To The Moon

Our organs are already showing damage, best to start addressing the cause

Photo by Craig Marolf on Unsplash

I spent most of my twenties living with dependence and addiction. It’s amazing how quickly people write off fairly obvious, major problems as “youth” or “typical excess.” My life was anything but typical and I’ve yet to meet another young person who had similar issues.

The cover only works for so long. Then, just with any long-term substance abuse situation, you’re forced to take ownership. Whether you like it or not.

I’m here to say to the developed world, from one addict to another: stop. It takes one to know one, after all. Developed nations definitely have their own dependencies. Our addiction, though, is tomore. More vehicles. Bigger houses. More debt. More useless gadgets. More. Always more, always bigger, newer, shinier. It’s killing us.

Just like me, our culture will have to go through a few stages. Perhaps it’ll manifest as those most closely associated with grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and at last acceptance. It may be something briefer: after all, I believe we’ve acknowledged that we have a problem already. It’s confronting it and dealing with the consequences that give us issues.

So let’s look at consumerism and minimalism. How one is killing us and how the other might offer a solution. It may not be thebestsolution, but at least it’s an idea. Doing nothing and letting our problems go unchecked is not an option.

The three-caste economy

Before starting in earnest, it’s worth noting that in the developed world, income inequality is growing — greatly. I’m not a huge fan of that term because it implies that the ultimate goal is equality in all incomes, which is not really true either. But massive disparities in wealth that grow over time are, generally speaking, not great developments. As such, somewhere between 25% and 50% (depending on the nation) of the developed world isn’t actually participating in its more opulent habits.

Photo byNick RomanovonUnsplash

Then, of course, there are the top 5–10% or so — in the developed world, this group can basically buy anything or get whatever services they’ll ever need. I don’t begrudge them that, but it also means this group is not likely to be living beyond their means (though they sometimes manage to.) They’ll also be the last to forgo their lavish lifestyles, if ever.

It’s the middle caste I’d like to focus on today. Those who have comfortable lifestyles but must still watch their spending. The group that chooses between on-time retirement and providing for their children’s education because they can’t have both. The group that, increasingly, is putting themselves into a debt prison that’s of their own making.

See, with any addiction, there are usually root causes. Trauma is a big one, conditioning is another — being conditioned through either nature or nurture to believe that your problem is not actually a problem at all. In our developed world, that conditioning is often called “advertising.”

Even though it’s only the very top of our civilization that can afford all this stuff, consumers are hit with a barrage of ads from the second they’re old enough to watch TV (or, nowadays, get a tablet.) Buy this. Subscribe to that. Look at this new thing! Way better than thatoldthing. The season of savings. Funny how spending money equates to saving it, in this world.

All of this, along with some natural human traits like envy/jealousy and pride, conspires to make the middle portion of many developed nations convinced that they need all of this stuff. And they don’t. But now we have an economy that depends on continuous growth — both in population and in spending. So what do we do about it?

“Nothing” is no longer an appropriate action. Our organs are damaged from years of feeding this addiction, this system. The symptoms are everywhere. What’s happening to our planet, the increasing suffering of the bottom third of the population in even the wealthiest of nations, increasing mental health issuesacross generational lines. Addiction takes a toll on the whole body, after all.

Income disparity in the United States is an obvious one since even comparable nations like the UK have seenthe share of wealth held by their elites decline. The U.S. hasgone in the opposite direction. All this economic growth has done nothing for most of the country. So why be so beholden to it?

Incrimental minimalism

I know, that’s a mouthful. Proponents of minimalism tend to recommend rapidly abandoning many of our luxuries and unnecessary goods. They do so with earnest goals in mind — saving the planet, reducing corporate greed, all sorts of things. But just as it is potentially lethal for a two-bottle-a-day alcoholic to abruptly go to zero, so too would be the ramifications of ceasing all consumer spending.

