Aweh, My Dearly Beloved Fellow Ruminants & Groupies
Forgive Me Groupies
Forgive me, groupies, for my merciful silence these past few weeks. Life has come at me fast, deadlines, distractions, and the usual existential dread. But what finally pulled me back to the keyboard was a dinner I had this week with an old friend from the more environmentally conscious North. You know the type: solar panels, and kombucha fermenting in reclaimed jars. We caught up, we reminisced, and I left vaguely hungover and sharply guilty not just about the wine, but about my unapologetically unsustainable lifestyle.
It got me thinking about this whole business of how we’re supposed to live now ethically, tastefully, sustainably and who gets to decide what that looks like. Abundance versus austerity. Maximalist indulgence versus beige-soaked virtue. And underneath it all, the exhausting pressure to perform our values, no matter what team we play for.
The Gospel of Abundance
An abundant lifestyle is undeniably seductive. It promises not just comfort and beauty, but the exhilarating illusion of control, the sense that you’re living on your own terms. And of course, in this gospel, abundance becomes the highest expression of elegance and taste.
To live abundantly is to enter a world where dreams take up real square metres. Where homes are sunlit and spacious, not just shelter, but temples of curated comfort. It’s driving the car that gives you a thrill every time you tap the accelerator. It’s booking multiple long-haul flights each year to recharge your soul under foreign skies. Abundance shows up in fresh flowers on the kitchen counter, last-minute weekend getaways, home theatres, and the quiet luxury of saying “yes” without mentally calculating the cost, monetary or environmental.
Of course, it’s not about showing off. It’s about fully inhabiting a life where desire and reality are on speaking terms.
Okay, maybe the part about not showing off is a lie.
The Cult of Austerity
But beyond the silk sheets, voice-activated espresso bars, and infinity pools teetering over private jungles, there’s another kind of luxury on offer, the curated emptiness of the minimalist elite. These are the saints of subtraction, the beige-robed believers who own nothing, wear the same four ethically sourced outfits, and greet the dawn with a gratitude meditation and a ginger shot.
Austerity, when styled just right, isn’t deprivation; it’s moral superiority disguised in old, faded T-shirts. This is the crowd that scoffs at abundance as vulgar, a symptom of spiritual immaturity. Your luxury SUV? A cry for help. Their indulgence? A perfectly steamed oat milk latte sipped slowly while contemplating the quiet dignity of less.
Where abundance shouts, “I made it,” austerity murmurs “, I transcended.” It’s not just less stuff, it’s better than stuff. Cleaner. Quieter. Closer to godliness or at least to a minimalist calendar with long, empty blocks of unscheduled virtue.
But make no mistake: this isn’t frugality. This is aestheticised asceticism. A lifestyle that costs more than it looks and rewards you with the subtle, smug thrill of being better than everyone who still buys things in colour.
Champagne vs. Rainwater
And so, the battle lines are drawn. Team Abundance, sipping champagne at 35,000 feet in seat 1A, versus Team Austerity, sipping filtered rainwater from a reclaimed mason jar. Each tribe is convinced they’ve cracked the code to the good life, and that the other side is either deluded, gauche, or both.
The abundance crowd wraps indulgence in the silky robes of “alignment,” self-love, and empowerment. Luxury becomes a kind of self-actualisation: if you’re not living your best life, what are you even doing?
Meanwhile, the ascetics parade their restraint like a spiritual mantra, mistaking denial for depth. Their discipline is a lifestyle filter. Their discomfort is curated. Their modesty is an aesthetic. And somewhere behind the fasting app and the third-hand linen, there’s the quiet, persistent whisper: I’m doing this better than you.
But scratch the surface, and the hypocrisy is as thick as double-fat yoghurt. The minimalist flying off to a silent retreat in Bali racks up a carbon footprint that rivals the yacht crowd. The abundance disciple preaching “freedom” neglects to mention the team of assistants, therapists, and au pairs required to keep the fantasy afloat.
Both lifestyles claim authenticity. But neither is real. They’re brands. Theatre. Carefully curated myths, one draped in cashmere, the other in compostable cotton.
The Optics of Sustainability
So, what does all this say about sustainability?
Honestly, not much.
Team Abundance doesn’t give a shit about carbon offsets; they’re too busy booking the next long-haul flight to “recharge” in Mauritius, sipping poolside cocktails under palm trees. Sustainability is a buzzword they scroll past on the way to a deep-tissue massage.
Meanwhile, the minimalist elite can’t stop talking about conscious living, all while permanently jacked into their MacBooks, AirPods, smartwatches, and ethically branded smartphones, running their “low-impact” lives on high-energy servers, streaming meditative epiphanies to the cloud.
Both sides consume. Both sides perform.
And the planet? Predictably indifferent. It doesn’t care whether your carbon footprint was made in Gucci loafers or barefoot on a bamboo mat. It’s still a footprint.
Just don’t ask the minimalist elite to be minimalist about their bank accounts; that’s where the simplicity ends.
Reality Check
Meanwhile, out in the real world, the one without silk sheets or recycled sandals, there’s an entire population that doesn’t have time for this ridiculous showdown.
Ask your Uber driver. Your delivery guy. The woman selling fruit at the taxi rank. They’re not debating abundance versus austerity. They’re hustling to keep the lights on, keep the rent paid, maybe get their kids through one more week of school with some dignity intact.
Luxury? Minimalism? Please. Try surviving a week on a social grant.
While the elite argue over which lifestyle saves the soul, most people are just trying to save enough to eat tomorrow. No one’s choosing between filtered rainwater and champagne when they’re queuing for municipal tap water.
It’s not that these debates are meaningless. They’re just deeply, painfully disconnected from the lives of the majority. It’s all theatre playing out on a stage most people can’t even afford to sit near, let alone climb.
The Trumpian Gospel
And then there’s the Trumpian take, gloriously unsubtle, proudly vulgar, and completely uninterested in the moral theatre of abundance versus austerity.
For this crowd, abundance isn’t a lifestyle, it’s a scoreboard. Gold everything. Big cars. Bigger jets. The biggest steaks. It’s not about taste, or ethics, or self-actualisation. It’s about winning.
The very idea of restraint is laughable, a loser’s excuse dressed up in beige. Sustainability? That’s for suckers and socialists. If you’re not flaunting it, you probably don’t have it.
There are no curated values here. No soft-lit virtue. Just raw, unapologetic consumption, gaudy, bloated, and strangely freeing in its total lack of shame.
In this worldview, you don’t question your footprint. You just buy bigger shoes. The planet? It’ll be fine. Or it won’t. Either way, the next round of golf starts at noon.
So, What Am I to Make of This?
On a good day, I’m amused. On a cynical one, I think we’re all just hypocritical performers in different costumes, arguing over props on a stage that’s already on fire. Maybe the minimalist monks and the maximalist moguls deserve each other a perfectly matched set of contradictions, locked in an endless performance of superiority.
Me? I’m eating my 500-gram steak (grass-fed, of course), sipping a properly aged Kanonkop Bordeaux blend. Trying to remember whether I’m supposed to feel guilty, superior, or just quietly terrified.
But I still like nice linen and fast Wi-Fi. And maybe that’s the most honest thing I can admit.
Till next week
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 