Why are we never allowed to have enough?
Modern economies constantly encourage us to want more: more possessions, more consumption, more experiences and often more debt. Advertising tells us that something is always missing and that buying it might finally make us happier.
But does having more actually improve our lives?
In this video, I ask whether there comes a point when our material needs have been met, and additional consumption adds very little to our wellbeing. Food, housing, security, meaningful work, relationships and participation in society for both work and leisure matter enormously. But once those needs are satisfied, relationships, achievement and understanding may contribute far more to a good life than accumulating still more things.
This is not an argument for accepting poverty. Quite the opposite. Millions of people do not have enough, while others consume resources on an extraordinary scale. Inequality therefore matters not just because income and wealth are distributed unequally, but because consumption is too.
And there is a limit we cannot escape: the planet itself. Human lives are finite, natural resources are finite, and unlimited material consumption is, then, impossible.
Maybe learning what “enough” means is not about giving something up. Maybe it is about discovering what actually makes life worthwhile.
This is the audio version:
There is no Debate Ammunition for this video.
This is the transcript:
Why isn't enough enough? That's a question I want to ask, because isn't enough good enough? Isn't that sufficient? And that's a question I think we have to ask ourselves at this moment, because we live in a society that always tells us we need more: much more. More possessions and more consumption. All of that is assumed to make life better, but there must be a point when our material needs have been met. Surely that has to be true. So why are we so reluctant to recognise when we've had enough, and what is the significance of not doing so?
My point is, does having more really make us happier? We're told it does, but that's not the point. Does it really? Because, in fact, happiness surveys undertaken by economists, including people I know, suggest that meeting basic needs does matter enormously. Having enough to live on, having a place to live in, being able to eat, being able to have fresh air and water, and, of course, being able to get to work, having a job if you want one, and having friends and social activities. All those things matter. They make a good life.
But beyond that point where relationships can happen and where we can see the people who matter to us and share our lives with them, the benefits from more material goods become very much weaker. And survey after survey shows that. More consumption does not necessarily mean greater well-being.
And let's face a fact: we are finite. There are only so many hours in a day. There are a finite number of days in a year, and there are only so many years that any of us can live. We might want to live life pretending that isn't the case, but we all know it's true, really. So there are limits to what we can do, as a matter of fact. And as a consequence, there's a limit to the amount we can experience and consume.
So there must logically be a point when we have enough, and the ultra-rich make this obvious. Their obsessive and excessive consumption is easy to see. Yachts, private jets, and multiple properties consume extraordinary resources. But does all this excess actually make anyone happier really?
Stable relationships, achievements and understanding provide much of what makes life worthwhile. More consumption cannot substitute for those things. In fact, it might mean there's just more to worry about.
That consumption is what I call ‘Cumber', which is the bit of the word in the middle of encumbrance. It's the stuff that wears us down. And this excess consumption might just be ‘cumber'. It's all for show. But it's not for happiness. It does not make these people necessarily feel any better or any happier.
And anyway, isn't the capacity to be happy finite? And is it really created by things or our relationship with other people? The rich may have things no better than anyone else.
So, why are we so frightened of saying we have enough? That's an important question, and the answer is fairly obvious. Advertising encourages us to believe that there's always something missing in our lives, and that fear creates pressure to consume still more. It also encourages us to go further into debt. It's fair to say that our whole economic system, as it currently operates, depends upon keeping dissatisfaction alive.
But what if we decided we'd had enough material well-being? Might we then give more attention to relationships, achievement and understanding? Wouldn't that make us happier? Well, wouldn't it make us happier if we had met our basic needs?
And I can't stress that point enough. Of course, if you have not met your basic needs, you might well still need more, and I'm not going to deny that. Dealing with poverty is an essential part of this argument, but maybe we need to deal with poverty precisely because those who suffer poverty do so because others consume far too much.
If we had less inequality, not just around income, but also around consumption, maybe we could deal with poverty very much better, and we could all then recognise when we've had enough.
