Less

There was an interesting Twitter post today from @KevOnStage:

People who grew up poor. What’s something you STILL do that you can 100% attribute to growing up poor.

https://x.com/KevOnStage/status/1956350710355771638 

I don't think I have an answer, because even though there are a lot of familiar things in the replies, I would do them anyway for the environment. I don't doubt that my horror of waste has some connection to money worries -- my glee at the change in the total when coupons are applied confirms that -- but anything that reduces and reuses (recycling too, but those first two are more important) seems like a good idea to me. 

There was a common thread in last week's books that came up in an additional two books: 

The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More by Annie Raser-Rowland and Adam Grubb

No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

For those two, just let me say that when you have people writing about cutting back and opting out and and how much better it was, there can be some reader rebellion with some of the extremity that can be almost unbearable when the writers are inordinately pleased with themselves.

Frugal Hedonism was a lot worse on that count. I do not recommend it.

Beavan was better.

From last week, both Humes and Freinkel interviewed people who had made substantive changes in their lives. Some of it does not appeal to me, and some does. Some would be hard but I could be open... ultimately that is a very personal thing.

Often the starting point was looking at the impact. Freinkel had a day where she tried tracking every piece of plastic that she touched. The number rose so quickly that the goal needed to be amended. 

Beavan and his wife wanted a week where they were going to go through all of their garbage, immediately complicated by their daughter's diapers.

Regardless, there was some way in which they would come to grips with their impact on the environment, the neighborhood, the atmosphere... somehow dealing with their output. Feeling the weight of that (which is always more than they thought it was going to be, even when they were expecting it to be high), they started to think about what they could do.

In every case, there were things that they loved about it. They ate better, they were healthier, they enjoyed their time more and were more relaxed... there were wonderful options that had been there all along but where other, easier things distracted them.

Conscious choosing led to greater satisfaction. That sounds logical, right? But it is easy to just get led.

I will add that pretty much everyone here was coming from a place of privilege. Part of choosing to eat locally involved having access to farmers' markets and farms. For someone living in a food desert, that's probably not an option. However, once you start thinking about it, maybe there is something you have overlooked or someone who can help. Maybe you can start a program that will benefit other people too. 

It starts with moving away from the easy and automatic.

I suppose that's part of why algorithm pushing bothers me so much. That's going to come up again.

It also goes along well with some of my thoughts about gracefully withdrawing from capitalism. There may be limits to the possibility, but there are options that can be done and they will take very conscious thought. 

They may all seem to involve taking less, something the planet desperately needs. That is also something that capitalism does not support, in ways that damage us.

It also involves that less feeling like more.