Capitalism, Trends, Economy - A Life Of Never Enough...
Capitalism tells us that we never have enough. You can never have enough new clothes – there’s always another fashion trend that you’ve not got in your wardrobe yet. You can never have enough clout – share your photos- no, your videos- no, your crying face to get those next few hundred followers.
It relies on a belief that we always need to be striving for the next big thing. And then, in the cycle of boom and bust that has followed societies for hundreds of years, things change and what was enough is now not enough. Prices rise, belts tighten, and we scrabble to get by, let alone to prove that we have enough by the ever-growing metric.
Our economy relies on this belief. Consumerism hinges upon the need to consume, perhaps not surprisingly. We don’t truly believe that the new (more expensive) phone will actually make us happier, but the phone we bought eighteen months ago is starting to wear out, the camera isn’t so good, it’s becoming less and less the convenience we were promised in the advert and more a brick in our pocket. Our philosophical understanding that another shiny piece of technology won’t magically make us happy is challenged and, ultimately, is bested by the immutable fact that life would be easier, quicker, smoother, and more high-definition with the new thing.
Objects are designed to break under consumerism, otherwise no one would bother buying new. And when the waste generated by decades of constant buying, breaking, and binning gets too much, we get another spin. We are not doing enough to fix it. We are not good enough at recycling, or at eating vegan, or at sacrificing the convenience we have been told to desire to solve the overwhelming problems of climate change, of poverty, of war.
We can forgo foreign holidays to cut down on carbon emissions and walk to work to avoid the car. We can repair our clothes and shop only second hand to try and reduce our own fast fashion footprint. But no matter how many corners we cut and alternatives we embrace, we alone will not make enough of a difference. Worse, the guilt we are told to carry for the death and devastation of climate change is at once too much for individuals to bear, and not enough to instigate action from our representatives.
But what if we were enough? What if we had enough? What if life was more than enough?
Skywoman is the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy equivalent of Eve. She was caught in the wings of the geese and laid down on turtle’s back. From her and her daughter, a land grew that was rich with resource and beauty. She spilled over with enough. For millennia, her descendants maintained the balance of enough, until Europeans and mercantilism (aka proto-capitalism) arrived, bringing with them the desire for ownership and amassing more than enough.
Sweetgrass or hierochloe odorata, one of three sacred plants for many indigenous tribes in North America, thrives best when half of it is cut, uprooted, or eaten. So too do fish in a pond – too many fish, and their waste puts too many nutrients into the water. The water becomes eutrophic, and the fish are choked by a rapid cycle of algal growth. If a pond is fished by people or predators, the fish population does not reach the critical level and both algae and creatures continue to live well. When enough is used, enough is left to provide for the future.
Enough is not an indulgence. It is a balance that life relies on, and yet capitalism tries to tell us otherwise. Ask anyone in recovery from an eating disorder and they will tell you that the binging that comes in the first stages of recovery is eventually replaced by knowing what enough is for you. The desire to eat an entire cake in one sitting will fade and you will have the slice that you once denied yourself without eating yourself sick. Our bodies tell us what enough means for food, for rest, for social interactions. But we are pushed to diet, to monetise our hobbies, to work ourselves to burnout in order to do what we’re told is the bare minimum. Do more, we are told, be more successful. You are not enough.
Maya Angelou wrote “my mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive”. So why are our lives so firmly dictated by a struggle for survival? It is increasingly not enough for us to work one job to pay our bills. We are told by our government to cut corners, to put on more jumpers rather than pay for warm houses. We break ourselves and our lives down to the bare minimum and even then, we struggle to find enough money to get by.
Because we do not earn enough to survive, we begin to question what we are really working for. In a week of 168 hours, why are we prepared to spend more than sixty doing something we don’t like if we cannot afford to spend the remaining fifty-or-so doing anything we enjoy? What exists at the end of the road to make a life like this enough?
Is life enough when it is pared down to survival? When we do not have the time or space for beauty and for joy, is it enough? The promise of a life everlasting in heaven after our death on earth is echoed in the myth of the American Dream. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, put in the work and the miserable trudge until you make it big and revel in your wealth. Suffer now for the promise of enough in the future.
When I lie under a tree on my lunchbreak from the office and I close my eyes, I find enough. The tree casts shade over my face to keep me from burning. The wind cools me down and brings the pleasant scent of blossom with it. The sun has warmed the ground I lie on and dried it out just enough to rest on. There are no notifications in this moment, no new email blinking and demanding my attention. The earth holds me for a few precious moments and promises that there is enough time for me to rest a while.
I try to hold that whisper with me on my commute, in my afternoon stint in the office. When I snatch a few moments to write on the weekend or in the evening I hear the message again; there is enough in this world for everyone if we start to look differently. There is enough time to make mistakes and learn from them. We are enough. I am enough.
Written by Beth Price
Beth is a writer and researcher based in Edinburgh. She is interested in all things cultural, especially when it comes to gender, LGBTQ+ identity, and media. She is half of Breakdown Education, an education platform and community that champions intersectional, diverse, and accessible knowledge networks.
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