To each according to their means
Do you remember rushing home as a kid, famished and then the elation of a cold glass of milk and a P and J sandwich. The world was back in its place. An answer was provided, hunger arrested.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Scarcity makes the heart beat faster for the dream of satiation. We need scarcity in our lives, it’s beneficial. It’s part of what drives us and makes us human. But in our modern world, it is too often being erased as we develop an infinite numbers of ways to make the world “comfortable”.
The technological revolution is basically trying to solve for good, the problem of scarcity. It’s what we call progress. I reject that view of progress being marketed and implied in every new development, every advertisement. You know the dream that your every whim and desire will be satisfied. At hand will be everything you need (oh, not to mention you won’t own it - but that’s another essay).
Scarcity is a naturally occurring phenomena and it makes the world work. Fires come and wipe out forests, generating growth. We sleep at night to live better, enlivened the next day. You don’t know the answer but you think and think and think, you dream, you live that question until one day, the problem is solved, the answer arrived. It’s your answer (and that’s key - more on this later).
But what if you didn’t need to do any work, go through the desert of scarcity to arrive at the oasis of an answer. What if there was a machine that had all the answers? Remember when we thought that Google had all the answers?
[It’s a cool song, on topic. Musical interjection]
E.M. Forster over 100 years ago wrote a small science fiction book covering this topic, the dream of everything. It was called - The Machine Stops. I highly recommend it for the lessons it teaches us about the false dream of abundance - a dream laced with the highly addictive chemicals of religion, paradise, heaven, nirvana et al. Sorry Dorothy, there ain’t no Oz.
Many creative people are finding that creativity doesn't grow in abundance, it grows from scarcity - the more Lego bricks you have doesn't mean you're going to be more creative; you can be very creative with very few Lego bricks.
Jorgen Vig Knudstorp
I remember as a university student staying at a friend’s cabin for 2 weeks of running, relaxing one summer. It was far away from civilization. Just one grainy channel on the TV. But fortunately there were 10 books on a slim shelf above the couch. I devoured those books. Loved every one of them over those two weeks, even though they all on the surface weren’t to my taste.
And here’s the rub. Scarcity makes you try and see and feel and do things the make you alive, engaged, filled with the energy of life. Too much choice, you’ll just finish a few pages of each book and keep going for something better, better, more satiating - a better glass of milk.
People have asked me, “How did you get anywhere before Google Maps?”. It’s a good question but easy to answer - we did get everywhere. Maybe it took a little longer but on the way, we experienced more of the world, we were more alive to the world. True story - my wife here in South Korea, won’t start driving without the GPS on. She won’t! But she is just one of many letting technology, the dream of abundance, rule our souls, peck away at our being. Is Google Maps a good thing? Yes. But it isn’t a panacea, heaven on earth. It’s a tool. And like with any tool, it’s about YOU the artist and how you use it. Trust me, many have and do get lost using maps on their cellphones.
I remember being a student in public school when calculators came out. Wow - what a game changer. Now all the answers were right there, in the palm of your hand. No long form math! The school banned them but we used them anyway, we even competed to have the coolest one. Same thing with slide rules (remember those?).
But did having all the answers make me a better person, a more learned person or even just better at math? Not. Sorry Buckminster Fuller, heaven ain’t no place filled with shapely, shiny high-rises.
ChatGPT is all the rage right now. It’s basically another development, leap forward, in the rush to provide us with abundance, everything available at our finger tips. However, it is just another version of the calculator - instead of numbers, it deals with words. A tool to get an answer not to get THE answer.
For an equation to be true, it must be beautiful. Nature is driven by simplicity and beauty. - paraphrasing Einstein.
Another value of scarcity is that it is closely aligned with simplicity.
Abundance, our very dynamic, having answers for everything world, increases complexity. It’s why there are so many answers to one question - be it - why the dollar is going up? How to control inflation? Global warming? A strong democracy? Does the vaccine work? ….
Scarcity keeps things simple. You focus on the prize. YOU are the driver of the bus, not some leaf pushed along by some effluvium flushed from the 27th floor somewhere. You aren’t pulling out answers as sound bites. Scarcity is basically a message of “Do it yourself”. You have the answers. Go get them.
Scarcity forces you to look, it doesn’t provide on a golden platter the answer, the false idol. You’ll need to invest the time and energy that will give your answer value - not else.
Take for example the issue of “the expert”. Today, the world is filled with experts. They all have their degrees (for the most part). They all purport to have THE answer to whichever problem is being looked at. But they are part of the abundant world. So many of them and such complexity. Most of these experts are full of shit. Nice people probably but full of it. Very smart. Very intelligent. But in the world of abundance, complexity - these kinds of tin-god experts are dead in the water. The recent pandemic showed us this in spades - so many caught with their pants down.
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. ~Joseph Campbell
A world where everything is ours will take and suck the vitality of life from us all. There is already such a dearth of individuality, character, spirit among us. If you want to be alive, feel alive, don’t go down that path of abundance, don’t buy into that message of the ad man where all your desires will be fulfilled - they won’t. Sorry Bill Gates, there is no paradise on earth.
Back to Forster’s machine. There is then this problem (shown in the short video). It’s a problem ancient and alive and healthy among all of us, us who are searching for more and more and more … never being satisfied with just what we have. Endlessly zombying through Ikeas in the clouds, for that new thing. Not enjoying that one book on a shelf primarily because we think books give us answers, the meaning. They don’t. YOU give yourself the answer. WE give ourselves the answers.
And that’s the rub. We must learn to value ourselves more. Even if we have a blemish, we are beautiful.
A Modern Anthem
All that I want
Is all that I need
The rest is only greed.
On Scarcity