Abundance Mentality in a Finite World

Date Posted: May 18th, 2009

If someone told you that there’s plenty of good stuff for everyone, you’d probably think that person was delusional. Everyone knows that scarcity exists in this world. If gold were plentiful it wouldn’t be as valuable. If oil were plentiful, there’d be less talk about alternative fuels. Stuff is finite. There’s no getting around that.

Yet, if you read personal development literature (like any of Steven Covey’s books, for instance), you’ll find that highly effective people tend to believe that there is indeed plenty or everything for everyone. They have what is called an “abundance mentality” (AM), the belief that scarcity is a fallacy. The not quite so effective people tend to have “scarcity mentality” (SM), the belief that if one person wins another must lose, that resources are finite.

It seems both strange and wrong to me that a delusional belief can be more effective than a more accurate one, and that’s what this post is looking into. How does AM work in a finite world?

Examining the Definitions

Before we really try to answer that question, lets examine what kind of beliefs people with AM and SM have.

Unsurprisingly, these kind of beliefs affect a person’s personal development. Here a few examples of the desires a person with AM has versus the desires of a person with SM.

A person with abundance mentality competes with himself. His potential is unlimited. He’s attempting to capitalize on an abundant resource.

A person with scarcity mentality believes that competition happens externally. She either competes with others or refuses to compete. There’s only one “Number One” spot. It’s a scarce resource. If she’s attempting to be THE Best, she won’t be happy for anyone else being their best since they now become a threat.

Assuming AM is possible, it’s not too hard to see how it’s superior to SM. With AM you’re free to be generous because there’s plenty of everything for everyone. No guilt. Everyone can be happy. No jealousy either since you’re only comparing yourself to yourself. Everyone wins. Life is good.

On the other hand, with SM you aren’t free to be generous because you’re compromising your own position. You’ll feel guilt either way. Jealousy is everywhere. Any win means that someone else has lost. Life isn’t all that great.

A Finite Earth

As I mentioned earlier, AM has always seemed like a delusional belief to me. The Earth is finite. There are only 36,794,240,000 acres of land available on earth. Divided up between all 6 billion humans, that’s about 6 acres for each of us. If anyone has a 10 acre plot, that means someone else must have less. Even if you account for children and the infirm who couldn’t take care of 6 acres, there will still be a finite number of acres per person. And if you think wild animals ought to have a home, that’ll decrease the acres per person by even more.

This applies to other resources too. Oil, water, trees, and other finite resources will eventually be mined away. We don’t have an ever replenishing abundance of this stuff. One day it will be gone. The earth can’t support all 6 billion of us using these resources at the rate 1st world countries are using them.

It certainly seems as though abundance mentality doesn’t work when it comes to finite resources. A person can pretend all he wants that we have an abundant supply of oil… and when it inevitably runs out he’ll get a rude awakening.

Stuff Versus People

The trick to getting AM to work is to see that abundance isn’t supposed to apply to stuff (it’s already been shown that physical resources are limited), it’s supposed to apply to people. Or more specifically, to human potential.

If you look hard enough, every human want can be satisfied multiple ways. If you’re hungry there are plenty of different things you can eat or do to curb your hunger. If you’re lonely you can fix that loneliness by spending time with friends or meeting new people or distracting yourself.  Chances are for every problem there is at least one of solution that will result in a net gain for society and for everyone else. Let’s look at a couple of examples: oil and property.

Example 1: Oil

Oil is a finite resource. Oil is also, for all intents and purposes, energy. It enables us to drive our cars, heat our homes, fly us across the world, among many other things. If oil couldn’t do that or if something else could do it, would we have the same love for oil? I think not.

There isn’t an abundance of oil, but there are lots and lots of ways to create energy. We just need to find some that work well.

Example 2: Property

Remember how we only have 6 acres of land? How can we feel comfortable having a 10 acre estate knowing that we have it at the expense of someone else? We could rationalize it by telling ourselves that “not everyone wants a large estate” or something similar, but that kind of reasoning seems a bit weak to me.

It also is the type of resource that’s often wanted for its own sake, meaning it can’t be replaced by something else that does the job.

The problem here is that you can’t justify living on that land all by yourself. Other organisms need a place to live too. The question to ask then, is who do you feel comfortable sharing the land with? Maybe you could let a significant portion of it go wild to provide a home for animals or maybe you could invite other people to live on your estate too.

Or you could go a different route and donate money to research ways to acquire more land. There’s a finite amount of land on earth, but we don’t necessarily have to live on earth. I bet there’s a space colonization project somewhere.

There isn’t an abundance of land, but there are plenty of ways to make good use out of the land we have. And if we’re creative we may even find ways to increase the amount of land humans can colonize.

A Refined Definition of Abundance Mentality

There’s only one thing that’s truly truly truly in abundance: human ingenuity. A better definition of abundance mentality, then, is the following: it’s the belief that through human ingenuity all needs (both human and non-human) can be sustainably met. It’s the belief that we have the ability to solve every problem such that no-one loses. If you’re in a desert, AM doesn’t mean you believe that there’s plenty of water there, it means you can figure out a way to have water there that doesn’t take away from anyone else’s enjoyment of water.

