I don't own a car (I do, however, have the use of my daughter's 19-year-old Nissan Micra, which I use once a week for a shopping trip to Warka). I've not been on holiday since 2014; I've not flown since 2020. The occasional short break within Poland or popping down to Prague to visit Moni – that's all the travel I do.
My lifestyle is ascetic – other than food, I buy little. I have stepped off the treadmill of materialism. The reward – a rich internal contemplative life. Long rural walks, exercise, a good diet, good neighbours, a large-ish library, the wonderful kitten that has adopted me, all bring happiness. Digital connectedness is important too. This allows for remote work, being in touch with family and friends online, and access to a wealth of fascinating podcasts and YouTube videos, to broaden and deepen my knowledge. Life is never boring.
So I find it hard to get into the mindset of those people who constantly need more – people who having reached a level of material comfort in their lives, strive to acquire more and more goods. Why? For what purpose? For the endorphine rush of walking out of a shopping mall laden with bags of new things? For the ego satisfaction of being swaddled with brands that raise one up the status hierarchy?
Tourism is also something that jars. I can understand the urge of someone with a spiritual connection to some distant place, for whom a visit there takes in the form of a pilgrimage. That is meaningful. But just to jet off to a far-off beach resort so as to show off the holiday snaps – absolutely not my cup of tea. And tourism is carbon intensive; 8.8% of human carbon dioxide emissions is generated by tourism.
Runaway consumer materialism is harming our planet in other ways; drawing minerals out of the earth to build a new car is not sustainable if multiplied by around a hundred million every year (the number is thankfully falling – only 88 million forecast in 2025). Clothes and other physical goods that have to be made, from raw materials, and then transported – none of this is good for our ecosystem. And plastics. And packaging waste. The toll on our planet affects us too.
Below: Google Gemini AI's Imagen 3.0 demonstrates the pernicious effect of runaway consumerism on the human psyche.
But buying new things keeps people in jobs; tourism keeps people in jobs. Materialism, powered by the status hierarchy, keeps the economy ticking along. The concept of conspicuous consumption and built-in obsolescence hark back to the 1950s and '60s, long before humanity started worrying about pollution and climate change; by then the New Age counter-culture was already signalling that it's time to slow down if for no other reason than for spiritual well-being.
Since then, things have got no better. What's the answer? De-growth? How to achieve that?
Well. policy-wise, I'm dead against forcing people not to do things they want to do (or forcing them to do things they don't want to do). Rather, I believe in convincing people that a less materialistic approach to life is better for their soul – or for those humanists with no belief in the spiritual – is better for their mental health. I'm de-growing, but not because I was made to. It's my choice, based on my observations.
De-growth? De-ego.
So – I end today with my big ask of humanity: aim to live in comfort, but not in luxury. There's nothing intrinsically valuable about living in discomfort – being hungry, cold, ill, stressed, unhappy. Work hard to achieve independent comfort; once you achieve that level, you can take your foot off the gas. There's more to life than doing a job you hate to earn money to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like.
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