[Continues from Pt I here]
I believe there is a need to de-grow the rich bit of the rich-world economy. Unthinking consumption should be curtailed, not by diktats from on high, but from a grass-roots realisation that change begins with the individual.
Chasing your next million bucks when you've already got so much cash that you no longer need to work - and worse - your children and grandchildren will no longer need to work - is no good for the planet. Rein it in. Focus on what's important.
De-growth means de-materialisation; determine what your life is for; what is its purpose, what you truly want. Clue: it's not about gathering material things with the aim of showing off.
The Person That Contemplates Not
Better phrased in Polish as człowiek, który się nie zastanawia, 'the person that contemplates not', the individual that charges forward heedlessly, recklessly, following impulse and instinct, is a threat to our habitat, to our planet, to our future wellbeing, when multiplied millions of times.
Zastanawianie się in this context means distinguishing needs from wants. I need food (healthy, unprocessed); but I don't need a gold wristwatch or other such bauble. I have all the clothes necessary for being comfortable indoors and outdoors in winter, summer, spring and autumn; as they wear through, I get repaired what can be repaired, then buy used wherever possible. If I have got branded clothes from a luxury brand, it's because I bought them second-hand at a tenth of the new price. Can I borrow a tool needed for a one-off job? If not and I have to buy a tool for regular jobs (garden tools)? I buy the best. Buy tools that can be repaired, ones with replacement blades available. Also, I buy local, paying a bit more to keep local shopkeepers in business.
I scorn 'retail therapy' - the notion that you can buy happiness through the acquisition of things. When you buy, buy with your soul. Buy things that really resonate with you, buy not to show off but to click with your deepest aesthetic sentiment. And generally, I see things as equipment - kit - which should be designed for the task in hand, from walking boots and winter coats to tools with which to create. Everything should be bought for a clearly defined purpose and not to satisfy some vague want.
Tomorrow will be greyer, drabber, slower, gentler. The aesthetics will be focused on function rather than form. I no longer wear a different freshly washed and ironed shirt every day (and I'm not alone in this.) A crumpled aesthetic is more authentic, more eco-friendly.
My way is a modest, ascetic way. It is guided by the principle that we should all have the right to strive to live in comfort, free from hunger, cold, illness, stress, unhygienic conditions - but that striving to live in luxury is morally wrong. Life should be a simple as possible, to quote Einstein, but not simpler. Life is to be enjoyed, not merely endured, but pure joy is distinct from fleeting pleasures or shallow fun.
Good business and bad business
De-growth should be seen in net terms; we should not pursue de-growth for its own sake; de-growth should not be forced on all businesses to the same extent. The good should be encouraged to crowd out the bad on the market. The more reliable, easier-to-repair, better-designed product, built to last decades not months - and so more expensive - should push out cheap, shoddy goods from the market. Firms that know they have good, solid, well-designed products - tools, building materials, electronic devices etc - should fight for market share. Bespoke clothing, made to last a lifetime, should displace fast fashion that changes every season.
I hope that AI will have a similar impact on the service sector - killing off bullshit jobs that offer no sense of purpose to the employee, should be supplanted by AI systems, freeing up time for people to learn, to create, to help, to teach - to fulfil their potential as human beings. I look forward to technology giving us control over the problem of balancing time and money. We need to support good businesses with our custom, and shun bad businesses that care not for our long-term wellbeing.
De-grow your wheels
After my daughter was born in 1993, I decided to buy a smaller, less powerful car. And so my two-litre hot hatchback was traded for a one-litre Nissan Micra, a move made precisely when most folk would see the addition to the family as an excuse for a bigger car. A car the size of a Micra proved big enough to stow all things needed for a baby. It served for 20 years, it did for a family unit with two small children, it ran valiantly around Poland, from the mountains to the sea, it was the daily commute until 2009 (in the days when I still considered driving to work somehow acceptable), until finally the cost of repair became uneconomic. And once gone, in 2013, children grown up, I felt no need to replace it with another car. No hire-purchase instalments, no insurance, no service or maintenance, no parking fees, no fuel costs.