And that is essential because, let's be clear, we are not the only things that have limits. Our planet also imposes limits on consumption. Excess consumption uses resources that future generations will need. The planet cannot sustain unlimited material consumption. We as human beings are finite, and critically the resources available to us are also finite. Recognising ‘enough' is therefore not a choice. It is an economic and environmental necessity.
So is enough, enough? More consumption cannot be the purpose of our lives. Enough must mean having the security and resources required to live well, and not everyone does - that's a point I've already stressed in this video - but beyond that point where we do have the security and the resources required to live well, relationships, achievements, and understanding matter more.
Learning to recognise enough may then be essential for our wellbeing. But that's also especially true if we want to continue to live on this planet, and we want our children, and their children, and their children to do so as well. That is the critical point. Enough is the word that lets us imagine continued life here on Earth.
That's what I think. What do you think? There is a poll down below, of course. Let us have your views. Please like and share this video. Please subscribe to the channel. Please hit that bell button as well because that means that you will be told when we produce another video. And if you'd like to buy Tom and me a coffee using the donation button down below, that would be great, although at this moment I'm actually drinking a cup of tea.
Poll
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
It occurred to me that salary levels are a good indicator of how enmeshed you are within the dominant ideology of extraction. There will, perhaps, be exceptions but currently I cannot think of one.
Conversely, any occupation that brings genuine care to people is usually paid below living wage levels – if at all.
it seems – not unexpectedly I suppose – we reward what we value.
We can change everything without scaring the horses. We don’t need to rewrite the whole economic rulebook. We can keep our mix of public and private businesses, but just change what makes them money.
Instead of buying and making endless disposable “stuff” that harms the planet, we could simply tweak the rules so it’s much more profitable to invest in what people actually need.
Change the tax rules: We make polluting and churning out cheap consumer goods more expensive, while giving tax breaks to green building, education, and healthcare.
Follow the money: Governments stop subsidising fossil fuels and start backing affordable, eco-friendly housing and community energy projects.
Boost community businesses: We give more support to charities, cooperatives, and local trusts that care more about helping people than making a quick buck.
Pay for services, not things: Companies can shift from just selling products to repairing them, which keeps the economy moving but uses way fewer resources.
And we stop treating things like health and social care, net zero, education and skills training as expenses, and start treating them as the foundations of a solid economy.
I love this pearl of wisdom; the message of capitalism is we are not enough so we need more to fill the painful void, would be interested in your thoughts about freedom, freedom from want, cumber, and to access nature.
Has the so called free market made us free or trapped us in perpetual anxiety and risk of existential threats?
Your timing is interesting. This year I and several people I know are doing the opposite of ‘nesting’. Maybe there is a word for it? We are clearing our cupboards and rooms of ‘stuff’ we realise we never use. All it does is take up space both in the house and in our heads. We are all of a certain age – is that a clue? Or are younger folks also catching our mood? You mentioned some days ago re charity shops leaving the High Street. This has happened near me so getting the unwanted items somewhere they will be accepted is the latest challenge. I am nearly done and looking forward to the sense of achievement. I guess the psychologists will explain it. It feels like a new ‘beginning’ rather than limping towards the end.
I searched through a jacket pocket in my wardrobe the other day. It still had cards from my time at City, Universty of London in it. It needs to go to a charity shop.
I take that as meaning that City, University of London needs to go to a charity shop.
Given the circumstances of how you were squeezed out I agree.
🙂
SUFFICIENT is enough to meet the needs of a situation or a proposed end.
Sufficient is enough. That was one of many often repeated saying and aphorism used by mother. They had been learnt as ‘country wisdom’ from her own mother who came from a rural Dorset family. I’m now recalling her many others saying which mostly taught the same lesson; appreciate what is already present. Advertising gives the opposite programming.
Happy and content is the person who realised they have enough. That true wealth.
