There’s a common theme that runs though much of the counter-culture that critiques and even seeks to live outside mainstream society, to the extent that it’s possible to do so. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, this alternative is becoming less and less optional, so I am looking harder at just how one might thrive outside the embrace of our standard, consumerist culture.
That theme is that too much stuff is bad. Many harken back to Thoreau who argued, “Simplify! Simplify!” followed by others who equated scarcity of possessions with richness of life. Duane Elgin’s Voluntary Simplicity and E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful remain some of the more articulate expressions of this idea. I’ve subscribed to this idea, and still do to a great extent. There is no real question in my mind that most of us have too much stuff. How we got that way, what it is costing us as a people and individually is another topic entirely. A quick search on the web will give you plenty of information on that story better than I could tell it. It is one of incredible cynicism, manipulation, and short-sightedness.
I have been working to reduce my own load of things, casting from me things that I realize I do not need. The process has not been without its moments of enlightenment.
It occurred to me recently, that one can make an interesting comparison between those who claim we have too much stuff, and those who argue for small government. Both are concerned with waste, although to be honest most of the anti-big-government rhetoric has its basis in an ideology of replacing government with private corporations. But let’s take the argument at face value for now.
The “Few Possessions” crowd tend to be on the left, while the “Small Government” folks lean right. I have always critiqued those arguing for small government because in my viewed, cutting government just to cut it can have disasterous consequences as we learned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. One must in all fairness ask whether those who argue for few possessions are open to the same critique.
My usual rebuttal to the jeramiads of “bloated government” is that what matters is not whether government is big or small, but whether it is effective. Whatever the size, can it do what it is supposed to do efficiently and effectively?
I’m moving to the conclusion that the question of stuff is not one of magnitude, but of optimization. If your life’s work demands you own certain things, then you should. Certain trades need their own selection of tools or materials. It won’t always be practical to share or borrow them.
I’ve been kicking around the notion that it might be possible to identify those things that I simply cannot do without, and that I can reduce the number of such things to the point that they will all fit in a footlocker or, more realistically, onto a single shipping pallet. Could I move my worldly goods in one Econoline van load? It seems possible until I look at our library. That by itself took five shipping pallets to move the last time we relocated. However, even though physical books are sometimes snubbed as passé, I need my books. I actually use them. They make my work more effective.
The question of “how much stuff” then comes down to two much less tractable questions:
What do you really need?
What do you really want to do with your time?
Answer those questions definitively, and the question of possessions starts to fall into place. More on this another time.
