What is Enough?   The Goldilocks Manifesto

Sitting in a sun-dappled living room in Los Angeles, I’m having coffee and reading the news in my comfortable middle-class environment. A piece about a well-known billionaire’s superyacht adorned with a mermaid grabs my attention. Soon after, I’m discussing a fundraiser with a collaborator living across town in his own middle-class environment. The event will raise money to build much-needed homes for unhoused folks in our community. A few minutes into the call, a young family acquaintance comes up. The kid’s parent happens to be said billionaire’s partner, whose likeness apparently inspired the mermaid figure on the yacht’s bow mentioned in the article. Due to my friend’s relational proximity, he paints a picture of one of the world’s richest men preparing sandwiches for the children. And suddenly while sitting in our middle-class comforts, the two of us are — strikingly — at a very L.A. convergence of too much, enough, and next to nothing.

“Enough” (adjective): occurring in such quantity, quality, or scope as to fully meet demands, needs, or expectations

In our current era of financialized capitalism, the global social order is built around relentless growth and never-ending wealth accumulation. The result is upper-crust lives filled with exorbitant excess that exists in parallel to people barely surviving on next to nothing. Often, the two opposites collide. In places like Los Angeles, it happens every day. And sometimes, this contradiction explodes into public consciousness more dramatically. Like this recent headline-grabbing juxtaposition: Billionaire adventure tourists perish while chasing six-figure underwater thrills as destitute migrants drown before reaching Europe’s shores. These extremes, so chillingly highlighted by the two maritime disasters, are often front and center. Plutocrat extravagance butts up against the most abject deprivation right under our noses. Hustle culture dominates social media spheres, preached by grind evangelists who have repurposed the age-old prosperity gospel. Cultural conditioning has us believing that striving for our own individual slice of too much is our God-given right, even a noble pursuit. Why be content sipping coffee in comfort when we can yearn for yachts and gazillionaire gadgets? After all, anything’s possible, right? Seeing this binary of too much and next to nothing, too many of us put our faith in those with deep-sea tourism levels of cash. In our aspiration, we side with tycoon interests, ultimately hoping that this will insulate us from ever having to join the ranks of those with next to nothing. But that’s a false choice, and there are others. There is enough. So travel with me to the Enough-O-Sphere.

Enough is the sense of “just right,” that magical condition that Goldilocks — of fairytale fame — tries to find. Not too hot, not too cold; not too much, not too little — that’s the Goldilocks Principle. Used in a variety of disciplines to connote that precisely perfect condition, this needs to be our cultural goal instead. Between the poles of painful poverty and obscene material wealth, basic human needs must be met abundantly for all – enough should be our holy grail. Aristotle already preached this truth back in the day. Neither too much nor too little are that great, so stick with the golden mean instead. Our existence can be a balanced, homeostatic state that meets life-sustaining conditions, keeps things in comfortable working order, and feels sustainable, safe, and sufficient. Amid the chaos and existential fear brought on by climate change, authoritarianism, war, and millionaires casually existing alongside dystopian encampment realities, focusing on enough can lead the way. This golden middle may just be the guiding light we need to escape the excess and deprivation brought on by what philosopher Nancy Fraser aptly calls cannibal capitalism. A system that, in its eternal quest for more, eats itself like an ouroboros until there’s nothing left. Enough has been the answer all along, not building corporate empires or miraculously striking it rich. Enough is cool, enough is sexy, enough is where it’s at. The laughable cabal of the aging titans of the tech industry trying to buy swagger they never had in high school: not cool. This frantic drive toward unnecessary wealth accumulation coupled with poisonous growth for growth’s sake is a ravenous vortex that swallows everything it comes across. Enough can be the antidote. A nuanced exploration of this middle space is long overdue.

Contemporary abolition movements along with some degrowth thinkers and critical theorists are working toward building a society that places enough at its center. Let’s join the quest to define, contend with, and move toward a shared enough. Let’s build on notions of sustainability, repairability, care, and solidarity instead of on too much or next to nothing. We can get closer to an Enough-O-Sphere that can house us all. To do this, we need a semantic decoupling of “growth = progress” and “more = always better.”

We need to laugh at billionaires getting swole and pursuing Freudian rocket exploits during their mid-life crises. We need to face our fears, not avert our gaze from those with next to nothing. A yacht? Nah... But yes to clean water for everyone. Extreme adventure tourism? I’ll pass... Give us ample rest and recuperation. A mansion with 25 bathrooms? Lame... Give us dignified housing for all instead. The mermaid cannot guide us, but enough can get us where we need to be. Let that be the compass for our journey.

 

09/2023