Without a car, I became wealthier. And healthier. How many daily drivers can boast 11,000-plus paces walked a day, every day, for ten years? I have cash, but will never part with it for car ownership. A car can be hired, a taxi taken, a ride shared. But owning a car makes no sense to me.
The pandemic and the internet have changed geography forever. I no longer need to be close to my office; I work remotely most of the time and travel to town by train once or twice a week on average. I chose my rural location carefully - rapid access into Warsaw on a modernised main line was a crucial element when I decided to buy my house in Jakubowizna in 2017.
Cottagecore
Central to my de-growth lifestyle is where I live - in a small house on a large (for a house) plot of land. The cost of owning and maintaining such a house is minimal - over the past 12 months, the sum total spent on power, water and property tax was less than 750 złotys (£145) - for the whole year! Granted, I spent a lot up front on solar panels, offset to a degree by a generous cash subsidy from the state. But that's paid, from now on, I'm in credit. Travel to and from central Warsaw with my senior travel card is 11.40 złotys (£2) a day. Watching carefully what I eat (no confectionery, biscuits, cakes, desserts, the rare salt-snack) I can budget for 35 zlotys a day (around £6) for food and drink (this excludes entertainment).
My aesthetics of land are summed up in the phrase "let it grow"; let flowers blossom; trim to the minimum, use no chemicals, no petrol-powered tools (lawn mower, strimmer, rotavator or leaf-blower). Lawns - slicing grass leaves to an inch above the surface is bad for the environment. Leave the dandelions to flower, to attract pollinators. A garden full of forget-me-nots on a sun-dappled evening in late April and early May brings delight to the soul. Bees and butterflies are wonderful creatures to co-exist with. A blade of grass left to grow to eight inches photosynthesises eight times as much CO2 into O2 as one shorn to an inch.
I have an acre of land; I feel a strong sense of responsibility for it, to the million or so plants, the insects, the birds - stewardship of my acre is important to me. Around me sprayed, manicured orchards are mass-producing visually perfect apples for the supermarkets - my apples, however, are unsprayed, untainted by two-stroke or diesel fumes; my cider is 100% organic - no added sugar, no added yeast, no sulphites, unpasteurised. And not for sale.
And so my land gives me great joy, a purpose, an aesthetic, a sense of belonging - of atavistic return to the Mazovian soil (my paternal grandmother hailed from Mogielnica, some 20 miles from here).
"But we can't all retreat to the land," you will say. Take away mountains, deserts and icy wastes, and there's enough hospitable land on this planet for every human being to have two acres.
Aesthetics of self - I keep myself clean, daily shower and weekly beard-trim and head-shave - but adorn myself with no jewellery, not even a watch; wear no brands to denote status in the hierarchy. I strive to stand outside of, and above, the hierarchical system - it belongs to less-evolved primates. Understand your biology, and rise above it has long one of my guiding slogans.
De-growth and health
Running off to the doc's every time something ails you, in the anticipation of pills or creams to make it better, is not always the best remedy. For me, healthy living is being continually aware of your health status, wanting to be healthy, and being immensely grateful for being so. The feedback loop is all-important here. Grateful-happy-healthy-grateful-happy-healthy-grateful. Never becoming complacent about health, never taking health for granted.
Seek joy in personal growth, in learning, in understanding - not in the aimless pursuit of stuff. In Part III, I shall explain how in my worldview, de-growth dovetails with human spirituality.
This time last year:
Old signs in Wrocław and Gliwice
This time two years ago:
Are aliens good or bad?
This time three years ago:
Thoughts - trains set in motion
The inexorable lava flow of development will take time to reach Jakubowizna; it is happening. Three new houses have appeared on my street since I bought the działka in 2017, but each one is detached, and two of them are bungalows. I cannot see the same kind of development that blights Jeziorki - or worse, Zgorzała, Zamienie and Nowa Wola on the other side of Warsaw's city limits - whole fields being turned into row after row of terraced houses with no asphalt or amenities.
