Lesson 2.6 - What is enough? the concept of lagom
“Nothing is enough for the man for whom enough is too little.” - Epictetus
How does one live well amid plenty? Check out the Swedish word lagom.
Lagom food is better than too much food. A lagom house is better than too large of a house. Lagom belongings is better than too many belongings.
Here’s the thing: capitalism and industrialization have produced a miracle. We can produce anything we need at any volume. Yuval Noah Harari describes it in the book Sapiens as “For the first time in human history, supply began to outstrip than demand. And an entirely new problem was born: who is going to buy all this stuff? … To make sure that people will always buy whatever new stuff industry produces, new kind of ethic was appeared: consumerism.” If you’re interested in the roots of consumerism, it’s worth reading the whole section of the book here (two pages).
One of the driving insecurities of capitalism is the desire for more. Capitalism relies on growth, which means that people can never feel like they have “enough.” The acquisition of more becomes the baseline of happiness itself. The problem with more is that it is never-ending and incessant. With the concept of “more,” when we get what we think would make us happy, we are only temporarily sated. Then the desire for more forces us to want more. We collectively live on a “hedonic treadmill,” which means we emotionally adapt to the material improvements we make in our lives, resulting in the ongoing need to get still more. You want a simple example of the hedonic treadmill on a societal level? Compare what we mean by poverty in the U.S. today to what poverty was around the world as recently as the 20th century. I could list unending stats (think about the poor heating and medical care and dental care of the 19th century) or give you anecdoctal stories about it, but the ideas of “wealth,” “poverty,” and “satisfaction” meant something very different quite recently. No matter how well off we are, we figure out new problems to have.
An immense amount of money and human talent today goes to finding words and images that will make us feel like we are not enough, that you need more. It’s cultural, meaning it is reinforced in what we read, what we watch on television, the conversations we have with others, and even appearing in our dreams when we sleep.
Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things, consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate. - Victor Lebow, Retailing Analyst, 1950
Let’s look at the concept of the hedonic treadmeill and more in housing from 1975 to 2016:
Since 1975, our GDP has approximately tripled. Are we 3 times happier than we were in 1975? Our housing sizes, then and now, are an illustration of more and how the hedonic treadmill doesn’t allow us to be grateful for too long. Here’s another, from the book Your Money or Your Life:
In the above chart, you’ll see a happiness scale of 1-5 and on the bottom, the results of thousands of participants, broken out by income.
Monthly income - Average quality of life of all participants in that income range
$0-$1500 = 2.81
$1501-$3000 = 2.77
$3001-$4500 = 2.84
$4501-$6000 = 2.86
$6000+ = 2.63
Two huge points:
In a capitalist consumer society, people of all incomes rate themselves less than 3. People live in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction.
People with more income are actually unhappier than people with moderate (i.e. lagom) incomes. Even with income, more is not better.
In the West, we live in a world of overabundance, a world of too much. Yet somehow conversations are dominated about the scripts of what we don’t have or what we want to get. We swim in excess, yet live with a consciousness of “not enough.” Yes, we all know the platitude “Money can’t buy happiness.” But do you really believe it? Or deep down, do you live under the assumption that, if you had an extra $10,000 a year, you’re be “better off”? In America, we live with a foundational assumption and aspiration: “When I get what I want, I will be happy.” It could be a bigger home, a committed relationship, a better job. How did we get so dissatisfied with life?
For over two decades, economist Juliet Schor asked people “In order to live in reasonable comfort around here, how much income do you think a family of four needs today?” These were the results:
You notice that people want just a little bit more? Always?
To overcome this, we need to be mindful of when we have the feeling that we need something before we can be happy, a feeling that consumerism is only too happy to find you a solution for. Because that way of being doesn’t go away, even if you get that something. You cannot buy your way out of the craving of always wanting something new.
Notice how the ideology of more increases a scarcity mindset, “what don’t I have yet?” Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky frames this as the false belief, “I’ll be happy when ____” (I’m rich, thin, respected, in a relationship, etc.).
The ideology of enough celebrates abundance. The ideology of more is a core driver of the stress and status of capitalism. If you knew you were enough, how much stress would you feel?
The narrative of ‘not enough’ shows up in the news, media, and advertisement in our daily life. Even charities and nonprofits use the same techniques to get you to give to them. Inevitably it’s something that leaks into our consciousness. This messaging implicitly tells us that we are not enough, that we are incomplete, and that consuming something will alleviate that feeling of not being enough.
These messages are woven deep into our culture. How does this feeling of perpetual dissatisfaction affect you personally? How can you choose to view and engage with these messages differently?
Again, back to the platitude that “money can’t buy happiness.” What I’m going to suggest to you is something more radical: materialism can actually make you unhappy and the problem is, we’ve ALL bought into materialism. It’s part of American culture and we’re like fish who can’t see water.
Enough is enough. Time to construct a new mindset and step out of the Matrix, at least partially. In the end, feeling like what you have is enough is a spiritual condition. It is an intentional choosing of the way we think about our life circumstances, of learning how to feel fulfillment and satisfaction with deepening the experience of what we already have.*
What is “enough” to you? Do you the dis-ease of “I’ll be happy when _____?” Discuss the concepts of lagom, more, enough, and the hedonic treadmill below.
To enjoy anything, we cannot be attached to it. William Blake understood this beautifully: He who binds to himself a Joy, Doth the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies / Lives in Eternity’s sunrise. What we usually try to do is capture any joy that comes our way before it can escape. We have our butterfly net and go after the joy like a hunter stalking his prey. We hide and wait, pounce on it, catch it, and take it home to put on our wall. When our friends come to visit, we say, “Hey, Stu, would you like to see my joy?” There it is on the wall - dead. We try to cling to pleasure, but all we succeed in doing is making ourselves frustrated because, whatever it promises, pleasure simply cannot last. But if I am willing to kiss the joy as it flies, I say, ‘Yes, this moment is beautiful. I won’t grab it. I’ll let it go.’
Easwaran, Eknath
Extra thoughts: On a deeper level, I think Americans have a mistaken belief that they should always be happy, and if they aren’t, something is wrong. Happiness isn’t something you need to have all the time; it comes and goes, like any experience. It’s not a prerequisite for being human. A culture of needing to be happy and comfortable at all times creates a selling opportunity for capitalism to temporarily alleviate that uneasiness through purchasing. If you become OK with occasionally being anxious, sad, or lonely, you’ll be able to opt of consumerism more easily. As Yuval Noah Harari, says in Sapiens “The crucial importance of human expectations has far-reaching implications for understanding the history of happiness. If happiness depended only on objective conditions such as wealth, health and social relations, it would have been relatively easy to investigate its history. The finding that it depends on subjective expectations makes the task of historians far harder. We moderns have an arsenal of tranquilizers and painkillers at our disposal, but our expectations of ease and pleasure, and our intolerance of inconvenience and discomfort, have increased to such an extent that we may well suffer from pain more than our ancestors ever did.” The feeling of contentment with what-is is a spiritual condition that no amount of money can buy. More, obviously optional, thoughts on the pursuit of happiness from me on my blog.
Extra: You think being rich would be great? Plenty of research shows that it brings relatively little joy to those on top.