Enough is enough!

Enough is enough! This is just me trying to process some thoughts...

As the realisation slowly ripples through our society that we've been long living beyond our means, and we're actively bringing about our own 'sticky end' with our species' behaviour, we're seeing a bunch of new movements, trying to change our societal patterns into something sustainable, just, and redeeming. Sadly, these movements are moving too slowly, mostly (I think) because their marketing messages do not have the required mass-appeal.

Movements touting phrases like 'degrowth' and 'sustainability first' and 'conservation'... are all quite right, but sadly for those of us who get behind them, we find we're in a small, often demonised minority. We're accused of virtue signalling, being bearers of grim news, and generally raining on people's parade. In short, we're not having the effect that we know is required: mostly because most people do not want to change.

The social inertia of extreme consumption is formidable, some might say unstoppable. I think it's also just habitual. People often allow themselves to form habits which are against their personal best interest, and find themselves unable to shed them, once the downsides become readily apparent. People know their behaviour is against their own self-interest, and often that of their families and societies, but they are not sufficiently motivated to change.

What our movement needs is another way of thing of things that sticks in the mind like an annoying-but-horribly-catchy song's melody and lyrics. Unlike those who purvey the mechanisms of vice - that addict us to things we know aren't good for us - we can't afford to pay expensive marketing firms to help "generate a perception of 'need' for what we're plying". We have to do that for ourselves.

A few of us have been toying with ideas, throwing around loaded words like sufficiency, communism, prosperity, austerity, and sustainability. It occurred to me that what we're really striving for is championing and lionising those who know when to say 'enough'! Those who have the self-awareness and self-control to resist the temptation to over-indulge (to their own detriment and that of their resource-constrained society) and instead savour the idea of having enough to meet their needs, as opposed to their wants. We need to praise that inclination, so easily superseded by insidious and immoral marketing, in our peers when we see positively them respond to it. We need to say, with confidence and pride, that we support 'radical sufficiency'... that, yes: enough is enough!