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Others have pointed out that attacking consumption itself in order to solve the problems of over-consumption is unlikely to succeed.
还有人指出，通过打击消费本身来解决过度消费的问题不太可能成功。
Consumerism has become a symbol of liberty and democratic equality – in today’s world, the idea goes, anyone can consume anything, and thus be turned into the person they want to be.
消费主义已经成为自由和民主平等的象征——在当今世界，这种观念认为，任何人都可以消费任何东西，从而成为他们想成为的人。
The symbolic glow of consumption cannot simply be turned off.
消费的象征性光芒无法简单地褪去。
People do love things. The anthropologist Daniel Miller studied shoppers in London and saw that many people do not see consumption as an act of hedonism, but as necessary provisioning for themselves and their families.
人是有爱的。人类学家丹尼尔·米勒对伦敦的购物者进行了研究，发现许多人并不认为消费是一种享乐主义行为，而是为自己和家人提供必要的必需品。
The items brought into the household were a way of showing thought and concern about the needs of the people in it.
买到家里的东西可以用来表达对家庭成员需求的考虑和关心。
In this way, shopping is a means to express care – an act of love.
在这种情况下，购物是一种表达关心的方式——一种爱的行为。
Anti-consumer logic, in a strange way, can be interpreted as anti-love. And who doesn’t want love?
奇怪的是，反消费逻辑可以被解释为反爱。谁不想得到爱呢？
While these arguments against minimalism – particularly in its most extreme forms – struck me as worryingly true, I also reflected on how much, by at least trying it, I learned about myself, my family’s needs, my relationship with things.
虽然这些反对极简主义的论点——尤其是其最极端的形式——让我感到担忧，但我也反思了，至少通过尝试，我对自己、家人的需求、我与事物的关系有了一些了解。
When I asked my wife about these critiques, she explained how our slow-buy phase made her pause before each purchase, to ask herself if she really needed the item, or if there was some other way to obtain it.
我问妻子对这些批评意见的看法时，她说，我们的“慢慢买”阶段让她每次购物前都会停下来，问问自己是否真的需要这件东西，或者是否有其他方式可以获得它。
She was less stressed during holidays and birthdays because she knew she didn’t have to worry about what to buy.
她在假期和生日时面临的压力更小了，因为她知道不用操心要买什么了。
And it made her consider how, just because a person has the ability to buy something doesn’t mean she should.
这让她想到，一个人有能力买东西并不意味着她就应该买。
For her, minimalism isn’t faux spiritualism, but a real contentment and reframing of what brings true joy.
对她来说，极简主义并不是虚假的唯心主义，而是一种真正的满足和对真正快乐的重新定义。
I agreed, even as I worried that while minimalism can be an important approach for individuals, we still need bigger answers – answers that don’t reframe just individual consumption, but how our larger world of consumerism operates.
我同意，即使我担心虽然极简主义对个人来说是一种重要的方法，但我们仍然需要更宏观的解决方案——这个方案不仅能重新构建个人消费，还能重新构建这个更大的消费主义世界的运行方式。
