Enoughness

It would take six to nine planets to supply the natural resources necessary for everyone on earth to consume at the rate that we in the United States take for granted. We have only 1 planet. Everyone in the developing world wants to live like we do in the US. This is a problem. Many would say it is a crisis. Certainly our consumptive lifestyle is a major contributor to global warming, a fact that can only be reversed by intense and rapid changes in our patterns of living.

What is the missing link? It was a year ago at the SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) Conference that a Native People’s representative introduced the idea of enoughness. She was speaking about the values system differences between western cultures and native people’s culture. She said, “In the native people’s culture, we have a concept called enoughness.” Once you have enough, you quit taking. You leave the rest for later, for your use later, or for your children or their children.

We are now facing a recession, which will clearly be deeper and longer if we reduce our consumption. And isn’t it about time?

Human beings rarely make fundamental change until faced with an intense challenge. Perhaps one of the functions of this time in economic history is to delink our prosperity and our consumption. Perhaps we are being called to consider the idea of enoughness.

What if one of the possibilities of this time is to create an economy built on sustainable ways of living? Ideas like sustainable agriculture where we use the land in ways that don’t need massive amounts of chemicals and water to grow our food. Ideas like renewable energy where we use the unlimited resources of wind and sun to produce our energy needs rather than investing in coal, natural gas or oil, all natural resources with finite quantities. Ideas like buying food from local farms, rather than trucking food 1500 miles to a grocery store. Ideas like preserving green space. Simple ideas like using recycled glass instead of granite for our new kitchen counter top.

What if this economic challenge we now face is blessing us with the opportunity to ask, do we have enough?