re: notes on overconsumption and instead of a self help book
A great post made it’s way onto the Trending page today.
I agree with pretty much everything in the post, so don’t expect any hot takes.
Every statement I wrote is made from purely anecdotal thoughts, so don’t take any of this as me preaching to you.
Let’s go!
...but the same is not necessarily true for dubious supplements, self-help books, or overprescriptive planning tools. Only in America can multinational companies explain to people that their true self-actualization will only arise via the purchase of additional consumer goods.
I agree. I feel that as the decades have rolled by, the corporate oligarchy that dominates our species has worked overtime to convince the 99% of us that products (supplements, self-help books, planning tools, etc.) that make our lives more convenient, take care of our needs faster, and remove all friction, are what we want to spend our meager slave wages on.
This is obviously an unsustainable model for human development. At some point, the only way they’ll make us more “productive” is by replacing us with robots.
Oh, wait...
Anyway. I am convinced that God did not create us to live fast lives. Adam and Eve were meant to be gardeners in Eden. That is a notoriously slow occupation.
Productivity, or at least, the extreme ideological version of it, is a modern invention and I think that we’re finally seeing its woeful results on the collective human mind, body, and spirit.
That being said, I also am someone who loves, at least self-help books and productivity tools, and I’m greatly enjoying Atomic Habits at the moment. A lot of these products have meaningfully improved my lifestyle, and not necessarily to make me more productive, but to make me more “intentional”, and for my own sake. Feel free to cast the first stone if you think that all such products are the devil’s spawn.
Finding a job that is within a reasonable number of hours that pays the bills is lexically prior to anything a productivity or wellness grifter could sell. Financial precarity under late neofeudalism is no joke, and until basic needs are met, no special secret productivity tool will cure longing.
I agree 100%.
A company does not love its employees, and looking for cosmic meaning and justice from employment is a fool's errand.
Say it louder for the people in the back!
Wine nights, gratitude journals, and ice cream dinner (because "I deserve it") are at least orthogonal if not counterproductive to the simple shit.
I agree. I think that the “I deserved this treat” mentality is born of a mind that is overworked. The times in my life where I felt burnt out were also the times that I snacked more just to “feel” something other than dread. Had we more lifestyles that are more temperate (and old word for “healthier” and “more balanced” that needs to make a comeback), then we would feel content with the simple (and often cheaper), harmless pleasures that nature, community, and life afford.
Purely selfishly, it feels good to take care of other people. Take your friend out to lunch for their birthday. Give the homeless person some cash. Plan an event for your friends to get together. The guy who does things for others is awesome.
I think this is the most important point, for me at least (happened to be the last one too).
True, we live in a society dominated by and drowning in cynicism, but if we zoom out from that big picture and zoom into our immediate social circle, we’ll often find that many (if not hopefully all) of those closest to us are not only trustworthy but also very worthy of our best efforts to serve them.
Yes, I used the unsightly verb “to serve”. One thing I learned a few years ago is that, in my incessant pursuit of purpose, meaning, achievement, and self-improvement, I directed all my thoughts to myself, I “served myself” to the point of becoming depressed from self-obsession.
I think that many if not most people who are depressed (even if this isn’t the main cause of their illness) would greatly benefit from thinking less about self, and more about others.
When you worry about how to help and be supportive of others, you tend to worry less about your own needs, especially the needless ones. You probably experienced this during the honeymoon phase of a romantic relationship. It doesn’t have to turn into an extreme. Again, there is a balance to this principle. You “can’t pour from am empty cup” as the saying goes, but I believe that it is a law of nature, that as the oceans evaporate water to the clouds, the clouds rain it on the mountains, the mountains spring it up to the rivers, and the rivers deliver it back to the ocean, that when we all focus on giving rather than taking, we all end up feeling more fulfilled. Pun intended.