Minimalism: live with less.

Why minimalism?

Have you ever thought about:

• How much of a high-tech phone do we need for calling?

• How many clothes do we need for one season?

• How big a room do we need for one person?

• How much furniture do we need for one room?

Modern human beings are constantly exposed to numerous advertisements. We are told that ¨You are not cool enough without the newest products, the successful experience, the costly icons, and so on¨. People are inescapably affected by celebrities or net influencers, thus trapped in endless desires for money, fashion, fame and success.

To achieve that, we rush the time, work hard and pay the bills, but fail to truly enjoy life. It seems that our world appraises consumerism as the ultimate happiness achieving. It is a common question for us:

• What are the essentials of life?

• How to create our own ideal lifestyle?

What is minimalism?

“Simplicity, clarity, singleness:

These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy

as they are also the marks of great art.”

- Richard Holloway

Whenever your physical space is filled with stuff, to the point of annoyance, you may ask yourself ¨Do I need all of this? ¨ If the answer is ¨no¨, then ¨Minimalism¨ is the exact solution you are looking for. Minimalism is a philosophy to get rid of materials.

Minimalists believe that we can access happiness and fulfilment beyond materials. Originally, Minimalism was exclusively a concept from the art world, that manifest itself by simple lines, structures and colors. Likewise, the minimalism lifestyle reinforces the essentials of life by removing the attention of unnecessary items.

Practice minimalism is a way to redesign the life and rebuild our mindsets.

A change of perspectives

You may be curious about ¨…So…to be a minimalist, does it point to own less and not buy anything new? ¨

The answer is ¨ Could be, but that is just the surface¨.

Literally, Minimalism means ¨Own fewer possessions, less stuff ¨,

but what matters more is to change the way and the perspectives we think.

Internality

Joshua Becker said ¨ being a minimalist means intentionally promoting the things we most value ¨. Minimalism is marked by the inner clarity and right state of mind. You are clear about your purpose and passion, less influenced by the external chaotic situation. That is an internalized condition that leads us to take back control of our lives.

Priority

Colin Weight said: ¨ Minimalism is about the reassessment of your priorities so that you can strip away the excess stuff.¨ That is what Minimalism really talks about, to live with things you really need and declutter the possessions, ideas, relationships and activities that don’t bring value to your life.

Passion

After removing excess stuff, what will minimalism keep? Passion. You will see how passion brings you unprecedented happiness implemented in your life by dedicating yourself. Saying goodbye to impulsive buys and non-purposeful chases, you will invest your time and effort on your real hopes and dreams, to seek a greater life. It will help you by make you start thinking about ¨What matter most to you?¨.

Check here, and you will find more advantages of changing perspectives and designing a simple life as a minimalist.

Minimalism Challenge: Project 333

You may build an impression about Minimalism now. To better understand the minimalism lifestyle, I will introduce a minimalism challenge named ¨Project 333¨ to you. Project 333 is the minimalist fashion challenge that invites people to dress with 33 items or less for 3 months. The method of Project 333 is to remove stress from life simply by reducing the number of items in your closet.

If you are you interested and eager to be a minimalist as well, there are ten simple minimalism guidelines and a comprehensive guide on Minimalism guiding you to practice the minimalist lifestyle.

What Minimalism means to us?

Minimalism's main benefit is to bring people back to the essentials of life and recover the mindfulness. As Anthoy Ongaro said, ¨ Minimalism is how I reduce distractions in my life so I can do more of what matters.¨

Also, Courtney Carver mentioned the power of simplicity in her book ¨Soulful simplicity¨. She said ¨ Give yourself all the space, time and love to remember who you are¨. An increasing number of people find that Minimalism helps them slow down life and free themselves from trivial items.

The fact that minimalism changes people’s lives shows us how living with less can lead to more. That is what Minimalism is about:

Less is more.

Less distractions, more concentrations.

Less possessions, more values.

Less unnecessary, more essential.

Less hysteria, more passion.

Less materialism, more spiritualism

….

What else do you think of?

Ready?

If you already feel overwhelmed and tired, why not start by simplify your life a little? Like a minimalist. It is time to discover what matters in our lives and reposition ourselves. Why not begin from decluttering our personal space to make space for soul care, spare the time for the best things, and welcome fresh mindsets.

