Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough

by Michael Easter

Black wrote that people with compulsive buying disorder “describe [shopping] as intensely exciting.” And like addiction, it’s often a learned coping mechanism, wrote Black. “Negative emotions”—for example, depression, anxiety, boredom—“were the most commonly cited antecedents to [shopping], while euphoria or relief from the negative emotions were the most common consequence.” Black said our abundance of cheap items means the disorder affects low-income people just as much as it does rich people. And the quick repeatability is key, he explained: “Many compulsive shoppers buy in quantity.” Even our concept of “need” has changed. We like to think that necessity is the mother of invention. But the Pew Research Center pointed out that it’s actually the other way around. Invention is the mother of necessity. We invent something we don’t exactly need, but over time it begins to dominate our culture so much that we start to consider it a necessity. Like GPS, bluetooth, wireless headphones, remote controls, television, microwaves, and on and on. We shape our machines, and our machines shape us in a way that makes us increasingly reliant on them. The number of items Americans consider “necessities” rather than “luxuries” multiplies each decade.