Mainstream society sabotages us by trying to sell us that having more—money, stuff, connections, etc—improves life.

How having more improves life it doesn’t say, but it’s usually through images of people enjoying themselves, typically when getting the stuff, which doesn’t represent the costs of paying for the stuff, maintaining it, putting on weight from eating it, the pollution it causes, and so on.

I’ve found two opposites of what mainstream society promotes more valuable for my life.

First, as much as I value emotions I like, I don’t find temporary emotional states valuable goals. I value emotional skills to create the emotions I want deliberately, which relying on external things for my emotions undermines.

So I value freedom to think and act how I like and strive for it.

Second, I find having more weighs me down and gets in the way of freedom.

In other words

Needing less gives more freedom than having more

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• Would you rather be you or have been born a Rockefeller? →