Anticonsumerism vs frugality

[Frita]

I think the best method really depends on which one someone responds better to: Didactic or dialectic? Personally, I have little patience for the dialectic method. It probably depends on what the goal is as well.

Some people certainly have a stronger preference. For me, it depends on the context and subject.

…the group most likely to commit suicide which is old men living alone in rural areas who own guns. I suppose if you look at the matter from the opposite perspective, it could just be that the old guys have the tools, skills, and freedom necessary to get the job done efficiently.

Why not another 4 quadrant model?

Maybe. Men are also socialized to be more violent, over-represented in professions with weapons training, less aware of and able to process their feelings, and indoctrinated for agency over cooperation.

I am sometimes accused of debating, especially by my avoidant spouse, when I am attempting to have a dialogue. If person A does not want to cooperate and participate, it is a way to blame person B. I usually bring this up to see how we can renegotiate the exchange, with varied results. I think that this model could also have another dimension that captures the trust versus mistrust and/or ability to see the validity and truth in multiple perspectives. (I am not quite able to put my finger on where I am going.)

I will just chime in that I also find a lot of meaning in being a parent. Like @5W7, my kids is/was cool. (Ya, I still have a relationship with my daughter who died when she was four, albeit very different.) And because my kids are not genetic, just biological with me as a surrogate, I feel quite connected to humanity in general. (I know that non-parents also feel this kinship, so there are many paths beyond parenthood.)

[Jin+Guice]

My theory is that whatever a human does is likely quite reflective of what that human actually wants, and the shit that humans talk has little bearing on this reality.

I whole-heartedly agree that people do what they actually want. The interesting part is not that they so often say they want something and do the opposite, but that they so often believe they want something and do the opposite. It is not interesting that we lie to others as much as it is interesting that we lie to ourselves. The self deception is the trauma response.

What I am basically suggesting is that "crisis of meaning" is often being applied to what is really more like individualistically-bypassing or never yet achieving or neglecting until the nth hour the Love and Belonging level of Maslow.

This is what I'm suggesting too (or rather where I am going). I will take it further and say I don't only think blindness to love/ belonging needs is limited to just INTJ ennui, but that it also haunts almost all modern humans and is largely responsible for both consumerism and the meta-crisis.

To bring it back to this:

I think the behavior y'all are describing has two main drivers:

(1) Social Value Meme
(2) Trauma/ Shadow behavior

Trauma causes us to lie to ourselves. We are both unaware of our true needs and unaware of when our needs are satisfied (we buy stuff to fulfill love/ belonging needs and are also unaware that we have not only enough, but too much stuff).

I think this behavior qualifies as being literally insane.

But, sanity is so often defined from the masses, and since everyone around us is having the same experience, our response works in the context of our cultural heuristics (given by the social value meme we are raised under). We are driven by hidden fear to consume (adopt 23 year olds, over-eat, medicate, obsess over celebrity gossip) subconsciously tricking ourselves into thinking that we can buy love/esteem (or numbing/ distracting ourselves from the pain).

[zbigi]

I propose a good way to not suffer from meaninglessness is to take any survival need and make it much harder to fulfill.

That's a good part of ERE. You're too busy cooking, growing food, repairing things, looking for used things online to have any existential angst. Although, for many, it's replaced by the angst of thinking "is this really better than consumerism?" (as seen in many journals here).

[jacob]

That's a good part of ERE. You're too busy cooking, growing food, repairing things, looking for used things online to have any existential angst. Although, for many, it's replaced by the angst of thinking "is this really better than consumerism?" (as seen in many journals here).

I have not noticed this in the journals. Likely people spend what feels like an excessive amount of time because they're in the learning phase. Once you know how to do it, basic chores definitely do not fill up an entire day or even an hour combined. I measure everything in terms of how long it takes to brew a cup of coffee (4-5 mins) because I usually do something else alongside that.

Doing the dishes by hand: 7 minutes (I have over 40 years of experience )
Cooking dinner for 3-4 days at a time: 20 minutes (when I was learning, I only cooked for 1 day at a time and I often spent an hour planning and trying new things.)
Cleaning toilet/bathroom sink/mirror: 5 minutes.

