Is Marie Kondo the new "Mr. Miyagi"?: Why Tidying Up is another misuse of East Asian ideas

Fast Company

"As a scholar of East Asian philosophies, one pattern in the Kondo mania is all too familiar: the susceptibility of Americans to plain good sense if it can but be infused with a quasi-mystical 'oriental' aura," says University of Oklahoma philosophy professor Amy Olberding. "Kondo is, in several ways, a Mr. Miyagi for the anxious, late-capitalist, consumerist age. Unlike The Karate Kid, we are bedeviled by our own belongings rather than by bullies–but just as Mr. Miyagi could make waxing cars a way to find one’s strength and mettle, so too Marie Kondo can magically render folding T-shirts into a path toward personal contentment or even joy. The process by which mundane activities transmute into improved well-being is mysterious, but the mystery is much of the allure, part of what makes pedestrian wisdom palatable. Folding clothes as an organizational strategy is boring. But folding clothes as a mystically infused plan of life is alluring. It’s not about the clothes. It’s about everything, all at once."