Apparently I jumped on a bandwagon I didn’t know existed. No-Buy New Year is a thing, or at least No Buy Year is a thing. I was grateful to learn that the idea is gaining ground in our culture at large, but it’s swimming against a rip current pulling humans farther and farther from stable ground. I’m guilty. I’ve spent too much of my adult life participating in consumer culture, even if my best intentions kept me on the fringes. While I’ve made choices through the years to continually decrease my consumption and live modestly, I failed to notice the growth of the affluence culture that exploded internationally while I hid in my little mud hut in the woods. The science journal Nature published a warning about affluence in 2020, summarized in this abstract:

For over half a century, worldwide growth in affluence has continuously increased resource use and pollutant emissions far more rapidly than these have been reduced through better technology. The affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts and are central to any future prospect of retreating to safer environmental conditions. We summarise the evidence and present possible solution approaches. Any transition towards sustainability can only be effective if far-reaching lifestyle changes complement technological advancements. However, existing societies, economies and cultures incite consumption expansion and the structural imperative for growth in competitive market economies inhibits necessary societal change.

I wrote an essay twenty years ago in which I mourned the necessity of using petroleum products. Though I’ve reduced my individual carbon footprint with a small car (the most energy efficient at the time I bought it 18 years ago and I’m still driving it) and with living on off the grid for thirty years, I’ve still relied on gasoline, and on a propane generator as backup for the house batteries. I felt so conflicted about it at the time that I wondered in this essay whether it would be a bigger gift to the planet if I just left it. I wasn’t depressed, or at least no more than usual, but I was really struggling with how to live in this culture. The editor canned the piece, and eventually I set the conflict aside. I really stopped struggling with it when my friend John, helping me pull weeds one day, addressed my solastalgia by pointing out that hundreds and thousands of people have been trying to turn the tide of this environmental destruction for decades, and if they couldn’t do it I shouldn’t feel guilty that I couldn’t. Later, the teachings of Catherine Ingram essentially gave me permission to enjoy being the animal that I am and love my little life. And then I found mindfulness, and calmed down.

But then this weird time warp happened, and a red tide threatens the planet now more than ever. Like you’ve never seen. When The Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris last fall, like many I canceled my subscription to that legacy news source. I’m glad I did. They’re throwing democracy into a dark dungeon with their capitulation to the incoming regime and the billionaires backing it. Their censoring of Ann Telnaes’ cartoon criticizing billionaire tech and media chief executives reinforced my decision to up my resistance.

I feel good about No-Buy New Year, and that motivates me to dig deeper into my Attention Budget. Like many of us, I’m tied to the Amazonverse through Prime, for the shopping convenience that was unfathomable when I moved to this rural sanctuary; and later for the streaming, which freed me from a cable or dish provider but comes with its own constraints. But after I learned that Jeff Bezos paid forty million (including my hard-earned purchasing dollars) to the new regime to make a Melania documentary, I committed to wean myself from Amazon as well: As much as possible, and over time.

The No-Buy Initiative is a big help, though I did order a pack of toothbrushes and some Omeprezole after an energy sapping bout of gastritis earlier this week. Those fall under essentials, and I won’t be able to get them locally soon enough. But I did consider the purchase and weigh the options, rather than simply point and click out of habit. I intend to plan better.