crave less, live more: the pursuit of contentment in our runaway capitalist world
Why it's critical and healing to live more meaningfully by consuming less
Yesterday I watched this excellent video conversation between BBC Food presenter Leyla Kazim and author, journalist and former CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers about so many timely and important topics including consumerism, social conditioning, and productivity culture - things that pervade our lives from every direction and inform our decisions on how to spend our money and, even more importantly, our time.
I could relate.
We’re inundated with more information than any other point in humanity’s history. That alone creates a general sense of dis-ease, and relaxation morphs into something we need to consciously focus on rather than being a naturally occurring result of hard work. If we don’t focus on relaxing (and even if we do sometimes) we don’t sleep well, cycling into anxiety, burn out, and eventually depression and other mental and physical illnesses.
Anxious, tired, overworked people make up a large percentage of the work force. With the advent of social media, the lines have completely disappeared between information, disinformation, and advertising. We really don’t know where information comes from or if it’s genuine, and it moves so fast that there’s almost no value to it anyway. We’re taken on distraction rides that wipe our energy, suck our time and leave us empty. According to the American Institute of Stress:
83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress, with 25% saying their job is the number one stressor in their lives.
About one million Americans miss work each day because of stress.
76% of US workers report that workplace stress affects their personal relationships.
Depression-induced absenteeism costs US businesses $51 billion a year, as well as an additional $26 billion in treatment costs.
Middle-aged participants had a 27% increase in the belief that their financial status would be affected by stress in the 2010s compared to the 1990s.
More than 50% of workers are not engaged at work as a result of stress, leading to a loss of productivity.
Companies spend around 75% of a worker’s annual salary to cover lost productivity or to replace workers.
The main causes of workplace stress are workload (39% of workers), interpersonal issues (31%), juggling work and personal life (19%), and job security (6%)
This tells the statistical story of what life in America has become for the majority of people. What it doesn’t lay out is the unfathomable psychological and emotional cost on worn-out people who so desperately want to believe that the system can, and someday will, work for them.
The sad reality is that unless we reestablish core beliefs about how we live, life on earth can never change for the better.
In the comments: tell us how you save your money and your sanity. What tips do you have to counteract rampant consumerism?
Many years back, I became engrossed in the concept of minimalist living. Not that I ever mastered it, or really ever wanted to, but aspects of it can improve quality of life.
Take, for example, the concept of Swedish death cleaning, where, as you get older, you get rid of things from your life so that your loved ones are not burdened with having to deal with your possessions. Because, I promise you, no one wants your stuff. There is too much stuff everywhere. Too much fast fashion, fast furniture, fast food, fast garbage. You might not even want your stuff, but you have it - and there are reasons you do. We’ve been manipulated by the runaway capitalist culture we’ve created and have come to accept as a normal, healthy, robust system. We’ve been force fed a mantra of “buy more stuff” since we can remember. And as long as we’re buying more stuff, the system keeps grinding on. But with horrendous consequences no one wants to think about.
Consumer confidence is economics speak for you will keep buying.
But there’s no future for a system that’s based upon the infinite consumption of finite resources, and we’re coming to the end of our resource-based consumption maturity arc.
We know we’re living on borrowed time in a flagrantly unsustainable, immoral, and wasteful system. None of us can do anything about the enormous problems individually. That would require moral governance and trust at a global scale for that kind of change.
We’d need those running the show to have a dog in the fight of poverty, hunger, slavery, racism, war. Which they don’t.
There’s correlation between work overwhelm, home upkeep overwhelm, information overwhelm, social media overwhelm, and shopping. Consumerism, like alcohol and drugs, can provide temporary comfort to deep pain. But the difference is, consumption of goods and services is the one thing we MUST do or the entire world economic system would risk collapse.
In other words, we’re trained from birth to willingly take part in an addictive system which will eventually destroy us.
The question is, how do we stop? Do we even want to stop? How did something that’s supposed to be good become the thing that’s destroying the entire planet?
Since the system works on us day and night to do this no-good-completely-addictive thing of endless consuming, we have to really, really want to step away in the worst possible way.
It’s the most important thing we can do individually and collectively. Stop the insane consumption circus. And in this fight, we are each Ground Zero.
Stepping away from clicking Apple or Amazon Pay was ridiculously hard for me. I live in the country side and hate actual shopping, so online buying is easy. Too easy. I had to cut it off if I wanted to live a half way meaningful life, much less practice what I preach about sustainability and organic living.
Private and publicly held consumer companies exist for one purpose only: To make us spend money. They don’t exist to provide happiness. They exist to make us part with our money, partially by supplying important and needed goods and services, and partially by shamelessly exploiting insecurities and weaknesses.
I find, when I repeat this fundamental truth to myself every time I’m ready to click the Apple or Amazon Pay button on my phone or computer, I’ve loosely calculated there’s a greater than 70% chance I won’t do it.
This truth has made me turn away from more workout clothes and more pillow covers and more saucepans and more socks. It’s made me look in my closets and find what I could still use. It’s made me pick more flowers and transplant ferns from the forest floor into my garden. It’s made me think more. About everything.
Of course we need consumer goods. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But there is a radical difference between what we want and what we need. And when we get clear on this, we move from being owned to owning ourselves.
We get to choose what resources are really worth the expenditure. And that can be life changing in a big way. Everything is either a want or a need. My needs list used to be long and my wants list used to be long. That’s a formula for financial disaster. With time, it’s radically changed. My needs list is short and my wants list is even shorter.
Being content with less gives us more than financial freedom. It gives us a chance to invest our time and money in things important to us - like improving our garden soil and practicing organic gardening, finding out what we truly love to do and doing that, giving to World Central Kitchen, building our small business, traveling to see how others live and bringing the best ideas home to implement. And countless other beautiful things.
I would love to hear ways that you’ve made your life less consumer based and more contentment based. Let’s start a list of ideas that others can take on. For the sake of each other and this gorgeous planet we are lucky enough to call home.
I’ll start:
Make a commitment never, ever to buy a brand new car. Before you say you lease your car, think about what the lease really costs you and what you have at the end of the lease. If you have to buy a car, buy one that’s a year old with a few miles or kilometres on it. You’ll save a ton over a showroom car and you won’t be responsible for putting another new car on the road that will end up on the pile.
Now it’s your turn!
It’s really not so hard. Create a minimalist budget and live within it. Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle. Give your excess money to feed, house, and provide medical care for those who need it.
Since leaving corporate America, it has been a fun (and frustrating) path to truly understand what I need versus buy, buy, buy...I want the freedom to share experiences with those I love rather than more stuff. Still a work in progress but love this way of living so much better....🌟