“Convenience Food” –> assumes that people wouldn’t want to cook for themselves if they didn’t have to. Isn’t it just as likely that people don’t want to cook because they don’t know how or that they think it’s too hard or whatever?

Shampoo –> See No ‘Poo. (I’ve been doing this for a little over a week now. We’ll so how it goes.

Computerized Sewing Machines –> The vast, vast majority of sewers can do amazing stuff with a Singer from the 50’s that goes forward and backward. If it can do a zigzag stitch, that’s nice too. The rest…. unnecessary.

New Clothes –> The thrift store is your friend. It takes a really really long time to wear out clothes and most of the stuff in the thrift store isn’t all that used.

Fancy Athletic Shoes –> We all should be walking barefoot (or close to it). The simpler the shoe the better.

Cameras –> A fancy camera in the hands of an amateur will still turn out amateurish pictures.

Computers –> Most of us don’t really need a computer every 4 years, but we’re forced out of them by new software that won’t work on the old ones.

If I wanted to I could think of more examples. Very few things in life are actually necessary. Some things will enhance our happiness. Too many things will weigh us down.

This has huge implications. For ourselves, it means that we can get more freedom by paring down the stuff that doesn’t matter. For the world, it means we probably have the means to enable everyone to have their basic needs met.

If we have the capability to create such a world, why aren’t we? I think it’s a matter of structure. We’re a capitalist society. We’re told to spend spend spend all the time. Many of us have thousands of dollars of debt. We have a mistaken belief that more stuff = more happiness. Until enough of us shun this belief system, we won’t as a society get to that place where none of us have to worry about how to get food, shelter, and safety.

Luckily, we don’t need society to be on our side in order to reap the benefits of getting rid of the unessential. Each thing you don’t need that you can get rid of is more money in your pocket. More money means you you have more you can save. More savings means less worrying about how to feed and shelter yourself. Not having to worry about that stuff is the whole goal.

The more of us that change our lives in a certain way, the more society changes in that direction. Businesses will start catering to our new values. Then it’ll be us running the businesses. Then there may not even be businesses as such. All volunteer organizations… If you wanted to sit on your butt all day you could! Without guilt even!

I think we have arrived at the age where this is possible. To go from possible to actuality we need to focus on what’s important and get rid of the unnecessary.

Are you living up to your potential? Do you want to? Do you feel guilty for not doing so?

Is wealth bad? Is power bad? If you don’t acquire either does that diminish the quality of your life?

What constitutes a good life?

What constitutes a wasted life?

If you retire and spend your time just connecting with people, is that wasting your time? If you’re just spending time with your family and closest friends?

Just some things I’ve been thinking about recently.

Keeping score in general feels bad when it comes to service, and money is the ultimate way of keeping score.

Also, how much money you have isn’t an indication of how much good karma you’ve amassed. When we buy things all we see is the end product, and as we all know, the ends don’t usually justify the means. If the food you’re eating now was procured in such a way that the soil underneath has been depleted of nutrients, is it worth the cheaper price than the one that was farmed sustainably? The plastic option may be cheaper but it’s often not recyclable or biodegradable. Is the computer that ultimately ends up in an electronics junk heap poisoning the earth worth the affordable price? We don’t see these negatives when we buy a new product. And even when there is information on products (Organic! Free range!) it can often be misleading. You can meet all the standards of organic and still not produce your products sustainably. There’s no regulation on what “Free range” actually means.

So yes, it’s very clear that you can generate lots of money by doing things that are unsustainable. That is, the value you provided to the end user came at a cost to the earth or to others who don’t have a say in the free market.

And, of course, when you go to spend the money you can use it in very damaging ways: flights around the world, giant houses, more new stuff than you can count.

Money is like power. When you have a lot of it it’s tempting and easy to misuse it. It’s also tempting to do amass it in less than ethical ways.

I suppose, then, that it’s not surprising that a primary sustainability metric is income. The more money you make the less likely it is that you’re living sustainably. Why? Because of all the reasons I’ve listed above. To generate money you probably waste a lot and you’re probably will to spend money on things that are also wasteful.

It certainly seems like the only way to do good for the world is to be OK with living on virtually nothing. But that sounds less than wonderful.

