Pier Vittorio Aureli: Less is Enough

Inspirational essay examining capitalism, austerity and architectural fashion.

There is an increasing interest in more socially oriented ways of living such as co-housing or sharing domestic space between the compound of the family apartment. But what is seldom discussed is that this way of life requires some effort. To live together requires less individual freedom, although that maybe no bad thing. The question is whether such a way of life might only be developed out of economic necessity, or because it is only by sharing and coexisting that we can reclaim the true subjectivity that Marx beautifully described with the oxymoron ‘social individual’ – individuals who only become so among other individuals. Here, less means precisely the recalibration of a form of reciprocity that is no longer driven by possession but by sharing; the less we have in terms of possessions, the more we’ll be able to share. To say enough (instead of more) means to redefine what we really need in order to live a good life – that is, a life detached from the social ethos of property, from the anxiety of production and possession, and where less is just enough.