What if we people no longer worship materialism as in the past? What if people finally start to realize that an excess of consumption is unfruitful? There are ways to reduce your consumption without feeling deprived. The more I study poverty and consumption, the more I find myself needing less. I wish to share how I was able to do so through my study of the subject.
How’s it going everybody this is beat the bush today i’m gonna talk about materialism and how you can get away from it people often times can force themselves to not buy certain things but today i want to concentrate on how to make yourself not even want to buy those things in the first place even if you have the money why am i recording this video is truly from a
Passion point of view for the past few weeks i’ve been thinking about this topic and it’s just sort of thinking about how i can solve this problem looking at the hoard of stuff that i have in my home right now i thought back in time about how i often would just buy one thing after another and the transition to who i am today where i buy a lot less things even with the
Minimal amount of things i buy these days i still wonder what the thought process is how did i get coerced into buying such a thing versus another item excessive consumerism is likely not good for the planet and for someone that actually lived their life with a lot of excess i really questioned the fact that after they lived this full life with a lot of stuff does
It really matter that they had all this stuff what actually do matter therefore i’m thinking well maybe consumerism it’s just you know just kind of spinning your wheels you’re not really doing anything productive i find that excessive consumerism could be a problem that could be solved i found this quote from adam smith and i thought it was very thought-provoking
And it’s also very telling on our consumer habits he argued that poverty is the inability to afford quotes not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for credible people even of the lowest order to be without now let me just reiterate what is necessary for the support
Of life food water shelter and also warmth in other words clothing food does not necessarily have to be very fancy as long as it meets your nutrient requirements which could come in the form of something very basic which we are not normally used to now if you go into a first world country the list increases a lot more for example we’ve come to expect have running
Water electricity natural gas cell phone service internet healthcare trash service cars car insurance and gasoline a group of doctor friends might look at another one that did not have maid service if they go over to their home and then go what is this this is like savage right you don’t have a maid here to help with the dishes this is crazy another example is
In the u.s. we’ve grown accustomed to having a car almost every single household has a car and if you’re in the more affluent type of communities then almost every single person has their own car if you move into the asian countries or highly densely populated areas they might not even have a car so a car never even enters the equation people do not expect you
To have a car people don’t look at a car as a status symbol anymore now as a modern person that likes to be socially included there are certain things you also need to buy for social inclusion examples are having a phone so that people can contact you because sometimes these days you can no longer contact people via a landline or anything you absolutely must have
A phone so even for people in the low-income people have come to expect to have at minimum a cell phone even if you are on food stamps even if you’re just scraping by people still have a cell phone it’s considered one of the necessities for social inclusion you also need to address appropriately if you happen to dress really weird you know really weird colors
Really weird styles or something then you cannot hang around with the same group of people you’re gonna be looked upon as like a weirdo and you’re not gonna want to hang out with you because you stick out like a sore thumb if you happen to hang around with you know higher-end people where they you know dress in name-brand stuff all the time if you personally don’t
Dress similar to the people that you hang out with well you’re not gonna be included in order to have social inclusion it’s also important to have enough money to go do the activities with your peers that does the same thing for example if you have a bunch of friends that you know maybe they are kind of spendy type of people and they want to go on all these fancy
Vacations and every single time you go you’re gonna have to you know put outlet enough money in order to buy your flight there you know pay for your portion of this activity where you happen to be traveling somewhere very fancy something i want to mention that’s very interesting is that let’s say 50 years ago you have someone on the edge of poverty and they’re
Living very little and they feel like they’re very poor if you suddenly can transport this person to today and they are also living on poverty they are probably going to feel a lot richer now this is very interesting to me because feeling poor is a consequence of your surroundings is who you compare yourself to that’s right next to you this can only mean that as
A result of our surroundings our mind is the thing that caused us to feel poor this means and i’m not saying that i can do that myself but if your bodily needs are met for example you have enough food shelter and morgue then the rest of the feeling about ourselves it’s fully in our mind so let’s say you’re in prison and you are fed you have warmth and you have
Shelter there’s no rain on you you’re in a cell or something then strictly from a mind if your mind is powerful enough you can still feel happy about yourself even in this dire state now i’m not saying that i personally am capable of this but it would be very cool that if some day i am i’ll give two examples where i do away with something and other people think