Can you make money sustainably?

There are some occupations that don’t do that much damage to the environment. Blogging, for instance, is fairly low. People aren’t buying new computers for the sake of reading a blog, and there are lots of ways to get access to said blog without even owning a computer. In general anything where there is no physical product is very low on the impact scale. (At least that seems intuitive to me… I don’t know if that’s actually the case.) Also with blogging and other content type things, it doesn’t matter all that much as you get more and more readers. With something like making cars or electronic stuff or plastic candy dispensers or disposable diapers, the more customers you have the greater your negative impact on the earth.

I imagine with one of these low impact type careers (especially content generation) you could have the potential to make lots of money essentially guilt free. And if you’re wise in the spending of your money you could have an incredibly positive impact on the world.

I used to take this to mean that the true hero was the antithesis to the characters in those stories. The poor person who has lots of people to share his joy with is better than the businessman. The person who has a small social circle (but incredibly close!) is way better than the woman with lots of acquaintances. The stay at home parent is better than the working parent.

Then I read lots of books and blogs which told me otherwise. Or at least discussed in great deal how to obtain large amounts of wealth, how to make many weak ties, and how to be successful in the workplace. On top of that these same sources mention ideas that are also important to me: service to others, changing the world to be a better place, living life with passion and fervor. The people that write these things don’t sound particularly depressed with their lot in life. What gives?

On top of that I realized that the people I thought were the heroes didn’t have the greatest lives either. Being poor means you’re unable to do things that enrich your life. For instance, a poor person doesn’t have the freedom to choose to eat healthfully. Nor do the poor have the freedom to send their kids to the best schools (or homeschool them), to private piano lessons, or whatever. A poor person can’t live in safe neighborhoods because he can’t afford it. It also probably indicates that he isn’t really doing a lot of service for the world. (Although, of course, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule.)

The person with only a few close friends is not in all that great a position either. She’s dependent on them to help her out, since that’s all she’s got. After a while they could become resentful of her frequent calls, and if one of them changes who they are (for better or worse) she’s stuck either changing with said friend or risking losing said friend. Also she doesn’t have the freedom to become all that she can be because there’s a good chance she’d lose her close friends. And when she needs a new job her close friends can’t really help her out because they all share the same social circle. So yeah, have too small a circle of friends (even close friends!) is not all that awesome.

Being a stay at home parent has its drawbacks too. It’s a funny situation in the home since the stay at home parent is dependent on his/her partner to put food on the table. The stay at home parent may develop an unhealthy attachment to his/her kids since he/she sacrificed 18 years of his/her working life to them. Etc.

The Middle Way
The truth is all of these observations are true. Neither the storybook path nor it’s opposite is optimal. What’s optimal lies in the middle, where the positives of both are combined. The successful business person who also has a rich personal life with lots of close friends is in a better position than the poor person who has lots of close friends. The person with lots of weak ties AND a close circle of friends is better than the one with just the close friends. The person who manages to spend lots of time with their kids and give to the community is in a better position than the one who’s solely focused on their kids.

What the stories tell you is where you should err. That is, you should err on the side of close relationships rather than material gains and weak relationships.

On combining both
The fundamental thing to keep in mind when you’re trying to gain worldly success and live a fulfilling life is to make time for the important. While you’re off amassing your wealth spend at least the minimum amount of time necessary with the people that make your life worth living: your family and close friends. It’ll probably be a bit less time than normal, but it’s really not about quantity, it’s about quality. Watching TV, reading together, and small talk, while nice are not the way to keep your relationship in good shape. Master the art of getting to the heartfelt, vulnerable, and intimate part of conversation as quickly as possible. It’s hard, but it’ll go a long way toward really maintaining your relationship.

When it comes to raising kids the same thing is true (quality over quantity), I’d personally prefer to err on the side of too much time. In this case the ideal is finding a way to spend the time with your kids and still be a part of work that inspires you. Blogging, to take a nice obvious example, is a great way since you aren’t bound to an office. Other “work from home” type work is good too.

To sum up, worldly success should not be dismissed. There’s a reason people strive for it. But, you shouldn’t ignore the important people in your life either. The challenge is to make meaning with the small amount of time that you have.

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

Image by: woodleywonderworks

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.