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People do love things.
人类确实喜欢物品。
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，而是认为这是为自己和家人提供所需物品的必要行为。
The items brought into the household were a way of showing thought and concern about the needs of the people in it.
带进家庭的物品是一种思考和关心家庭成员需求的方式。
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——一种关于爱的行为。
Anti-consumer logic, in a strange way, can be interpreted as anti-love. And who doesn’t want love?
反消费的逻辑，以一种奇怪的方式，将消费解释为抵制爱的行为。谁不想要爱呢?
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——尤其是以最极端的形式——让我感到担忧，但我也反思了，至少通过尝试，我对自己、家人的需求以及我与事物的关系有了很大了解。
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.
当我向妻子询问这些批评时，她解释说，我们的减慢购买阶段让她每次购买前都会停下来，问问自己是否真的需要这件物品，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.
她在假期和生日时压力较小，因为她知道她不必担心买什么。
And it made her consider how, just because a person has the ability to buy something doesn’t mean she should.
这让她思考如何购买，因为一个人有能力买东西并不意味着她应该买。
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.
我同意她的观点，尽管我担心极简主义对个人来说可能是一种重要的方法，但我们仍然需要探索更大的答案——这些答案不仅重塑个人消费，而且重塑我们更广阔的消费主义世界的运作方式。
In the early dawn of one summer day in 2008, Marcus Eriksen’s raft, floating in the Pacific 60 miles west of Los Angeles, was sinking.
在2008年夏天的一个清晨，马库斯·埃里克森的救生筏漂浮在洛杉矶以西60英里的太平洋上。救生筏正在下沉。
Fifty-knot gusts churned the sea and threaded through the powerless vessel, pulling it apart.
五十节的狂风搅动着海面，穿过这艘无力抵抗的救生筏，将其撕裂。
This should not have been a surprise.
这不应该让人感到意外。
After all, the raft, named Junk, was constructed of a Cessna airplane fuselage sitting atop ply board and strapped to 15,000 plastic bottles.
毕竟，这个名为“Junk”的救生筏是由塞斯纳飞机机身、位于其下的层压板以及绑着的1.5万个塑料瓶制成。
