Overcoming the Fear of Missing Out Caused by Voluntary Simplicity

Less than 800 words of ekoPhilosophical life advice for our times.

Hello and welcome to rewilding philosophy, your newsletter on ^ekophilosophical health for our times. This is the second edition of life advice for our times in less than 800 words. Reading this will take you on average 3.5 minutes. Potentially, those 3.5 minutes will change your life forever 😉. I hope you enjoy and I’d love to hear how this format lands for you.

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Conferences, gatherings, burns, getting to know indigenous cultures, visiting friends across the world. I long to do those things.

While I don’t fear missing out on vacations, material things, or a beautiful house, I have a strong fear of missing out on social experiences. It's not just any social events I worry about missing. I don't mind skipping a party or a conference about sustainability goals that doesn't achieve much.

What I fear missing are events that combine regeneration with inner work, where I’d meet shamans, scientists, and activists. Events that merge the creativity of a burn with the intellectual stimulation of a university—events that often require travel across the world.

I dream about a life where travel is carbon-negative.

I am in a position where I have the financial means, the time, and the desire to attend these events. But I don't, because I know it is harmful to the planet and that carbon offsets are largely ineffective—offering short-sighted solutions. Flying is one of the most carbon-intensive activities we can engage in, obviously causing harm to humans and more-than-humans.

Lately, I have been struggling with my self-imposed principle of not flying. The challenge isn't just the act of not flying—though that's difficult—but it's made significantly harder by the fact that many people in my social circle fly regularly. At my former workplace, a sustainability research institution, colleagues would live in the US and frequently fly to Germany for work, they would attend every major conference across the planet, sometimes just for a day or two.

On a societal level, my experience has been that we often congratulate and impress each other by talking about having attended events in places like Mexico, Ibiza, or Seattle. No one (myself included) wants to be moralizing. We've had enough of that in our field.

At the same time, we tend to want what others want. Seeing my social circle excited about these trips makes me want to go too.

“Humans are creatures who do not know what to desire, and they turn to others to make up their minds.” René Girard

So how do I overcome this FOMO?

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.” Epicurus

Overcoming FOMO is important not only because experiencing it feels unpleasant, but also because if others see that I am genuinely distressed about avoiding air travel, they won't feel motivated to stop flying themselves. Not only do I want what others want, but others want what I want. My visible struggle then might even undermine the collective effort to reduce air travel, as people may think, "If it’s causing so much distress, it might not be worth it."

Our relationships and societal norms push and pull us in various directions, making it challenging to align our actions with our values.

Therefore, to genuinely address my fear of missing out:

I first acknowledge and accept the tension. My inner conflict is part of our times. I take it with Søren Kierkegaard who acknowledges that true self-awareness often arises from sitting with our existential angst rather than fleeing from it. Or as Donna Haraway says, to stay with the trouble.

"Staying with the trouble requires making oddkin; that is, we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles." Donna Haraway

Secondly, I evaluate my core values. I take time to introspect on what fundamentally drives me. Are the events I long to attend aligned with my deepest values, or are they influenced by societal pressures? Developing a personal philosophy grounded in virtues, as Aristotle suggested, might already set me straight.

Thirdly, I try to find communities of care. That means that I find like-minded people who share my commitments. So I can want what they want. This is what I am trying to do with IPeP and specifically with the PhilosophyGyms.

I also use alternative solutions. Since travel feels integral to my well-being, I travel by train - I have journeyed as far as Hong Kong this way, as well as to Guinea-Bissau. This not only takes more time but is also more expansive. To visit events that only last 2-3 days, this is quite a commitment and usually adds at least a day of extra time (within mainland Europe and the UK). This in itself helps me check my priorities. If an event seems truly important, then it's worth the additional time and expense. If not, then it’s obviously not worth flying to and emitting several tonnes of greenhouse gases either.

Lastly, I try to change the system alongside my personal changes. As Levinas says, our ethical responsibilities extend beyond personal choices to include actions that influence our collective environments.

I find overcoming FOMO to be ongoing practice of reflection, diffraction, and deliberate action. To me, this is what it means to practice ^ekophilosophy.