Agreed
Recently The Milton Keynes Literary Festival organisers asked for submissions (poems & flash fiction) to an online literary evening on the subject of ‘Plenty’. I entered a poem & was fortunate to be selected as one of the contributors to the evening (and what is now a PDF booklet). Here’s the poem:
The Summer of Plenty
The blackberries came early this year
As did the maroon and yellow cherries
The paths through the park were dusty
Leaves drying, dying, and dropping
Trees drying, dying and dropping
And, I hear, there are plenty of
Hedgehogs in distress
Bracken fires
Crops destroyed
The blackberries…
Came early this year
…
Buckingham
30/7/26
Jon Harvey
Very good
And true
I love this blog post. It’s what I learnt 10 years ago through personal experience. But it also made me feel lonely in a way because everyone around me appeared to not see what I had learnt.
There is also the word “relative”. If you are out walking and have no shoes, and the guy to your left has some boots, he is a king. The guy with the boots looks to his left and another guy is on a push bike, he looks like a king. The guy on the push bike looks to the left and sees a guy on a motorbike and thinks he is a king. The guy on the motorbike looks to the left and sees a guy in a car……I’ve made my point.
There is objective needs (materially AND emotionally, humans are pack animals, we forget emotional wealth is just as important as material). And then there is subjective needs. I think capitalism plays on subjective needs. As highlighted in my example above. It gets to a point where it’s not about the money, but who we are as people, how we treat each other and the world we want to create. Aka, it’s always politics.
Thank you, and much to agree with.
There’s many variants of the “fisherman and the business man” parable, but here is one:
https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/09/04/the-fisherman-and-the-businessman/
Blindly obvious when spelled out like this!
Yes but . . Different stages of life have different levels of “enough”. When your children may unexpectedly have 6 friends to stay to tea, you need more than someone of 80-odd who seldom has unexpected visitors. My late husband had a bandsaw and a lathe in the cellar, because he invented engineering models for hands-on museums. No-one can be said to NEED availability of 85 different varieties of magnolia, or over 500 varieties of daylily, But I find pleasure in knowing these resources are available, and even fantasising about growing some of them. You, Richard, are keen on model railways ….. and so. There’s a pretty wide gap between what we all need, and what helps each of us different people to thrive.
I believe there is an element of compulsion here. Yes, advertising makes matters worse, but they’re hijacking basic human impulses.
I’m wondering if looking at this through the lens of addiction could provide further insight.
Interesting…
About 40 years ago I was a Samaritan and one night had a call from a man who told me he just wanted to talk. He told me where he lived- posh part of the town. He had a good job, two top of the range cars, his children went to private schools and they had two foreign holidays a year. I wondered where this call was going. “Then my wife got cancer and died within a few months. I would give it all away to have her back.”
It was one of those moments. What can you say? But we talked for almost an hour and he thanked me ‘for being there at 1 am”. Being there was perhaps enough for that night.
I drove home and it all seemed it looked so good and problems so small.
But I now think he gave me something. A reminder what was important. We all need it from time to time.
Agreed.
I had the insight when I was. student, forced by my father to pretty much work my way through university, that I was happy nonetheless, though I had less than most. I can still recall precisely where I was when I had that insight. It has shaped my life since then.
An interesting observation concerning student days. In my time we were all on grants so had pretty much the same income, and it wasn’t much. But we were all happy.
I also observe, through the course of my life, that there’s little correlation between happiness/ satisfaction, and income/ wealth. Funny that…
Thank you
Lao Tzu wrote 3000 years ag0
“There is no greater disaster than notknowing when we have had enough.There is no greater fault than the desire for gain.Therefore those who know when enough is enough,always have enough.”
Tao Te Ching Chapter 46
I agree with him.
Being rich may not make people happier but it helps them live longer.
The sad fact of growing inequality is that the wealthy are living longer lives spent in good health than a growing number of the rest of us.
Accepted, entirely.