A repair can take a long time if I don't know what I'm doing (learning phase). But if I do know what I'm doing and I have the parts on hand, it's quicker than buying a replacement.

Overall, it's not been my experience that it's possible fill an entire day with "housewife" or "househusband" activities. Of course some people proceed much slower than others. For example, it takes me 12 minutes in the morning to get up, shower, shave, and get dressed. DW can easily spend 45 minutes on her routine. However, even cooking something elaborate like a holiday meal does not take up an entire day. What to do what to do...

I'm also not sure that artificially making things harder is a way to cure meaningless UNLESS doing things the hard way is somehow meaningful in itself. (Walking instead of talking the bus is slower at distances over about 2-3km and walking is potentially meaningful in ways that riding the bus is not.) Rather hardship usually has to be imposed externally to cure mental ailments. For example, it is well-known that cases of depression go way down during wartime.

[zbigi]

I have not noticed this in the journals.

I remember at least two off-hand. One was @ertyu's (I hope he doesn't mind being used as an example), where he was basically set for ERE (or at least "lean ERE" , all he had to do was to work slowly on the trash place, learn skills, and grow. But, instead, he preferred the siren call of living in nice and more expensive cities, going to a coffee shop for a danish every day etc. The vision of ERE life was just less attractive. The other example was the guy who rage quit the forum couple years ago after many arguments with you and a couple others (can't remember his nick). He said that he did live the ERE life but ultimately was tired of living in an unattractive, rural location and working all day on Mickey Mouse projects to save a couple dollars. It was just not exciting for him, not how he wanted to spend his life.

However, even cooking something elaborate like a holiday meal does not take up an entire day. What to do what to do...

I think I wrote here somewhere already that aristocracy had an entire cultural setup for solving that question (mostly for men only though). They had to deal with the issue of "what to do when you don't have to do anything" for millenia. The answer was usually to do something to distinguish oneself while serving a cultural or religious ideal. The "distinguish" part hooked into basic mechanisms of human ego, which made the motivation visceral ("I want to be better than those other apes"), while "serving an ideal" gave a concrete direction to that ego-driven motivation. Most common solution was probably to serve king and country in wars, and try to be the best knight and military commander one can be. (This also links to what you wrote that making life harder for oneself works only if one believes it serves a purpose).

As to the ERE routine not taking you a lot of time - yeah, but haven't you also put months into renovating your bathroom and making bathroom furniture? IMO there are definitely big blockc of effort required from time to time, if someone wants to live a middle class lifestyle life on an ERE budget.

[7Wannabe5]

I will take it further and say I don't only think blindness to love/ belonging needs is limited to just INTJ ennui, but that it also haunts almost all modern humans and is largely responsible for both consumerism and the meta-crisis.

I don't disagree, but I believe there are layers upon layers, water-we-swim-in assumptions and edge cases to be unpacked here. For example, I recently saw an ad for a new product which is a sort of a long plastic Gogurt squeeze pack full of a semi-liquid cat food. The purpose of the packaging was to allow the cat owner, a young woman in her 20s in the ad, to enjoy interacting with her cat as the cat slurped the food from the end of the package. My immediate thought was "They are selling a faux breast-feeding experience to young adult female cat owners." The ease with which one could create a DIY device for this purpose rather than purchasing it would not in any way speak to all the socio-tech-eco-nomic structures/realities producing a market for such a product.

