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Wage Slave Rebel Dispatch
Enoughism
As is true for most Americans and likely most people in a late-stage capitalist society, during childhood I developed an unquenchable desire for more. This isn’t a characteristic explicitly taught, but one that is both partially innate and evident enough in others that it can be nurtured by companies for profit and imitated by children to acquire normality. Big is better than small, tall is better than short, new is better than old, more is better than less.
This view is so pervasive and rarely challenged primarily because our economy depends on it. As long as people want more, they will work more to earn more to buy more so that more can be produced and the wealthy can become wealthier and we can maintain our happy little status quo. For this reason, materialism is our religion. In those times that others might pray, we buy. In those times that others might seek enlightenment, we seek the nearest Starbucks. Things make us happy. Things define us. Things fill the gaping voids in our souls and in our lives.
At least temporarily.
It’s true that having things does make people happier. Food, clothing, homes, tools, etc. all make for some pretty nice things to have. They improve our quality of life, they enhance our experiences, they enable us to explore our interests and develop valuable skills. But people today go well beyond what is reasonable. What we are seeing is rampant and disgusting material gluttony encouraged by immoral profiteers. And while it hasn’t often been vocalized or formally acknowledged, most of us have this nagging feeling that at a certain point the acquisition of things stops being beneficial entirely and actually becomes detrimental to our well-being. We may, for a brief moment, experience some sort of happiness for owning this or that, but it really only distracts us from our malnourished souls, decrepit intellects, and unfulfilled potentials.
We don’t need capitalism and we don’t need materialism and we don’t need consumerism. We need enoughism. We need to curb our inclinations to spend and realize that growing our inventories will never amount to growing ourselves.
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Great post and great title! I am not saying I have got there with this, but I have noticed a lack of interest in buying more 'stuff' recently. I purposely don't go shopping very much these days, as I find once you get in the shops, there is more and more things to entice you and suddenly you feel like you 'need' all these things you'd never thought about before!
The only thing I buy lately is books and food. And as far as the books go, I'd be happy to trade them off for new ones or go to the library, but my selection is usually too limited.
Now though, my major goal is to sell off the things I don't use. I'll probably have a store up for that in the next week or two, or maybe I'll just do it through Craigslist.
Well done. Really enjoyed this post.
I can safely say that I am most happy when playing football (soccer, just so people don't get the two confused). If kicking a ball around on an open field with some friends is how I am suppose to live out the rest of my life then so be it. I can die with a smile on my face.
This desire people have to obtain well above their own needs (or their family's needs) is baffling at best. Sure a decent car and a nice home may be warranted but to have things for the sake of having is nothing more than showing off really, a way to separate yourself from others or to place you in a different, higher, class.
I'm not sure I would agree that it's nothing more than showing off. Showing off is certainly part of it, but over-consumption should be equated with theft. In a world where half the population has too much and half the population has too little, over-consumers have the burden of justifying their material gluttony.
In that first paragraph, though, you really hit the essence of what enoughism is. I'd also hope to die simply, knowing I'm doing what I love with as much as I need.
Enoughism is a good concept, but so much of the wonderful things we get to enjoy and experience are the direct result of a capitalist society. The computer your writing on, and even your ability to be a freelancer would be entirely impossible without the creativity and motivation capitalism encourages.
I can understand where you are coming from that my computer was made within a capitalist society, but does this mean a computer cannot be made outside of a capitalist society? If it can, I don't understand the argument. It came from a capitalist society simply because I live in one, not because capitalism has a monopoly on computer production. Furthermore, it might be argued that just because technology is new or has more features or is more complex, this doesn't necessarily entail progress or happiness. Adapting to knew technology is a long and detrimental journey. For example, most Americans spend far too much time being distracted by televisions and cell phones to do anything worthwhile or valuable. Most of us simply absorb. We haven't yet adapted to technology in a way that we can get out of it what we may and still retain our humanity.
As for my ability to freelance, in some respects you are right. Many of my clients are for-profit businesses. This is also the work I like least because it stifles creativity in order to reach the lowest common denominator. I think I could do well without capitalist influence. Could most people? I'm not sure, but I most certainly could were it possible.
Jonathan makes a good point. How scalable is offering a suggested way out of over-consumerism while simultaneously making your money off of those over-consumers (or, more often in the designer's case, those that market to the over-consumers)? This is not to knock Enoughism (love the word!), but rather to think out loud the "what comes next?" thought.
Suppose you do rack up enough converts (a heady task, to be sure), will the need for our services decrease? If so, will it lead us to a need to be more creative in obtaining or creating work? Now that I have that actually written out, it sounds like a better deal than I initially thought. Go for it. Keep promoting enoughism. I'll be excited to see how it leads those of us who live off of consumerism to change!
I have to give credit where credit is due. "Enoughism" was coined by John Naish last year. It's meant to be the antithesis of consumerism. (More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoughism)
For designers and other service-based freelancers, I think it's really hard to target over-consumers. People who need services usually need them out of necessity. It's true that there are people who need services primarily to market to over-consumers, but I usually have enough information about such projects that I can avoid them entirely.
There are many other economies we can explore that cultivate or promote enoughism. Bartering, gift economies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy) and participatory economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parecon) are a few. The point isn't to replace capitalism in it's entirety, but to create small communities which use these alternative economies. Freelancers are probably more capable of doing this than a lot of other groups, since we all have something to offer.
I love the concept of enoughism. Since drastically reducing my possessions and changing my spending habits, I've noticed that gaining new things is actually very unenjoyable. I like not having much, it means there's less to think about. Things can weight you down big time, and I never really understood it until I made changes in my own life. Great post man.