Afterwards, you will be connected with new experiences, feelings and relationships. At that time, you will have the power to define your philosophy of living and pursuit the things you truly love.

We are looking forward to hearing your stories.

Who’s Behind DANSIC

Hello there,

We thought it was time to write a post and explain who we are at DANSIC and why we are doing what we’re doing as a team. We’re talking about the organisation as a whole, our wonderful volunteer members, and most importantly, the common mission that binds us all together. We’re constantly evolving, so bear in mind that parts of this post are specific to our 2021 team.

You might have already guessed it from the abbreviation that we are a social innovation club. Now, you may ask what that actually stands for? Let us clarify it for you a bit.

Social innovation, in general, is the process of developing novel practices and solutions that can tackle large, even systemic social issues. These new methods aim to meet social needs in improved and better ways than previous solutions have. Social needs can be anything from education, healthcare to community development or similar. Different organisations apply different definitions, but most of them revolve around a sense of ‘newness’ (innovativeness), and the importance of social objectives, actor interaction and diversity.

Effective solutions that social innovation is built on include innovations with a social purpose such as distance learning and virtual volunteering. And that’s where we come into the picture.

Our role as an organisation in the rather complex territory of social innovation is best described in our vision statement. The overall vision of DANSIC is to contribute to the creation of a society that is socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. We know that these are loaded words, however, we are really trying our best to bring this vision to life by embodying it as a student-led organisation and by fusing it into all our activities.

The way we do it is pretty simple. Each year, we organise an event around a specific theme that aims to raise awareness and investigate that topic. The larger goal of the investigation is to find potential solutions for challenging systemic and environmental issues by mobilising students and other actors. Previous themes included sustainable travelling, the intersection of mindfulness and sustainability, and other wonderfully diverse themes. The format of the events can vary as we like to keep things exciting and, you guessed it, innovative in some way. Think case competitions, workshops, panel discussions and the like.

Behind the scenes, we have our brilliant team of student volunteers, who put in all the hard work to make these events happen. Our team changes almost entirely each year to start every new project with a fresh set of volunteers. For this reason, the answer to the question of ‘Who are we?’ is actually quite diverse. So are we as a group. We asked our current team to explain it from their personal context why they joined DANSIC and what their experience have been. This is what they said:

Tuuli (Marketing Director)

“I wanted to experience organisational work and also network with other young professionals/students who are interested in social, environmental and political issues around the world. The work has its challenges, especially when we are all stuck at home but it’s very rewarding when all the pieces come together. It will be exciting to see the end product!”

Rita (VP - Communications)

“I joined DANSIC because I wanted to do something that had an impact on the world. I wanted to use my knowledge and time to develop something that would potentially change people’s lives. Turns out, it changed my life. Being surrounded by like-minded people from different backgrounds and paths in life opened the door for mindful discussions that often change our perspective of the world.”

Hugin (Fundraising Coordinator)

“I joined because knowing how fortunate I am to have been born and raised in Denmark, I want to help the less fortunate. I thought it would be fun to gain experience within fundraising and creating a case-competition from scratch. All in all, I believe this volunteer opportunity to be a meaningful experience, where work actually changes the world for the better, even though we are “just” students.”

Nikoleta (HR Director)

“It has been a long-held dream of mine to engage in a fresh student initiative and to associate with young professionals from all sorts of backgrounds. Being a Psychology student and having worked mainly in settings involving trauma in the past, this time I wanted to try something new and put my skills into practice within the field of human resources and organization. DANSIC gave me this great opportunity, which has already increased my possibilities for a fulfilling future career.”

If some of this piqued your interest and you would like to get involved, whether you’re a student, recent graduate, passionate fellow, business or other organisation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. That’s it for now — we’d love to hear from you.

Effective Altruism

What is it?

Have you ever heard of Peter Singer or Toby Ord?

If yes, then you probably already stumble upon the Effective Altruism concept.

If not, this post will help you understand what effective altruism is

and how you can join the movement.

Effective altruism is a philosophy and a movement

that aims to use reasoning to do the most good.