I think one of the assumptions underlying your above statement is that humans can't meet their love and belonging needs in the consumer market, so they keep spending and spending, but never really healing their inner trauma. A very cynical observation might be that this is exactly what the market producers/purveyors of therapy and self-help products would want you to believe. It's not your stinkin' armpits keeping your from getting a date; it's your stinkin' thinking. Think back to the terrible years of junior high. Picture the least loved/esteemed, most "untouchable" kid in your class. I'm picturing a very doughy girl, with greasy black hair, acne covering her face, blank-eyed stare indicative of IQ around 80, wearing stretchy too-short pants from K-Mart and thick dirty gym socks. Could you in the role of charitable benefactor spend money in a manner that would render her at least somewhat more lovable/esteemed within the context of junior high? Of course you could. However, you might also observe that this child does already experience love/belonging within the context of her home where she lives with her near-blind Grandpa, her 7 year old sister, and a cuddly Golden Retriever. Consider a young pioneer wife out on the prairie homestead with no neighbors for miles around, and her only company is her husband Knut who rarely speaks and grunts in the dark of the evening as he ruts with her. Is the consumer marketing aspect of Modernity causing her feeling of lack of love and belonging, or might it be something more towards development of the rugged-individualistic ethic prior to the advent of feminism? Might her situation improve when lights in the distance indicate that neighbors have arrived? Yes, of course, and whether the apple kuchen she serves at the quilting bee is scratch-made or flash-forward-to-1950s purchased at super-market is irrelevant.

My point here being that there are many ways in which humans can have problems with love and belonging (or not) and one reason why we Moderns/Post-Moderns often try to fix or mediate these problems by spending money in the market is simply that we can. The fact that a free market 21st century female might prefer feeding her cat with a faux plastic breast full of fish paste to the option of silent rutting with Knut is not unrelated to the fact that the efficient functioning of the market has rendered her affluent enough that she can make decisions in alignment with this preference. So, for better or worse, Knut may now have to spend some money on therapy that might help him to better express his emotions within the realm of sexuality in order to better get his needs met. Etc. etc. etc. infinite regress and/or progress.

[Jin+Guice]

Heh, I don't think making life harder cures meaninglessness, rather you are too busy surviving to experience meaninglessness. The meaninglessness is still there if you are able to get out of survival mode. I am not suggesting people deal with meaninglessness in this way.

I also don't find that chores take up the entire day and I am still in the learning phase/ relatively slow/ inefficient/ lazy (plus I'm still working part-time).

He said that he did live the ERE life but ultimately was tired of living in an unattractive, rural location and working all day on Mickey Mouse projects to save a couple dollars.

...sucks to suck. Personally I'm living the ERE life in a beautiful and vibrant city, in an attractive location working all day on whatever I feel like doing. I used to live the non-ERE life, but I didn't want to spend all day working on other people's projects in florescent rooms just to earn a couple of dollars.


@7:

Those are examples of consciously spending money on love and belonging needs. What I'm talking about is subconsciously spending money in a futile attempt to meet (or numb distract ourselves) from needs which trauma has made us afraid to admit (to ourselves) that we have.

[7Wannabe5]

It has been my experience that there are many factors that may contribute to how many hours are spent on home making. For simplest example, the ratio of the number of humans and other living things are occupying or visiting the home on a regular basis and the number/variety of activities taking place there to the number of home-makers actually doing the work makes a huge difference. For example, how many hours/week did I spend just on the task of dealing with diapers when I had two tots wearing old-school washable diapers? How much longer did it take me to tidy the kitchen in the morning when my two teenage step-daughters had their friends over the previous evening? What if I simultaneously had an infant, a teen-ager, a decrepit senior, and a husband who worked in a grease-pit in my household? What if my 15 year old won't eat meat and my spouse is doing low-fat Paleo and my 8 year old signed me up to bring cupcakes for the bake sale? What if my kitchen is currently dingy, dark, and drafty? What if the roof is leaking and my spouse is a depressive musician? What if my spouse is a jolly extrovert who routinely yet randomly invites 6 extra people home for dinner? What if I am also running a small business out of my house? What if my growing kids require more privacy, so I have to frame a wall to make an extra bedroom ,and the toilet is leaking at its base, and my spouse is yelling at me to bring him a beer, and somebody left the hamster cage open?

