Why not encourage what we have to gain, as we consider various responses to overshoot?

An Up-Side for the Time Ahead

"We can no longer have everything we want, but
we can be more than we ever imagined.” *

Where do our best options lie in these changing times?

We can be more than we ever imagined.

Activities rooted in being, offer endless possibilities. They include learning, love and laughter, care, appreciation, sport, music, dance, and the like. They provide fulfillment without turning natural resource into waste. Before we were trained to consume the excess products of industrial machinery, life-based activities were humanity’s dominant pastimes. Such activities are uplifting and can be identified as “fun”. The friendly, memorable meme “More Fun, Less Stuff” then becomes a beacon to light our way.

Along with fulfilling lives, we may want a healthy environment, and a stable world for the grandchildren to live out their lives. These too are illuminated by our beacon because their absence is clearly not fun.

With this broad vision concentrated into four short words, we can slip by the dominant narrative of perpetually expanding production and consumption and offer an alternative to consuming and polluting our Earth.

If one is troubled by climate change, species extinction, inequality or other symptoms of humanity’s overwhelming the Earth, more fun, less stuff provides direction.

Enjoying our selves, rather than material goods, may be the most potent thing we can do to secure our place on Earth. More fun, less stuff.

Having time to follow one’s interests is more attractive than scrambling to earn enough money to buy more things. More fun, less stuff.

Enjoying the company of friends is more fulfilling than having the latest thing “as seen on TV”. More fun, less stuff.

The more we gain fulfillment from life-based potentials, the less we will have time for, or interest in, material consumption. Less material activity means fewer natural resources exploited, less CO2 and other wastes produced, and ultimately less inequality. All while gaining genuine fulfillment. More fun, less stuff.

An economy that focuses on the needs of people and ecosystems rather than on the perpetual growth of production and consumption will provide more time for living. More fun, less stuff.

A future powered by renewable energy is more secure than one dependent on diminishing supplies of polluting fossil fuels. More fun, less stuff.

Education consists of knowledge and good-will. Healthcare is the same at the preventative level if we share and encourage quality nutrition and lifestyles that foster good health. More fun, less stuff.

Imagine everyone having nutritious food, comfortable housing, education and health care while minimizing material accumulation. Pressure on the Earth would be relieved and ongoing generations could celebrate living. More fun, less stuff.

We could do away with planned obsolescence if producers were guaranteed quality of life rather than facing destitution if their sales dry up because they designed for durability and effective repair. More fun, less stuff.

The knowledge and tools we now have to provide for basic human needs are far more efficient than they were before the consumer age. If we select technologies for sustaining healthy life for ourselves and the natural world, we can create long-term well-being. More fun, less stuff.

The goals of humanity are overdue for change. Memes guide social change in a similar way to how genes provide a basic pattern to guide biological growth. It follows that if we can share the meme "More Fun, Less Stuff" into the popular mind, it will help human culture evolve away from our materialistic expansion mode and toward a world where humans can find security within the cycles of nature. More fun, less stuff.

As the meme becomes recognized, it will provide a handle to draw forward the question of what our society’s goals should be: Do we want to grow until we drop, or should we redirect our economy toward the well-being of people and ecosystems? More fun, less stuff.

Wherever concern with what is happening in the world is felt, share the meme more fun, less stuff. It points the way to a better world.

Ways to help spread the meme.

* “We can be more than we ever imagined.” Quote thanks to Howard Jerome.

Note: Finding fulfillment in living need not preclude any other efforts to fit human activity within our planet's nature. Material buildout, however, cannot be successful without overcoming the custom of material expansion.