I know what you mean. For quite a while now, I experience buyers remorse before I even buy things. I should keep track of the money I spend each month and post it online. I wonder how low I can actually go.
November 28th is Buy Nothing Day. I should write about that and encourage people to participate. Maybe they can't buy less all the time, but even just one day should teach them something (probably about how quickly they are willing to buy things).
I've always strayed toward the minimal lifestyle, but I never knew just how little I needed until I started living out of my carry-on bag. I don't even use everything I brought with me. And I barely have anything!
Advice when you start selling stuff: throw a party and have a 'garage sale' room. Kristin and I did this and it really helped reduce the amount of 'stuff' we had sitting around, waiting to be sold before we moved from LA.
That sounds like an awesome idea for selling stuff. I'll definitely look into it. I have lots of stuff I feel completely detached from so there's no need to hoard it when other people can use it. Looking forward to unloading this mess.
"This desire people have to obtain well above their own needs (or their family's needs) is baffling at best."
This is definitely intriguing. I think most of us at some point have wondered why people who have hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank keep working. There are lots of common examples that are arguable meme level. Things like the lottery winner who insists on keeping their job as a janitor (or whatever).
Rather than blaming this tendency on a construct such as capitalism, I tend to think the explanation is more likely found in evolutionary psychology. After millions of years of scarcity, we developed a chunk of our brain that tells us that we need to keep gathering and gathering because the resources aren't going to be there forever and we'll need them. Basically, it' adds teeth to the "pack rat" analogy.
So here we are, only a hundred or thousand years into a society of relative abundance. Our instincts that developed over millions of years of scarcity no longer apply in the same way and we get cognitive dissonance because we see people doing things that don't make logical sense.
Now, for those who frame this in terms of levers of power such as capitalism… I'm not letting the isms off the hook. Things like capitalism tend to exploit these built-in tendencies for their own benefit. This happens on many levels.
Okay… I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately and apparently my comment should have been it's own blog post… I'll spare you the rest of my diatribe.
Thought provoking stuff. Nice work.
You might be on to something, Andrew, and I think I mostly agree with what you are getting at. It should also be said that people "work" (defined broadly) because it's one of the greatest things life has to offer if you're doing it right. I don't mean going in to a 9-to-5 that you hate, but getting paid to do something you love. For example, a luthier who wins a million dollar jackpot probably isn't going to stop building or selling his instruments. But in general, our tendency to want more combined with capitalism's exploitation of that tendency are the likeliest culprits behind our sorry spiritual state.
I think Andrew is right. Rampant consumerism and the work ethic are definitely two different two different things. It seems clear the desire for more is not the only reason that people work – even at jobs that aren't inspiring to them. Still, I'm not sure that I agree with the idea that the need to work and accumulate things is evolutionary in nature. I would argue that it's more sociological and related to status and the way people structure their lives.
One of the most hateful things about the current situation in the US and UK is that people are defined, and therefore define themselves, by the job that they do. Within seconds of meeting somebody they will ask 'What do you do?' and then make a judgement about you depending on what you do for a living.
Work gives people purpose, defines their place in society, gives them status, provides them with a tribe or social circle and, frankly, fills up empty days for some people. Not everybody would be content to sit around reading great books, listening to great music and improving their minds every day – for a lot of people, not having the routine and structure provided by work would be their worst nightmare, leaving them lost and purposeless.
Also, owning possessions and having money gives an individual in our society staus and power. Whether we like it or not, buying bigger and better things to improve one's status has taken the place of physical confrontation in our day to day lives as the primary means of defining superior status. The millionaire doesn't prove that he is of higher status than the beggar by fighting him, as he may have done thousands of years ago. Instead, it is the clothes that he has bought, the watch that he wears, the shoes he has acquired and the haircut he has paid for that indicates his higher societal status to others as he walks down the street.
This comment is in no way a defence of rampant consumerism, but if there is to be real change, it must be taken into account that work, even if it's not work that feeds the soul's passion, is so responsible for structuring our lives that any alternative to capitalism and wage-slavery must contain a way for people to feel needed, useful, accepted and part of the society around them or it doesn't stand a chance of getting off the ground.
I hadn't really thought about it in this much detail before but If I'm right, then perhaps consumerism is not purely caused by the western world being full of bad and greedy people, but is simply a side effect of the way our society is structured?
Finally, something that few people seem prepared to acknowledge is that in most cases people can only follow their dreams and passions if somebody else is doing the grunt work. If somebody wasn't growing food, making clothes, building houses and collecting drinking water for me, I wouldn't have time pursue my 'dream life'. Take the examples of great art, literature and music – these things may be present in all societies and cultures, but only seem to reach their highest forms in societies where the basic requirements of life are taken care of by somebody else.
Some of the most vocal opponents of capitalism and strongest advocates of 'lifestyle design' want to be life coaches or self-help tutors, but there's not much call for that in a society when your days are already filled with growing food and providing water for your family.
Whilst it may unfashionable to admit and even more unpalatable to acknowledge, it is a direct result of the inequalities and imperfections in the current world that allow us to sit around contemplating our navels and wondering how our 'passions' and 'purposes' can be discovered.
Food for thought I hope…
[...] days to drive anyone mad, so why don’t we just pair life down to the most important one: enoughism. I could tell you more about it, but I think I’ve written [...]
That's true, we dont need all the rich food that make us fat and make us sick either
Last paragraph was perfect. Balance, or having enough and the pursuit of knowing when enough is enough should be sought out as much more valuable than having the biggest house, most cars, biggest pizza, longest nap…enoughism. I like it.
Great post…..well written and motivating. Keep up the great work!
You might like this video we did in April 2009 on Enoughism…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe5yFYryYLI
Enjoy, Monty H