The race to possess more and more

During this holiday season, we are surrounded by the call to acquire new material possessions. Indeed, the drive to produce and sell more is the basis of our economy, much of which turns on holiday sales. Yet those who follow Stoic principles should tread lightly. For Stoics, the only thing of real value is virtue. 

The ancient Stoics did not argue that people shouldn’t have any things or possessions, or that we need to completely eschew material wealth; in fact, some of them (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius) must have been extremely wealthy and surrounded by material goods. Wealth and possessions were a “preferred indifferent” to them.

However, the Stoic emphasis on virtue and good judgment above possessions and wealth should make us stop and question our current economic system, especially the race to collect more and more things. We can explore this idea as a way to understand living in harmony with nature, Stoic-style. 

The dominant capitalistic economic system in modern America is organized along consumerist principles, and companies and entrepreneurs rely on constant growth, more sales, more goods, more products. But I’ve followed with interest recently as new theories have begun to emerge that challenge the traditional emphasis on consumerist growth as the only driver of human well-being, or even prosperity itself. In a 2020 article in the New Yorker about the movement against growth among certain economists, we learn that not every economic thinker is in favour of more growth:

After a century in which G.D.P. per person has gone up more than sixfold in the United States, a vigorous debate has arisen about the feasibility and wisdom of creating and consuming ever more stuff, year after year. On the left, increasing alarm about climate change and other environmental threats has given birth to the “degrowth” movement, which calls on advanced countries to embrace zero or even negative G.D.P. growth. “The faster we produce and consume goods, the more we damage the environment,” Giorgos Kallis, an ecological economist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, writes in his manifesto, “Degrowth.” “There is no way to both have your cake and eat it, here. If humanity is not to destroy the planet’s life support systems, the global economy should slow down.” 

Imagining a different world

We could imagine a different world. And sometimes, we can even experience that difference – for instance, when we take ourselves out of an environment shaped by giant corporations (typical of my life in a suburban area in the US) to an environment much more influenced by small local businesses and services (which I noticed when I visited rural Ireland earlier this year). After just a few days outside of the realm of the growth-focused-company-as-king, I felt that going back into big box stores, strip malls, larger than life billboard ads seemed quite jarring, showing consumerism playing at a scale that’s not really human. 

Interestingly, it seems that the “post-growth” movement is picking up steam, according to the article cited above:
Once confined to the margins, the ecological critique of economic growth has gained widespread attention. ….The degrowth movement has its own academic journals and conferences. Some of its adherents favour dismantling the entirety of global capitalism, not just the fossil-fuel industry. Others envisage “post-growth capitalism,” in which production for profit would continue, but the economy would be reorganized along very different lines. In the influential book “Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow,” Tim Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey, in England, calls on Western countries to shift their economies from mass-market production to local services – such as nursing, teaching, and handicrafts – that could be less resource-intensive. Jackson doesn’t underestimate the scale of the changes, in social values as well as in production patterns, that such a transformation would entail…

Human-focused changes

A stronger focus on service-oriented economies could bring about human-focused changes, especially at the local level. This remains speculative – it’s hard to predict how people will adapt to the future, though it’s clear that we will need to evolve. 

In that evolution, I hope we can turn back to Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, and other Stoics, who advocated focusing on virtue and the ability to cultivate our inner goodness over external goods. It may be that by helping each other with services and in pro-social ways – ways that the ancient Stoics would see as aligned to the cosmopolitan nature of humanity, and living in harmony with nature – we could find new forms of “growth,” both personal and economic.

Meredith Kunz is the author of The Stoic Mom Substack and blog https://thestoicmom.substack.com 

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