What if I'm really challenging myself to go moneyless, so I have to grow the wheat and pumpkin, tap the maple tree, milk the cow, chop the wood (oops, forgot make the ax!), make the fire, cook down the syrup, grind the wheat, whittle a rolling pin, (depreciate the build of a table to work on), dig some clay, build a kiln, form and fire a ceramic pie pan, churn the butter, roll the pastry, fetch some water, bake the pumpkin (oops, need a knife and spoon too), make the filling, bake the pie (in the kiln, I guess), whip the cream. Whew, I think that's it, with perfect organization of activity and depreciation of major tasks, maybe only took me 20 hours to bake my Thanksgiving pie! Since I am core generalist and home-making is towards one of my 6 major generalist purposes, I often enjoy re-inventing the wheel when I have the "leisure" time available*, but this year I got some free cans of pumpkin puree from the weekly almost-expired food give-away at the senior center where I currently reside, so only took me maybe 30 minutes while simultaneously making a pecan pie. My mother repeatedly suggesting that I was going to too much trouble and she could just order some pies to be delivered on her Shipt app.

IOW, the "livelier" your household, the more the housework. If you live by yourself in a minimalist Teflon box sterile regimented (you make your children sit on a hard bench for an hour if they forget to leave their shoes paired and pointed to the NNE by the door) towards "dead" household then you won't have hardly any housework at all. Generally, "lively" energy is towards youth and the feminine, and "dead" or "killer" energy is towards the older and the masculine. For example, in the classic gardening title, "We Made A Garden", the author wanted the pavement to have plants prettily spilling over it and her late life acquired G.O.M. husband wanted the pavement stripped clean of all growth. For most of the book he got his way, but then he died, and she did as she pleased.

*OTOH, I do NOT enjoy the added burden of having to meet multiple, conflicting preferences of others in the household when I am doing the work. I greatly admired the behavior of the paternal farming realm great-grandmother of my children who survived three husbands, as related to me in an anecdote involving her third husband coming home for lunch and complaining because she had once again served soup, resulting in the consequence that my home-maker heroine role-model simply never ever made soup for him again. That's what I call strong boundaries!

[jacob]

As to the ERE routine not taking you a lot of time - yeah, but haven't you also put months into renovating your bathroom and making bathroom furniture?

That would be greatly exaggerating the effort. It takes me about 30 hours to build one piece with hand tools (I've timed a couple) to the point where it looks like something a consumer would pay $500 for rather than something that betrays its 2x4 lumber origin. The bathroom renovation contained a medicine cabinet and a vanity. So overall <<100 hours. I do stretch these jobs (ditto repair jobs) out for a long time but that does not suggest that I work on them 8 hours per day every single day. They often sit untouched for weeks and weeks. It's 10-20 minutes here and 10-20 minutes there as it slowly comes together.

Add: When I first got into woodworking I actually thought I could fill out a lot of time doing it. However, it quickly became apparent that a home only needs so many pieces of furniture and so building new furniture is not something that happens very often. This only leaves the possibility of trying to sell existing pieces (the used value on even good furniture is pretty low) or giving them away to make room for the "upgrades". The other problem with handmade solid wood pieces is that they hardly wear at all compared to the standard consumer particleboard junk.

[Jean]

A good way to fill your day, is to have a gf that can't fix her own stuff, or to care about the thargoid invasion of the solar system in elite dangerous.
If you already know that you are better than the other apes, and you don't really care about them.knowing it, it's very unlikely that you'll work on your magnus opus.

[Ego]

However, it quickly became apparent that a home only needs so many pieces of furniture and so building new furniture is not something that happens very often. This only leaves the possibility of trying to sell existing pieces (the used value on even good furniture is pretty low) or giving them away to make room for the "upgrades". The other problem with handmade solid wood pieces is that they hardly wear at all compared to the standard consumer particleboard junk.

I really enjoy saving good quality furniture from the landfill, but found it difficult to sell the pieces individually. Then, just before leaving, we did an "Estate Sale" and sold many of the pieces I had rehabilitated in the Furniture & Art Repair and Restoration Log in one fell swoop. You might give it a try. List several pieces at once as an estate sale and see who shows up. If one of your indestructible pieces finds its way into the hands of someone who might otherwise buy three or four different pieces new from Ikea, then you are nudging them toward anticonsumerism.

