Carlton green wrote: 12 Apr 2026, 8:39pm
For some years my thoughts have been changing, perhaps even doing a ‘U turn’, with regard to acquisition and constantly striving for better rather than enjoying what I already had - I find that the acquisition disease has infected most of humanity. My excuse is that having known (been pained by) what it’s like to have too little I became determined to maximise whatever little wealths that I could - can’t say I’ve been remarkably successful, but I’ve done alright.
I’ve recently come across the concept of enoughfluencing and it really chimes with me now as I strive to reject automatically seeking ‘more’ and try to enjoy simpler things and what I already have.
Similar to de-influencing, enoughfluencing encourages individuals to love what they have rather than constantly striving for the next thing. In today’s influencer culture, we are conditioned to want more. More beauty products, more clothes, more accessories, more supplements, more luxury, more travel, etc.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/enoughf ... ve-simply/
That’s the drift of things, knowing what we need and rejecting driven consumerism and acquisition; trying to focus on what makes for a better life and that happiness isn’t a new car but rather quality time spent with people important to you.
What are your thoughts and experiences?
When I were a lad, 384 years ago, I was well-off but very poor at the same time. The poverty was purely that of cash and what it bought, which was very little and often nothing as the cash had gone before next wage-slave payment day. However, I had the newly-minted NHS, free education and a very cohesive socialism of neighbours that provided a lot of the sort of wealth no longer in fashion, not to mention small groups of other children who made a lot of adventure out of nothing at all beyond perhaps a bat and a ball and a lot of roaming about.
Some of my contemporaries, equally cash-poor throughout their youth, reacted by becoming the sort of avid consumers striving after wealth that you mention. For reasons I've never really understood, I was lucky enough not to be infected by that memeplex and often found it bizarre that some of my friends wanted to follow fashion, have the "pleasures" of owning a banger-car and were otherwise forever disappointed at not having more, more, more despite their large debts.
I remained cash-poor but happy until my late 30s, after which a career and my freely-got education allowed me to progress up a wage scale. Unlike others about the place, I didn't throw this wage into gew-gaws and fripperies, such as foreign holidays, a car or daft clothes-of-the-moment. No heavy drinking or fag-sucking either. In fact, I saved money and this had many benefits, including that of not forking out twice the price for a thing I did want via the mechanisms of usurious debt and interest payments thereupon.
These days I'm well off ..... but only in the sense that I can have what I want. (My income is less than the average wage by a significant degree). The trick is to not want much; and to make a great deal of what one does want. I've had vast amounts of pleasure from bicycles and woodworking tools, for example.
My current income is quite small by most standards. But I don't feel the need to waste it on tat that I imagine gives me some sort of essential status. When I see a dafty proudly piloting a Geet Big SUV that he can't really afford (or pilot well) it still makes me titter and smirk.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
