Thanks so much for your thoughts. I really look forward to having your input, as every comment like this will force me to consider my viewpoints in more detail.
I want to let my main ideas emerge over the coming weeks, but I can comment a bit on my expectations with all this.
I don't realistically expect my philosophy to catch on as a global movement. I am not that optimistic. Convincing people to choose a lifestyle with less money is very difficult. And there are probably millions of people out there who care about preventing ecological disasters, with all different approaches for trying to motivate people -- yet we're still on the same trajectory as ever. I would have to be pretty arrogant to think that my idea would surpass the efforts of everyone else.
I am sure there have been many famous people with much greater reach than I have who are urging similar actions.
One distinction I see is this: when making requests like "buy less", "give more", "drive less", "use less water", etc., there never seems to be a target to strive for. It's always a list of "here's 10 things you should do better at", and for some people that is helpful, but I think a lot of people get overwhelmed at all the things they're doing wrong and start to feel like a significant change is hopeless -- because they should always just be doing better. On the other hand, some people hear about these things they can do to help, and their takeaway is that recycling and using energy-efficient lightbulbs is enough to justify an extravagant footprint. I mean, every improvement helps, but it doesn't lend a clear picture of how their spending/consumption/footprint compares to most people on the planet.
The advantage of my approach is that it focuses on just one thing (income/expenditures, to which environmental impact is closely tied), puts it in perspective with the rest of the world, and gives a target to move towards in that regard. So the core of it is simple and yet there is a lot of flexibility in how a person decides to work it out in their own life.
My target audience is people who are empathetic to the suffering going on around the world, and concerned about climate change, but who have a hard time conceptualizing what a meaningful change might look like on their part. People who want to help but are also used to a certain standard of living, and can't understand how they could minimize that and still be comfortable, secure, and happy.
If I were to be extremely optimistic, this is what I would like to see: people who adopt my philosophy end up living happier lives than ever before, while voluntarily using less money, and when other people see this they will be surprised and intrigued, so the idea spreads organically. As more and more people realize the problems with affluence, maybe there starts to be a shift in the way we perceive wealth. Maybe hoarding resources will start to be viewed as a pathology rather than as success. Maybe this creates more social pressure on wealthy people to do good things with most of their money. Clearly, with the ongoing outrage about billionaires in space, this is already a trend, but seeing as we need a massive immediate global reduction in carbon emissions and the wealthiest 10% are responsible for most of that, I think they deserve to be put under even more scrutiny. And honestly, that includes middle class Americans too, who are very rich on a global scale. Rather than just rain down condemnation and tell everyone what they're doing wrong, though, I hope my book can offer a positive path forward to a better life that is also meaningfully less impactful.
Anyway, I said more than I intended to there :D I look forward to hearing more of your feedback going forward. Thanks again.