[7Wannabe5]

Those are examples of consciously spending money on love and belonging needs. What I'm talking about is subconsciously spending money in a futile attempt to meet (or numb distract ourselves) from needs which trauma has made us afraid to admit (to ourselves) that we have.

Yes, I agree, and would note that you are conveying both more and less than the word "trauma" encompasses. You and I are fairly close to the same MBTI type (you likely have more decisive J energy than me) , but I find the Enneagram model to be more useful as therapeutic (as opposed to descriptive) tool. As you can see in the diagram below, the core emotion and thus the "flavor" of trauma experienced varies by type. Most rationals, therefore, most members of this forum, hold Fear as their core emotion.

Therefore, for those who are of Type 5 (most INTJ/INTPs, although some who have more J than T identify more as Type 1-principled warriors) through more introverted half of Type 7 (you and I), "trauma" is likely either going to be resolved through acquisition of more/higher knowledge/competency or it is going to be perceived as being resolved through acquistion of more/higher knowledge/competency or "enlightenment." However, the unconscious or less than fully conscious mechanisms for dealing with yet-to-be-brought-to-light sources of anxiety vary fairly significantly across the spectrum of those in the Fear Triad. For example, you used the words "numb/distract" and that is largely much more applicable to Type 7 on cusp of 6 than Type 5. Type 5 is much more likely to "withdraw and stockpile." IOW, a 5, especially a 5 on cusp of 6 (the most anxious type) will tend towards "saving too much" rather than "spending too much" towards alleviating fear. The majority of Type 7s, especially as they rise in extroversion towards 8 or if they have more S than N, are actually big spenders, because shopping is an addictive, distracting, overly optimistic activity. However. there is a strong minority of Type 7s who are frugal generalists. But the flavor of our frugality is that we prefer being "spendy" with our time/attention rather than our money, because Optimization/Specialization is "boring" or "not providing of the level of distraction/stimulation" we prefer. So, a Type 7 who is more towards a dysfunctional EStP will endlessly drink, party, swing from the chandelier, and spend/waste money on shiny things and shiny people, but a Type 7 who is more towards eNTP will be more inclined to spend/waste time on shiny ideas or projects, with lack of sustained focus being primary issue. And the secondary problem which may result if we dysfunctionally attempt to force-of-moral-will (should, should, should...) our focus is that we will then be more likely to compensate with cookies, alcohol, stupid-sex, slumming etc. etc. and even the occasional weird spending binge. IOW, (and certainly MMV even for self-diagnosed 7s) for a classic ENTP/Type7, the direction of growth and healthy frugality is towards INTP/Type5 (not so much INTJ/Type5), through shared characteristic/value of Open Curiosity. Becoming more intellectually focused (Ti) (as opposed to more acheivement-oriented and morally conscientious (TeFi is too much of a stretch for us) ) just requires thinking forward a bit longer before going sideways, but this requires being open to the possibility that we don't actually already know what might lie ahead on the more focused path, being as curious about climbing the mountain as running down every branching path. Staying longer with "I wonder..." rather than counter-productively beating ourselves like bad puppies with "I shoulds..."

Head - 567

Fear, how do you navigate through a dangerous world, processing using the mind, questions
Type 6: Being vigilant and double-checking, not straying too far from “others” in terms of who you are
Type 5: Withholding all your energy from others to avoid the messy emotions that can drain your highly-sensitive system
Type 7: Distracting yourself from harsh realities with fun and movement

Also, the means by which the varying types handle stress, conflict, or not having their needs met is a different grouping. type 7s who are more highly functioning will begin to better integrate the more positive aspects of the coping mechanism of the typical Type 5, while still remaining essentially Type 7. Type 5s who are more highly functioning will begin to better integrate the more positive aspects of the coping mechanism of the typical Type 8, while still remaining essentially Type 5.

