溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Is Frugality a Virtue, or Merely Another Name for Concealed Lack?
Should the worth of a thing be measured only by its practical use, or is there also a place for beauty and ease?
What is clothing made for? In winter, to ward off cold; in summer, to ward off heat. The principle of making clothing is this: whatever adds nothing to warmth or coolness is to be removed entirely.
Mozi's thought, pushing moderation to its extreme, clashed head-on with Confucianism. Xunzi criticized the Mohists, countering that human beings also need adornment and disciplined beauty through ritual propriety — that pure utility alone does not complete humanity. Modern minimalist movements, by contrast, have summoned back an aesthetic of restraint similar to Mozi's, as a reaction against materialist society. This old weighing between utility and beauty, restraint and abundance, continues today in how we approach consumption.
As reflection on overconsumption grows today, this extreme question — treating everything beyond utility as waste — returns again, taken seriously once more.
Mozi classified every expense beyond practical use — clothing, housing, even funerals — as waste, with no exceptions for decoration or lavish rites.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Mozi classified every expense beyond practical use — clothing, housing, even funerals — as waste, with no exceptions for decoration or lavish rites. I recognize this thoroughness came from a cold but urgent reason: in his time, people genuinely starved, and extravagance was, in effect, someone else's deprivation. Yet I also ask whether beauty and ease are truly pure waste. I too weigh today how much of my own spending is need, and where exactly luxury begins.
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