Is this the end of consumerism?

We need this crisis. I recognise that’s a confronting, callous thing to say when people are dying and families are struggling. It’s a hard thing to hear when we feel vulnerable.

But the coronavirus crisis has a way of gripping us by the neck and forcing us to look in the mirror. It demands we reflect on our lives and choose what to keep, and what to leave behind. We did this as a nation in defining our essential services and families are doing it now as they cut and recut household budgets.

Forced to press pause, a few things become clear. We’ve added layers onto our lives we don’t need. The absurdity of the daily commute, packed malls on sunny Sundays, processed food, online shopping and nextday delivery, cheap plastic junk, fast fashion, regular takeaways. If anything, the crisis has paused the chaos of crap in our lives and forced a return to the real normal. Spending time with family, home cooking, gardening, reading, walking, exploring the neighbourhood, checking in on people, rekindling friendships, clean air, seeing the stars, stillness.

The simple truth is that the road we’re on leads to ruin. Excessive consumption in the industrialised world is overshooting our planet’s boundaries and making us lonely, sad and sick. Modern society kills far more than Covid-19 ever will and ecological collapse more still – 4.6 million people die each year from air pollution alone. The economic model we’re now desperately trying to save, is dependent on ever-growing GDP using finite resources and wholly blind to the social and environmental consequences.

But where do we go next? Now is the time for big, bold ideas grounded in the best parts of our humanity and our true-blue Kiwi values – community, care and creativity (as coined by Max Harris in The New Zealand Project.) Here’s two ideas I’m holding onto.

Retrosuburbia is a peoplepowered movement to refit our suburbs for simplicity. Centred on a guidebook/manifesto that’s now available online for a donation, it’s a complete guide to building household and personal resilience. Think food production at home, costeffective DIY improvements for efficiency and personal upskilling, budgeting and lifestyle advice for greater selfreliance. Its central call to action is to design our lives around simplicity, nature and the things that really matter. Because building stronger, more sustainable communities starts in our homes.

If Retrosuburbia is the howto guide, the Sufficiency Economy is the vision: a world in controlled slow-down and a rejection of consumerism. It reframes ‘‘the good life’’ away from the bach, boat and beamer. Instead, we strive for an economy delivers ‘‘enough, for everyone, forever’’.

Food is grown at home and in the community, luxury loses its appeal, we repair things and care less about convenience. We voluntarily buy less, so work less and invest that time in relationships and our passions. It flips the outsourcing equation that runs our lives now – instead of working jobs we may or may not like to pay others to look after our children, care for our grandparents, grow our food and maintain our homes, we find the joy in those things ourselves.

In this economy, those that can afford to draw back from the formal ‘‘work’’ economy do so by choice, freeing up resources and contributing to social infrastructure (like community gardens, playcentres or repair hubs) to support others to live ‘‘the good life’’ too. It’s about adding layers of real meaning and purpose onto our lives – the kind we’ve glimpsed these last few weeks – instead of slogging through to the weekend and buying more stuff.

Many will dismiss all this as a utopian daydream. Let them. The same was said for religious freedom, social mobility and democracy before crises made them inevitable too.

Already, we can see the new economy shining through the cracks of the old. Community Supported Agriculture feeds more every year, governmentfunded organisations like Gen Less are championing voluntary simplicity, Greenpeace is calling for a Covid response that warms up our 600,000 under-insulated homes and there is serious talk of a Universal Basic Income.

History, it’s been said, has a habit of happening all at once. That certainly feels true right now. But we’re not flying blind. Bold ideas like Retrosurburbia and the Sufficiency Economy have been incubating on the sidelines of society, just waiting for us to look in the mirror and see them.

The crisis has paused the chaos of crap in our lives.