So, yes, Abundance Mentality does work in a finite world because it’s not about believing in the abundance of things. It’s about believing in the abundance of human potential, something that’s not really possible to measure.

Tags: Abundance / Scarcity Mentality, Psychology, Sustainability.
Posted at 1:20 pm | No Comments »

Organizing Your Electronics

Date Posted: May 12th, 2009

This week I’m doing a synchroblog on “Spring Cleaning” with Jason Fischer. A link to his post is at the bottom.

For those of us that do spring cleaning it’s often as much about organizing our stuff as it is about a general cleaning. When you open up the shed to find all of your tools in disarray or try to find your CD resurfacing device in your giant box of loose electronics you may think to yourself that this is the time to get this stuff organized. After all, it’s spring cleaning time. You don’t just want things clean, you want your place to look nice too. And nothing looks nicer than a well organized house.

In my house, the “electronics tub” has been essentially an odorless landfill. Have you ever thought about going to a landfill to find something you threw away? If the thought doesn’t fill you with dread, you aren’t thinking hard enough. You’d have to sift through piles and piles of rotting junk to find an object you aren’t sure is there. Take out the “rotting” part, and that’s pretty much how I felt about the tub.

The picture on the right is smaller, more contained version of what the tub looked like. It was a giant plastic tub containing all sorts of wires (in knots), hard-drives, old video game systems, and much much more. The tub was also fairly deep, so if the item you were looking for was on the bottom… good luck. The thought of trying to find a headphone adapter in there made me seriously consider just getting a new one.

(Btw. If you ever think it’d be easier to buy a new anything than to find the one you have, something is seriously wrong with your organization system.)

Version 1.0: An Attempt

I first became acquainted with Aaron’s giant tub of electronics just after we started dating, and not long after that I felt compelled to improve it. I was probably trying to find something in it, and that combined with the fact that we’d just started dating I was feeling helpful. So I got out a giant bag of zip ties, and started bundling all the wires together so at least they wouldn’t get tangled up. Aaron soon joined me, and we started cataloguing the stuff in the tub in addition to separating out the wires, as well as tossing the stuff the we wouldn’t use and wouldn’t miss. It was a good first step.

But the organization system didn’t last very long. Zip ties are great as long as you don’t use the wires, but if you need to use a zip-tied object, you’re going to have to cut the zip tie holding it together. It’s very wasteful, so we were loath to wrap the wires up again once were done using them. Also, we didn’t feel motivated to keep up the inventory spreadsheet since there was no way to track what stuff was and wasn’t in it.

Version 1.2: Minor Improvements

A year or so later, we solved the zip tie problem by getting these velcro cable ties. Unlike the plastic zip ties, they’re reusable. We still use them, and I highly recommend them.

We also got a smaller, flatter tub to fit under the bed. That saved us some space, and made it a little easier to see what was inside, but it had it’s own drawbacks. If we wanted to find something we had to move the futon. Also there was limited light and limited mobility. If your item was on the far side of the box seeing and reaching it wasn’t easy to do.

Version 2.0: The Awesome

When we moved, Aaron had an idea for how to better organize the electronics tub. We implemented it a couple months ago, and it works very very well. All it requires is a bit of closet space, some closet organizers, and a labeler (semi-optional). A picture does the system more justice, though.

As you can see, we divided the cables up by category. There’s a slot for USB cables, a slot for firewire, a slot of random AC adaptors, a slot for power cabels, and every other loose electronic object we have.

Finding stuff now is a whole lot less painful. In fact yesterday I was trying to find a hard to find item, the AC adaptor to charge the battery for my digital camera. I don’t use my camera very often, and while I knew the charger could be plugged into the wall I thought I might have lost that part. Lo and behold it was on the AC adaptor shelf. I did have to pull out a few adaptors first, but it was nothing compared to having the pull out everything in order to find what I’m looking for.

With this system there’s no need to do an inventory, either. We’d tried the inventory system before so that we’d be able to tell if what we were looking for was actually in the tub. With the new system, checking to see if we have something is easy, so that problem is non-existant.

While the labeler is semi-optional, I highly suggest that you get one if you don’t already have one. It makes labeling one or two random things simple, and if you want to relabel something you can just put a new label on top of the old one. Can’t do that with a sharpie. It also looks a lot neater than handwritten labels. Getting refills for the labeler isn’t difficult or that expensive, either. The office supply store that carries your labeler most likely also has refill cartriges. They last a long time, too. I’ve had mine for a year and have had to change the cartrige only once or twice. I’ve changed the batteries about as many times. Being a choir director, I do quite a bit of labeling. I imagine both would last longer for the average person.

Don’t Give Up!

So that’s our system for organizing our loose electronics system. I hope you find it useful. And even if you don’t have this issue there’s another more fundamental message here: don’t give up if your first attempt at improving an area of your life doesn’t work too well. Keep trying, keep improving. Eventually you’ll find something that works well for you.

Have fun spring cleaning!

Other members of the synchroblog:

Spring Cleaning for Your Finances — Jason Fischer writes about how you can clean up your finances.

Tags: Organization, Self-Discipline.
Posted at 10:27 am | 1 Comment »