That it’s completely unimaginable and also an example where i still am using certain things and i personally cannot imagine doing away with it because it’s unimaginable to me in other words my standard of living has gone up high enough that i’m absolutely must require this for one reason or another my mind is trapped in you know thinking that this is absolutely
The standard if i live below the standard then i’m depriving myself the first example where i’ve done without is trash bags other people would look at this and then go oh my gosh i cannot believe trash bags are so cheap how come you don’t just buy they’re like five dollars and you get a hundred of them well for me i just use the groceries trash bags and it’s no
Big deal i still have the same equivalent thing i can still throw away trash and stuff but other people have grown so accustomed to buying trash bags that it is sort of like a basis of life it’s always there they always going to buy it once you get into this stage you have essentially conditioned your mind to absolutely meet a certain item if you happen to not
Have this item i can imagine that if you’re so used to having trash bag and suddenly one day i just take it away and all of a sudden you have to you know use some other method you’re gonna start feeling like you’re depriving yourself of something now onto things that i actually cannot do without i regret that i cannot because i absolutely need these things for
Example i need my computer to edit these videos i need the internet to upload these videos i need expensive camera gear this camera that you’re looking at me through and also a cell phone and the corresponding service because i’ve grown so accustomed to going every which way and if i’m lost or anything i can just use gps i can use any kind of directory service and
Find out you know what is interesting near me i’ve grown so used to being able to access information in such a quick manner so it’s become a part of me and if i take it away i’m gonna feel very burden because i’m so used to this advancement of technology of accessing information so quickly and not wasting my time just you know just walking everywhere so it is an
Increase of standard of living for me now finally i talk about consumerism and how yeah you should not buy as many things that you think you need and if you do this you kind of take the load off of yourself and kind of save your resources for better things but the question here is how we can change our perspective so that we do not want those things in the first
Place because if you’re depriving yourself if you’re forcing yourself that’s not fun at all you want to change your mind you want to alter the way you think about the world so that you do not want those things in the first place so therefore you’re not depriving yourself therefore you’re feeling good about yourself first know that it is our minds everything is in
Here that is causing us to feel pity for ourselves it is what is causing us to feel bad for us to compare ourselves to our neighbors then we go oh you know they have all this why am i in such a state this is what causes our own self-loathing now if possible of course it’s good to be the richest person on your street but this is often not under your control it is
Even better if you are able to control yourself and sort of stop yourself from comparing yourself to others because you can all you know go look at other things go look at oh yeah you know what car they have and then you start looking up how much it costs you kind of observe all the you know fancy things they like to show off so whenever you get caught yourself in
Such a situation where you’re looking up the the prices of things you know maybe you can buy it as well it’s always good to go okay realize that you’re in the act of doing it because you know even i am guilty of doing that know that you’re in the act of doing it and just stop yourself just go you know what no i don’t even want to know so you know kind of you know
Forcing yourself to be oblivious to it you know it’s one way to get around comparing yourself to your neighbors another aspect is also put yourself in perspective here living in a first world country it has these luxuries already so they’re you know technically you should have no reason to be unhappy at all because you’re so much further better off than people in
Poorer countries there are people out there that are struggling to meet even the basic needs of food shelter and more so how do you do this to really bring it home well you can just watch youtube videos of poorer countries or you can even go and visit those countries yourself just to see what it’s like and then when you come back in and go wow you know you put
Yourself in that perspective i know this is kind of weird because you’re actually going to places less fortunate places just to make yourself feel better i know this is a terrible way to go but it’s also important to do that finally i think the greatest challenge of all is to be able to have control of your mind i mean really really have control of it so that you
Can yourself just think yourself into a happier mood so to prove that i’m not a master this these days i absolutely need a cellular phone service this is not part of the absolute needs of your body so if somehow in the future maybe i can do away with it maybe for a month then it would sort of be like practicing the way i view my perspective thanks for watching this
Video i know this video got a little bit more philosophical than usual but i feel like this is a basis of fighting consumerism don’t forget to give me a like lead on this video push that subscribe button and ring that bell icon thanks for watching
Transcribed from video
Death of Materialism By BeatTheBush