3 big ideas of effective altruism are:

Impartiality

Impartiality is about taking sympathy and compassion out of the picture when it comes to helping others, and instead use impartial and impersonal reasoning. This evidently leads to the conclusion that the ones that should be benefited are not the ones closer to us, or whose misfortune is closer to out hearts, but instead the ones who are in the worst conditions and suffering the most.

Cause prioritization

Most organizations and non-profits focus on a single cause. A true effective altruist is not concerned with a cause above other. Instead, they prioritize the causes based on if they can be advanced significantly in an efficient way. A cause that has a bigger benefit and affects more people is likely to be prioritized over another that produces less good.

Cost-effectiveness

Very connected to the last idea, is cost-effectiveness. When choosing a cause or organization an effective altruist will prioritize the one that can do the most good with the least amount of resources. This can be expressed for example in quality-adjusted life years (QALY) saved per dollar. The bigger this number the more cost-effective is the cause or organization.

An illustrative argument in favour of effective altruism

Let us say you are walking in a park by yourself and you see a child drowning in the nearby lake. What would you do? I am going to assume you would heroically jump into the lake and save the child. Now let’s say you just bought a new pair of shoes that you love and you know will be damaged if you go in the water. You have no time to take them off. Would you still save the child? Most likely yes. A life of a child is way more important than the cost of your new shoes. Now let us say the park is located in one country and the lake in the neighbouring country and there is a border (not a physical one) in between. Is that an impediment to save the child? Probably not. The life of a child from other nationality is as important as the life of the child from our own country. Now let us say this child, instead of in a lake right next to us, is dying in a country we cannot see. Would you still sacrifice the cost of a pair of new shoes to save this child? Most of us don’t. We distance ourselves from problems we cannot see, even when saving a life is relatively easy and inexpensive. Something simple like a mosquito net that can protect a child from contracting malaria costs some mere 30dkk (4eur).

How to donate?

You can be saving hundreds of lives if you become rational about your donations and start allocating resources, even if few, to cost effective organizations. And how do you find these causes? That is easy, there are organization dedicated to research the causes that do the most good. Give Well is just one example. And you can still choose what are your personal priorities. The movement focus on several causes like global poverty alleviation, animal welfare, long-term future and global catastrophic risks, among others.

But if we all donate of effective organizations, then all other organizations lose funding. Shouldn’t we diversify?

The answer is no. There will always be people donating for causes that are resonate with them in some emotional way, but for an effective altruist the priority is to do the most good possible with the resources they allocate. This implies to always donate to effective causes disregarding personal preferences. Once that cause is tackled and resolved, then we can move on and make other cause our new priority. And that is how you properly solve all the world’s problems, or at least you try.

A change in perspective

If you think your small donation will not make a difference, think again. In the big world that we live in, a small amount like 300dkk(40eur) can make a huge impact. This amount is more than the average monthly income per capita for a country like Afghanistan or the Democratic Republic of Congo. We in the developed world have the added responsibility of contributing to help the problems of the world. This line of thought does not come from a place of superiority or pity charity, it comes from reasoning. If we have more resources and can apply them better somewhere else in the world then that is the rational thing to do.

And if you think you don’t have many resources - maybe you are just a student, eating noodles most nights - it’s time to change your perspective and check your own privilege. You are probably still on the top 20% of the richest people in the world. In fact you can check that here. So, giving the equivalent to a Spotify subscription every month to an effective charity can make a real change in the world without impacting your finances significantly.

Giving What We Can Pledge

If effective altruism is something for you, maybe you should check the Giving What We Can Pledge. In 2009, Oxford philosophers Toby Ord and Will MacAskill created the Giving What We Can Pledge based on the effective altruism philosophy. Similarly, to the Giving Plegde (a pledge taken by the world’s wealthiest individuals that commit to giving out the majority of their wealth to philanthropy) the Giving What We Can Pledge is also about committing to give a significant amount of your income to charity. Members that take the pledge commit to give 10% of their income to effective altruism causes for the rest of their lives. More than 5000 people already took the pledge. But if this sounds scary, they have a Try Giving Pledge, where you can commit to donate 1% or more of your income for a limited amount of time. And if you have no income? Then you can commit to donate 1% of your life expenses. There are no excuses to not give it a try.