As I’m sure I might have said before, in my line of work (pensions, etc.) I find those with “sufficient” and/or “enough” are contented, nice, people. Those who sit on millions, like a dragon on his pile of treasure, perhaps using esoteric trust structures and “offshore” products, to create more and more and more are a miserable lot. I have the great luxury of having decided some years ago to choose not to work with such people, who are never happy, unlike me. They really hate it when I say “in the long-run we are all dead” (Keynes, I think), which absolutely brings out the puritan in me!
Also, I find that it is those with enough income as opposed to capital are the happiest. Many clients, once they have arranged a supply of income from their pensions and/or investments, are content to give capital away. This makes them happy, too.
Much to agree with
I agree that in retirement income is king. I took no lump sum from any of my retirement pension pots, but put it all into annuities – index-linked, eschewing a larger initial amount for a continuing predictably adequate amount. I have not regretted it.
Paul
This is a tricky question, I understand the concept of enough we practice it daily, I know when I’ve had enough to eat, sleep, drink and I know I have enough sugar in the cupboard, but how to define basic needs. From a macro perspective it’s fairly easy, food, water, shelter, heat, light, communication and health would be my view, but when you get into the detail there’s a lot more to unpack. For instance, I have enough sugar in the cupboard to last a week, I know that the supply chain of sugar is fairly stable so I have the confidence I can get more next week. My basic need in this instance would be the confidence in the supply chain as well as my personal basic need for sugar.
Sticking with the food theme, what about chicken, if I’m on a budget, supported perhaps by social security, what chicken do I buy?. Is it the £4.99 forced and caged grown, hormone filled version. the £16 corn fed free range or the the £37 Sutton Hoo. I would say the Sutton Hoo is not a basic need, however the choice between the other two is more nuanced. Not only is there the ethical challenge of meat raised and fed that way but also a very real health concern as well. I have a basic need to eat well and healthy, the government (as is) and the DWP would disagree with my choice of corn fed. One is injected with water and chemicals and the other is not and is fully traceable back to the farm, the taste and texture are vastly different.
I voted for sometimes as although I know how important relationships and experiences are, sometimes you need more than the government describes as basic needs.
Thank you
All you need is love. That is enough. In terms of material such as housing, money, wealth; enough is much less than what a imagine it to be. And in other respects such as family, shared social bonds, communal activity, it is much more than what I believe I need.
Really excellent article Richard! A great little book of quotes that I come back to is ‘Don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats’ by Kathryn & Ross Petras… there’s one from Louis Armstrong in there…”making money ain’t nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you’re just as graveyard dead as he is.”
He was right
It’s noticeable that at mealtimes we say to our children “are you full?”
Whereas, my grandparents’ generation say “have you had sufficient?”
There is a distinction.
Agreed.
I actually do not like feeling full.
The Buddha understood this clearly around 2,500 years ago. Modern society seems to be built upon hijacking (as one other commentator put it) people’s latent unwholesome states of mind and then amplifying these to a degree the planet can no longer sustain. If we’re going to survive as a species we will need to find ways to collectively both internalise and externalise the wisdom of enough.
Having enough is when you cannot think of an answer to your wife’s question “what do you want for your birthday?” that includes something you can actually buy with money. “A new brain”, one that can remember things and concentrate on one subject long enough to make better use of the musical instruments, wood-working machines and the other toys you already own isn’t a practical answer. Nor, sadly, is “a new spine for you”, one that doesn’t require you to get around in a wheelchair and wear an opioid pain patch 24/365.
There are lots of things money can buy, including happiness if you are one of the many people in the world who struggle to provide the basic needs for yourself and your family, prompt medical treatment and electric wheelchairs when the state funded system cannot provide them and, above all, the ability to make at least some choices about how you live your life. But the pursuit of unlimited monetary wealth for it’s own sake is a fool’s game.
[…] did not expect the videos we produced on charity shops and the concept of enough being enough to be viewed many tens of thousands of times, but both have been, with 63,000 and 83,000 views […]