Photo byLukas BatoonUnsplash

So, like the drunk, we must taper off. Reduce our consumption incrementally, day by day, year by year. Make no mistake — this will cause a lengthy and indefinite economic contraction. The idea is to at least ease into it slowly rather than causing mass layoffs all at once that end up harming the exact people who can withstand it the least. Give policies and support systems some time to catch up, if you will.

There will be those that say economic contraction or growth is irrelevant. Sincethe majority of the population is faring even worseafter years of strong economic growth, the labels don’t matter anyway. The profits are concentrated too narrowly for it to matter. I get that, but it’s the layoffs we’re looking to avoid. People needsometime to try and reduce their more extravagant spending and save some money before the economy completely tanks.

And on that topic — there’s plenty of wealth to go around in nations like the United States. Instead of investing that wealth, we’ve convinced ourselves of imaginary needs that deplete our funds, leaving us beholden to debt and creditors. The fact that a third of those with six-figure incomes are included in those paycheck-to-paycheck figures I linked above is evidence of this more than anything else.

Someone is going to say that rent is insane in Los Angeles or New York or wherever, and that no reduction in spending can make life livable on $100,000. That, for lack of a better term, is bullshit. I worked in NYC for many years and currently reside in the6th most expensive areain the whole southern portion of the US, so I get it. But here’s the thing: themedian income in NYCis $70,000 for ahousehold, $69,000 in LA, and $78,000 in Austin. If half of the city’s entire households are making it on 30% less than what you pull in, it’s the expectation — not the salary — that is the problem.

This is why we have to start looking at want versus need and gradually tapering off from our consumption addiction. I hate to break it to everyone, but no one needs a Chevrolet Suburban. Well, maybe if you have a full security detail. Otherwise, you just don't. Yes, I know, you have kids, and they play sports. Do you know what other places those “problems” belong to? Every other country on Earth. Yet there aren’t Cadillac Escalades every five feet in Europe.

Similarly, I don’t get this quest for McMansion-type properties. Even if you get one, how on Earth do you furnish it? My significant other and I are definitely in the “comfortable” section of the income bracket, but we struggle to even fill the 1,400 square feet that we have. I’m used to 750 and she’s used to 1000, so it’s a lot — to us anyway. I see people with similar jobs to ours buying 3,000-square-foot homes and Mercedes S-Class vehicles all the time. Why?

We have to focus on the areas where we’re extravagant and admit so. Once we do, we can start cutting back. I’m not immune. I have five flat-screen televisions in the house. Why? I have no idea or defense. Two sit on the floor of the closet, unused. We upgraded for size…or picture quality? See, I don’t even know. I’m done buying TVs.

Photo byLoewe TechnologyonUnsplash

Not only is this stuff completely unnecessary and harming the planet, it’s also just bad financial sense. If people in the 70th to 90th percentile even took a somewhat frugal approach to living, people would be retiring at 50 routinely. Instead, boomers —the wealthiest generation in history— are workinginto their 70s. I guarantee you they’re not all doing it out of love for corporate logistics, either.

Parting thoughts

I’m not saying that we all forgo driving entirely, stop buying goods of any kind, grow our own food, and move to 400-square-foot wooden cabins in the Montana wilderness. I’m just advocating that we all take a look at where we could make do with less — probably much less — and act on that knowledge. Like any addiction, it’ll be hard to break.

Who knows, with all the extra money we’d save, perhaps the financial services sector would grow enough to offset some of the damage caused by reduced consumer spending. Even if not, we haven’t exactly seen the middle and working classes benefit from all this “growth,” anyway.

As our economy becomes an increasingly global one, odds are that much of the developed world is going to find itself on the losing side of the equation. Outsourcing is one threat, AI and automation are two others. We’d do well to prepare ourselves for what’s coming — not only is it the right thing to do, it just might be necessary for the next few decades. Better to be prepared. You’d be surprised how much better you feel in recovery.

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