SAVE ONLY PLENTY

“It seems man can cope with anything nature throws at us, save only plenty” – Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

Is this the problem we have in the Western industrialised world? That life is too easy, the struggle for survival just a phrase we hear on nature programs and charity appeals?

Darwin’s theory of evolution is often paraphrased as “survival of the fittest,” which is an oversimplification, but at least lets us believe we understand it. Unfortunately, we seem have been misspelling it for quite some time now. Capitalism and commercialism work because they play on our hard-wiring for survival – we want to be the fittest (fattest, richest) – so we focus on wealth and possessions as the measure of our fitness to survive. Capitalism may have proved it’s more in tune with human nature than communism or socialism, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing us any tangible good.

When Steinbeck went on his second great American road trip in the 1960s, he was repeatedly disappointed with the progress of his country, not so much because of the progress itself, but because of the increasing homogenization of the previously differing accents and dialects of the regions, and the increasing waste and lack of respect for both people and things he saw as a side effect of the increased standard of living. This was many decades after Thoreau made pretty much the same point in Walden Pond, which remains the acknowledged work on the subject of simplifying and the natural life.

In the U.K, The Good Life was making the point back in the 1970s – that we are too dependent on big agribusiness and multi-national corporations in our urban commercial culture. This we know, if only because the interlocked international banking system proved the point in its recent spectacular crash and ensuing crisis.  If we import all our food, we are hostage to the first blockade. If we import all our power – petrol, oil, natural gas – we are hostage to Russia's power squabbles with ex-Soviet countries, to every new twist in the ongoing attrition in the Middle East, every coup in oil-rich regions of Africa. It makes us very vulnerable to international political and economic breezes. So surely, the obvious course for wisdom and long-term survival is to decrease our dependence on imports?

It seems an impossible ask on the individual level, because what can one person do against the status quo and government policy? We can simplify our own lives, opt out of the “survival of the fattest” by buying less, consuming less, owning less and above all wanting less. Bruce Lee, perhaps, put it best when he said that what matters “is not the daily increase, but the daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” Okay, so his philosophy is not what he's famous for, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

I admit I'm having trouble hacking away at the unessential.  It's hard to cease desiring, to stop buying into as powerful a status quo as our material world. After all, we can't opt out of living in it. There are so many things I can see a place for in my life, but they're not necessary as I have a biological imperative to be the fattest/fittest, I also have a biological tendency to lethargy – in survival terms, the less we do, the more energy we conserve when we need it. So I'm going to try giving in to that – stop expending energy on wanting and acquiring, and conserve it to be spent on doing, on experiencing. Because in the end, I think I'm far more likely to regret not doing far more than we'll regret not possessing.

And if that means I have to make do and mend or do without, I'm certain Steinbeck was right, and I will cope admirably with all adversity, save only if I give in to plenty.