So, for example, when I was in therapy dealing with trauma when I was around your age, gaining better access to my cold, rational side (Ti) was towards enlightenment/growth, because allowing my primary (Ne) to hold too much sway leaves me vulnerable because too much of a soft-touch in my warm, sentimental tertiary/quadranary (FeSi), but this would be almost exactly the wrong move towards growth for a Type 5. That's why it's amusing (to me) when I out-loud spreadsheet cold-evaluate my relationships to the extent that even a Type 5 on this forum might object. IOW, the extent to which I don't get flak on this forum for calculating the value of the food in the doggy-bag I brought home after a date is amusing to me, because my immature (FeSi) generally renders my behavior too warm/kind/generous in my relationships for my own good. This is not a problem typically suffered by INTJ.

A more generalized take on this would be that "Don't take emotional/practical responsibility where you don't have authority" is fantastic advice/mantra for any type suffering from bloated and/or immature Fe, but it is terrible advice to offer a Type 5, because it reinforces their reactive withdrawal mechanism. For better or worse, the direction of growth for an INTJ type 5 is to realize that they are capable of taking on more authority and leadership. IOW, their mantra might be something more like "Learn how to extrovert more authority in realms where you feel (Fi) a sense of moral responsibility." Ergo, it is evident that Jacob is a high functioning 5, because that is what he is doing with this forum. In a social setting that is more difficult for an INTJ, like an environmental action group full of Fe/Fi dominant types, this would look like cutting to the chase and continuously taking competent direction over the group while stomaching the onslaught of the emotionality of others (I feel real empathy for Type 5 typing this out although not particularly a problem for me.) My mother is an 8 on cusp of 7, so I asked her what this feels like, and she said that when she believes that she is the most competent human in a group, she is compelled to take charge of the group. The reason why this can be dysfunctional behavior for an 8, but growth behavior for a 5 is that an 8 is less well able to discern when they actually are the most competent human in the group and will often just short-cut to "I will take charge, because somebody damn well has to take charge, and I am clearly competent at taking charge." So, often the best way to deal with an angry traumatized 8 is to bore them with calm, nerdy, informative talk until they relax enough to delegate.

How each type handles conflict; how they handle situations where their needs are not met; coping mechanisms; worldview

Reactive - 468

Emotionally reactive under stress, hard time containing their feelings, need you to see the problem that they can see, pointing out the “bad” thing
4: Reacts in self-absorption and amplification of inner states, feelings of hatred fuelled by inadequacy, expressing negativity is “authenticity”
6: Reacts in outspoken combat, standing up for what they believe, drawing attention to anything that feels wrong or dangerous, emotionally moody, anxiety
8: Reacts in force, untethered anger and denial of vulnerability

Positive - 279

See the positives, find ways to bring light and avoid negativity, “everything will be okay”
2: Focus on the goodness in themselves and others, amplify their lovable aspects, keep people close by being a good person
7: Actively avoiding negativity by making life fun, creating some chaos for momentum and distraction
9: Seek harmony and peace, avoid big waves and disturbances

Competency - 135

Focus on objectivity and rationality, doing things correctly and competently, neutrality
1: Reigning in impulses and funnelling them into rigidity and correctness
3: Work ethic, focus on being able to do things well, repressing soft feelings in favour of productivity
5: Knowledge seeking, over focus on detached objectivity, ignoring emotions

Anyways, I hope this makes some kind of sense. The important point here for any/all of the Type 7s on the forum being that it is very important to stay core true to yourself while attempting growth in the direction of Type 5. Also, if any/all Type 8s on the forum would step forward, they could likely be helpful to majority of Type 5s here. Also, although Type 7 explorer/generalist is generally the direction of decay for Type 5, it can offer growth opportunity for INTJs who are especially heavy in their J and lighter in their N, towards lightening up and being less moralistically rigid as defense mechanism. IOW, it can help break them out of going to "Safety is everybody doing the right thing. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" when traumatized, while the more oblivious Type 7 just logically replies, "Um, well, what worked for me was that (1) I picked up my spoon and then (2) put it in the pudding and then (3) put the pudding in my mouth. Am I missing something here?"

[Jin+Guice]

@7:

I agree that I am abusing "trauma" and also the word "needs." There isn't a great word that I'm aware of for what I'm talking about.

I'm confused if you are disagreeing with me or agreeing with me and adding some MBTI/ enneagram nuance?

What I am saying is:

Action is driven by "needs."

