We live in an economy of more. From an evolutionary psychology standpoint, it makes sense. Our brains are wired to continuously search for more of what is good to survive. 

Our brains haven’t changed in tens of thousands of years. We’re still running on the same software we used when we were sleeping in caves and foraging for food.

We have grown in information, knowledge, and technology, but our brains are still wired the same way they were when our survival was constantly in jeopardy.

But there are modern ramifications for running a scarcity protocol. We’re constantly battling with the desire for more.

More food. More pleasure. More money. More status.

Though our brains are operating the way they have for tens of thousands of years, we’ve collectively grown in consciousness and self-awareness. Individually and collectively, we’ve moved through the various stages of human development and learned things about ourselves and the operating system we’re running on along the way.

If you want to dive into the process of human development, I recommend looking into Spiral Dynamics. It’s a theoretical model of how humans develop individually and collectively through time. 

There’s a mental and emotional drain that comes with the economy of more. A continuous lack of satisfaction is an exhausting hamster wheel to be stuck on.

So here we are today, living in a culture where we have more than we need to survive. Collectively, we have more than enough. For the majority of the human race, we’ve blown past what is required to survive and are living with more than enough.

Yet we still want more. When is it time for me to say “this is enough”? 

This isn’t an argument against capitalism. I believe it’s the best system we’ve come up with so far and better than the alternatives. But it does have negative ramifications that are worth addressing.

Our social and economic systems are part of our evolutionary process, and adaptations within them occur at the individual level first. I’m interested in what it means to ask “what is enough?” on an individual level. 

We see the want for more at every level of our lives. Each goal is a bit beyond the previous one. This year will be a bit better than the last one. A steady incline of upgrading our purchases to the next best version.

What does it look like to shift our individual perspective to live in an economy of enough?

I think it starts with defining what enough actually looks and feels like. I don’t think we’re deliberately charging past enough with a greedy desire for more. We’re simply following the rhythm of what’s happening around us.

So the first step is to determine a realistic perspective between our needs and our wants. When we take inventory of what we actually want and how we define success for ourselves, we could be surprised by what enough actually looks like for us.

I’m not implying that we need to take a vow of poverty and remove every luxury from our lives. It’s about consciously deciding for ourselves what enough looks like and having the restraint not to blow past it once we get there.