“More” is a trap

It blows my mind how often I respond to my feelings by buying things.

Doesn’t matter what it is, really: remorse, disappointment, hopelessness; happiness, pride, excitement. On a bad day, I want to buy myself something nice (as a treat), and when things go well I want to… buy myself something nice (as a treat).

All of these feelings started in my body. I became aware of the sensations and my consciousness used words to understand them. And that language pointed me to buying stuff.

That was the behaviour pattern. Feelings and emotions in my body. Awareness. Understanding. Mediated through a purchase or two.

In the moment, it felt reasonable. I “deserved” the buy when I was down, I “celebrated” on the up. And the want made it seem all the more justified.

But, afterwards, the having wasn’t enough. When the feelings returned, because that’s what feelings do, I didn’t look back to the gadget and think “Yeah, that’ll do”.

Ex-finance guy Nate Hagens, who used to work on Wall Street, described it well when he wrote about working with billionaires who seemed profoundly dissatisfied with their success:

One client in his eighties had $800 million with us in laddered treasury notes and bonds. He was as cheerful and witty as one could be, but if his interest payments hadn’t arrived in his account by noon on coupon day, he would call and berate me. I also discovered he lived in a tiny apartment, didn’t own a car, and didn’t spend any of his $800 million.

Over time, a pattern emerged: Wanting seemed a stronger force than having.

It’s easy to think this is natural, inevitable. But it’s a feeling, right? It starts in the body. And then it falls on us to describe it.

Unfortunately, the language we’ve been given to do so isn’t on our side.

The language of “more”

We use language to understand our feelings and justify our actions. A feeling starts in your body, you become aware of it (maybe), you use language to make it knowable and you decide to do something about that feeling.

Basic stuff, right?

Then you start thinking that language is real. You’re sitting there thinking “god, I just feel so bleh… I’ve got to do something about it” and, because you’re thinking it, you assume it’s true. But your internal monologue is a liar. It’s just a series of thoughts, built on language, and language isn’t reality. It’s just what we use to make a reality we can comprehend. And it’s not neutral.

The language we use to describe the world – and that guides how we understand our feelings and actions – is gifted to us by the places we live. And, look, the places we live just might be a bit cooked.

The language of consumption

Ideas grow in parallel with society, both for and against.¹ As capitalists looked to exploit nature during the 17th century, thinkers separated us from it:

• Francis Bacon argued that the natural world was a “harlot” that need to controlled by men.
• René Descartes’s put forth ideas that argued humans alone that agency.
• Immanuel Kant suggest that people have no obligation to non-human beings.

If you want to extract resources from the natural world with impunity, it’d sure be helpful if people thought that nature needs to be dominated. It help if we, as a people, have no need to care for anything that isn’t us.

These ideas were supported and they seeped into society. They became part of the background hum, regardless of whether or not they’re the most effective ways to understand the world.

The conditions of language

We’ve grown up with ideas and expectations that nudges us in certain directions.

If you live in a capitalist country, your default language for understanding yourself and the world has all the assumptions of capitalism baked in. That vocabulary becomes the way you understand what you feel and what you do.

It’s retail therapy. It’s replace rather than repair, spend rather than create, buy rather than build. It’s the way some groups of people are turned into resources and the way that people who, for whatever reason, can’t work in the narrowly defined ways of capitalist economies are marginalised.²

It’s the way that alternatives the defaults – “sustainably made”, fixing things, buying second hand – are simultaneously viewed as status symbols or sources of social shame depending on who’s doing it and when.

Is it sashiko? Or is it just a patch?

Challenge your defaults

This isn’t a static challenge. The scope of “more” grows as the demands of the market grow. It’s not enough to just be a customer anymore: businesses want you to use their app every month, sign up for their points program, get the newsletter and recommend them to your friends for discounts.³

Companies need you to want more so they can preen for investors. It’s not for you.

Understanding how this vocab seeps into our minds means we can change start swapping it out for something that better serves us. How would you respond to feelings of dissatisfaction if you’ve internalised the Taoist idea of “need little, want less”, for example? It’d probably lead to different behaviours than the capitalist retail therapy, right?

By taking a step back and separating yourself from the language you use, you can start making different choices. You can slowly, over time, choose different verbs to use. You can apply a different awareness to your feelings.

It helps build distance between yourself and a system of language that doesn’t serve you.

You’re already enough

I’m still working to break these habits. The impulse towards want is strong and well ingrained.

To help challenge that pattern, I keep coming back to two ideas:

• “Need little, want less” from Lao Tzu, which I mentioned above.
• “You already are what you want to become” from the Zen Master Linji Yixuan (as quoted in Healing our way home by Valerie Brown, Marisela B. Gomez and Kaira Jewel Lingo).

They’re both pithy ways to short-circuit my more indulgent impulses.

I notice a dour feeling and notice myself wanting to buy something to ease that, “need little, want less” reminds me I don’t have to follow that routine.

If I find myself wanting to buy yet more art supplies because I want to paint and draw, “You already are what you want to become” reminds me that I don’t need to buy any given object to feel like an artist – I already am one.

That’s the thing about capitalist cultures, right? They need you to keep thinking you’re not enough. The consumer cycle only rolls on if you think you’re lacking (and that the only way to overcome that lack is to buy more).

“You already are what you want to become” – and much of buddhist thought overall – is an antidote to that. Everything you want, be it contentment or peace or self-confidence, are inside you. You provide the conditions for your own satisfaction.

The world will try to convince you otherwise. I try to remind myself of it every day. It’s a work in progress.

Maybe I’ll buy a new journal to write about it some more.