People often act in conflict with their own stated "needs" in a way that appears to be harm to themselves (in conflict with their actual "needs," since, as established, people sometimes lie when stating their "needs").

Acting in conflict with your "needs" is caused by "trauma."

One of the observed actions this "trauma" causes (to different degrees in different people) is consumerism.



I think this applies across personality types with the exception that not everyone's "trauma" response will be consumerism.

[ertyu]

Action is driven by "needs."

People often act in conflict with their own stated "needs" in a way that appears to be harm to themselves (in conflict with their actual "needs," since, as established, people sometimes lie when stating their "needs").

Acting in conflict with your "needs" is caused by "trauma."

So would you then define having wants which are not needs as a traumatic response?

[Jin+Guice]

@ertyu:

No, that's why I said I'm abusing the term "needs" haha.

(I am covering this whole crazy ass theory I made up in my journal)

"Needs" are self-determined. I'm also not just talking about physiological needs. The trauma response is where two needs contradict and you cannot resolve the contradiction. This generally causes people to depart slightly from reality and enter a world or worldview where both contradicting needs can be true.


I really wish I had better words and explanations for this phenomenon because now that I can see it, it's like seeing a magic that underlies the entire world of human interaction.

[ertyu]

@ertyu:

No, that's why I said I'm abusing the term "needs" haha.

(I am covering this whole crazy ass theory I made up in my journal)

"Needs" are self-determined. I'm also not just talking about physiological needs. The trauma response is where two needs contradict and you cannot resolve the contradiction. This generally causes people to depart slightly from reality and enter a world or worldview where both contradicting needs can be true.


I really wish I had better words and explanations for this phenomenon because now that I can see it, it's like seeing a magic that underlies the entire world of human interaction.

Did you reinvent cognitive dissonance theory then? Have you read Mistakes were made but not by me?

[7Wannabe5]

Acting in conflict with your "needs" is caused by "trauma."

One of the observed actions this "trauma" causes (to different degrees in different people) is consumerism.

Yes, I agree. The point I was trying to make is that although "frugality" and "consumerism" are not necessarily uniform or uniformly opposing, something that resembles "consumerism" or "spending/shopping" is more likely to be a trauma/stress coping mechanism for humans who have EP rather than IJ as their MBTI type. The type most likely to self-describe as frugal is ISFJ: Salt of the Earth type, a type of human who really has very little in common with INTJ (second most likely to self-describe as frugal) except to the extent that if an INTJ was compelled to hire a housekeeper/nurse/post-apocalyptic-sex-partner-with-no-conversation (see "The Earth Abides", "The Corrections", and my chemist FIL's third marriage to a "lunch lady"), they would almost certainly prefer to hire an ISFJ.

Also, men are twice as likely to self-identify as frugal as women, and as Helen Kyrk communicates in "A Theory of Consumerism", at the juncture in history where 'consumerism" came into being, the role of "consumer" clearly fell to the woman-of-the-home. There are a lot of introverted men who are de facto frugal simply because they only very rarely do any shopping, so hold little comprehension related to the process of how goods from a store are acquired. For example, and I am embarrassed to admit this, my INTP son called me from college because he needed instructions on how to buy himself a shirt. Also, see ISXJ George Bush Sr. and the "what-is-this-miraculous-invention?" grocery scanner incident. OTOH, extroverted men are more likely to enjoy social trade inclusive of shopping, but those who hold more J are more likely to be careful "consumers", maybe the types/gender most likely to have a subscription to Consumer's Report Magazine and a Home Depot Discount Clip Card. Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader is most often typed as ENFJ.

