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

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