The bare minimum has fallen on hard times. Our new century has seen its once elegant hull wrecked upon the craggy cliffs of this post-post-post modern age. Dragged undertow by the likes of bio hacking, micro-dosing, and marginal gains—coupon clipping for the soul; a society of godless people hell bent on a short-cut to consciousness; set adrift in an iso-tank escape pod—halfway to nowhere and getting closer everyday.
We are maxed out. Worn down by the endless onslaught of empty noise—without haven, without course, doomed to “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.” We fill our bellies with ancient grains and goji berries, and yet the emptiness increases. We steer this vessel with a broken compass and yet we demand a speedy arrival. How are we to cure this longing that ails us?
Look no further wayward sojourner and fall with me into the buttery nooks of the Bare Minimum; the whole minimum and nothing but the minimum. A method unconcerned with outsmarting the tall hedge maze of fate but rather allowing the crushing abyss to wash over your blemished self “in an awesome wave.” Stop searching and you will find yourself. Want what you have and you will have it all. Content yourself with yourself and get reacquainted with the Bare Minimum (BM™).
Throw off the yoke of shame imposed on you by your masters and embrace the idioms of the unwashed masses; “Don’t work harder, work smarter!” “Cs get degrees,” and my favorite “Good enough for government work.” Because let’s face it, if it's good enough for the bondservants of American serfdom, then it's good enough for you!
Why spend what precious few hours you have left striving for the summit of a molehill when you could side step it all and embrace BM™. Contemplate eternity? I’d rather contemplate breakfast, “More BM™ please!” Because I am a simple man. In fact my only remaining hope is to one day live in a modestly furnished one-bedroom apartment above a quaint family-owned pizza shop on the outskirts of a big city. Close enough to be there and yet far enough to evade the epicenter of the blast. I believe in BM™, do you?
Before one more moment is lost you must realign yourself with BM™ and remember that history makes fools of us all: those of us who are mostly right are more than likely a fair bit wrong and those that are wrong are most certainly more frighteningly right than any of us would like to admit. So give up, embrace BM™ and accept that your communications degree is stupid. Why minor in Ethical Taxidermy when you could major in BM™ today.
So start outperforming, in an underachieving manner of speaking, and join BM™ now!
But before I go, if you’re wondering to yourself how you could thank me for my invitation, think nothing of it, after all, it was the very least I could do.
A Note on The Author…
F. Scott Arkansas was born in Omaha Nebraska in the midst of an electrical storm that claimed the lives of 38 people. He started BM™ fourteen years ago in an effort to combat the spread of unmediated individualism, which he has publicly decried as “cowardly.” He is both the founding member and junior executive fellow of the Institute for National Concentration, a public health trust committed to the abolition and subsequent destruction of unsightly leisure wear. He is married to 3 sets of fraternal twins and has an assortment of children he refers to as Canadians. Mr. Arkansas can be found among the Andean foothills searching for “our missing socks.”