So, prior to any complex or simple rational/emotional abstraction (inner letters) , the more reflexive/instinctive behavior of the types under trauma would be I (withdraw/stay in), E (go out), J (secure/focus), P (look around/fuzzy-wide-angle.) So, EP types much more likely to "go out" and "fuzzily look around" for something/anything to alleviate stress/trauma/negative-emotion-not-yet-cognitively-processed, so "shopping" better fits their instictive mechanism. So, financial frugality, when exhibited by an EP type, is more likely to be cognitive or secondary, rather than primary instinctive response. This is also why, for example, you and I are "obviously" more "slutty" than a typical INTJ (sexual identity:The Secret Agent) or INFJ (sexual identity: The Snow Princess.) We could be "discreet" and "chaste" if the negative consequences rationally considered were similar to those in the financial realm. Like if one of our partners told us, "I will only have sex with you if you get a 40 hr/week job at Glengarry Glen Ross" or birth control hadn't been invented and Huey, Dewey, and Louie were already looking at us with sad eyes when their gruel bowls were empty, or somehow the consumption of sex was found to contribute to climate change, or too frequent recurrence of scary dream in which our-least-favorite-internet-pseudo-intellectual is sitting on a straight-backed chair in the corner of the room watching, and jotting stacatto rhythm with pen as he adjusts the sharp crease on his trousers once again to center.

[Henry]

I do our grocery shopping. The other day my wife came with me. She couldn't keep up with me. The day before Thanksgiving mind you. She was both amazed and appalled at my reckless disregard for humanity. Yes, a few items were forgotten and the salmon wasn't sliced, but I explained to her how the overall calculus works - speed/time/efficiency vs. loss factor. I explained the value of the permanent scowl and how it's better to be hated than to be friendly with a widow blocking the whole aisle looking for the right brand of coffee or why it's ok to walk under the outstretched arm of a tall shopper helping out a smaller one (I am a proponent of putting height limitation charts outside grocery stores like they do on rollercoasters). I see the old men, accompanying their wives, walking a few steps behind them, their eyes to themselves as though they are walking through a mass gynecological examination room. I have often thought I should teach a course at a community college on grocery shopping for men. I would have aisles with people acting out scenarios like how they instruct cops in simulated trainings on how to navigate a crack house. We would have field trips where I would force a man to play grocery cart chicken with an old lady. We would raises our voices in unisons "We will not be replaced" well maybe not that far but you get the point.

[chenda]

I would have thought online shopping would suit your temperament much better. You could avoid it all and get a nice young minion to deliver to your door.

[7Wannabe5]

@Henry:

There does seem to be an essential trade-off in time vs. money vs. quality when shopping, which as with all things may be mitigated through skill/experience/knowledge. Both of my parents were city-raised and privileged to the extent that they never learned how to cook prior to marriage. My frugal-yet-food-clueless X on the E/I spectrum father did the shopping, because we lived in a bedroom suburb and my mother did not learn how to drive a car until her mid-30s. So our kitchen only ever contained the approximately twenty food items my father deemed essential in plainest form if fresh and most generic version available if a processed food. Steak, pork chops, chicken, Russett potatoes, Red Delicious apples, iceberg lettuce, white bread, Thousand Island dressing, corn flakes, milk, butter, etc. My sister and I were compelled to teach ourselves how to cook from books before the age of 10 due to the sheer monotony.

When I was feeding/household-supplying my family of four on less than $40/week, I had a weekly route which required buying items at 4 or 5 different stores. Big Lots, ALDI, Bakery Outlet, Co-op, and Large Chain store. My DS36 and I were laughing over Thanksgiving about how he and my ex used to fight over last piece of relatively rare hunks of meat I would serve. Vegetable gardening would likely be the least time efficient towards highest quality procured means of "grocery shopping." The greatest money saving and/or waste reducing practice I have employed over the years is the Eat/Cook-Process/Shop-Scavenge/Planned/Away list I maintain. In my current situation, there is so much food to be scavenged, I only need to occasionally walk over to the co-op to buy coffee beans or a staple such as olive oil. I spent more money doing my laundry last month than I did on groceries, and anytime somebody stops by I am attempting to give them food items on my Away list, because the freezer is jam packed. In part this is due to the fact that my shopaholic mother keeps ordering food to be delivered even though there is no need for this and she actually prefers my cooking. I could put a stop to this by messing with her technology (my sister cut her off from Amazon shopping by simply deleting the app), but when she was on her own the delivery people served as a sort of back-up caregiver network, and this would be more expensive to replace than the cost of the food waste.