F For a surprising number of individual and social problems, there is an impressively simple and inexpensive solution: less. Fewer cigarettes, less alcohol, less sugar. Less debt through more cautious consumer behavior. Less environmental destruction fewer flightsfewer car journeys, less meat. Less of all the things we want but don’t need. More sustainability is not more technology, but rather less excess. One could put it bluntly: the ecological crisis is less a problem of knowledge than a problem of excess. The big challenge: finding the right balance. We have completely lost the feeling for this in our Tiktok-driven, everything-available world.
The attractive thing about the less approach is that this solution is available immediately. It needs no new infrastructure, no breakthroughs in research, no long transition periods, no new national debt. We can flip the switch today or gradually downsize our lifestyle. We experience something that feels like it is disappearing more and more from our lives: self-efficacy. Renunciation is not powerlessness, not the consequence of a ban imposed by others, but rather the return of creative power into one’s own life. It means no longer just being the object of marketing, habits and temptations, but once again the subject of your own decisions. I say no because I can.
To compensate for the sacrifice, there are many things that we could – and should – have more of because they are good for our well-being and cost almost nothing: time, sleep, exercise, conversations, creativity, commitment. Less consumption here and more life there: That would be a gigantic social-ecological health program. A program based not on coercion but on insight and self-empowerment. And yet it is a gift that we are surprisingly stubborn about refusing, as if we have become accustomed to the idea that a good life must be one thing above all: full. We push the boundaries of what we declare we have a natural right to further and further towards the fastest possible self-destruction. We know better, but are unable to use this knowledge.
Instead, we rely on technology as the promise of salvation. circular economy, CO₂ storageAI: All of this can be useful and is sometimes indispensable. But it is often used as a sedative. It nourishes the hope that we can continue to live as before – only more efficient, cleaner, more optimized. Technology becomes a myth that saves us from having to fundamentally change our own behavior. Progress, defined one-sidedly by technology, is supposed to fix what our way of life does. This is nothing more than technological chauvinism. Why do we actually prefer to entrust our future to technical fictions rather than shape it ourselves?
Because going without is not part of our cultural behavioral repertoire, because we compare ourselves with others who supposedly have more and because our brain prefers what is familiar and comfortable. It defends the status quo, even when it is obviously harmful. What we “need” is rarely the result of sober consideration, but rather the echo of unconscious inner impulses. Moderation does not appear as a strength, but as a punishment.
When moderation is experienced as freedom and not as loss, a revolution in everyday life can emerge
We are overwhelmed by everyday life and should consciously say no. We feel disadvantaged and then have to cut back ourselves. We desperately seek status and recognition and are told to give up the things we hope will give us just that. And the others don’t do it either. Why should I of all people start with this? That’s why the weekend flight becomes a question of identity the speed limit on the topic of culture war because the emotional takes over.
Fear of giving up
The call to renounce triggers fear. The philosopher and politician Edmund Burke warned about what this means around 300 years ago: “No feeling robs the mind of its ability to act and think clearly to such an extent as fear.” What would objectively make sense then hardly matters anymore. The inner protest is not only directed against political measures, but fundamentally against the idea of limitation. Environmental policy and shaping the future thus become a social-psychological project. Without the ability to process fear, feelings of loss and hurt, any sustainability policy will remain unstable. Psychological maturity is not a private matter, but a social requirement for a moderate life in an ecological sense.
Perhaps the biggest mistake is that we think of giving up something as a loss. What we completely ignore in the blind routine of our ever-increasing lives: In reality, we have long since lost so much due to our excess: attention, time, relationships, inner peace and belief in a future worth living.
Conscious renunciation would then not be impoverishment, but rather a reconquest: of autonomy, dignity and responsibility. Not: “We have to do without,” but: “We decide to live less controlled by others.” In this sense, renunciation is not an ascetic exercise, but rather a cultural technique. A skill that needs to be practiced. Anyone who cannot do without is not free, but dependent on habits, expectations and stimuli. Perhaps this is the uncomfortable thesis: excess is not freedom, but a form of immaturity. Renunciation could become the measure of progress, as an expression of maturity in dealing with limits, with power, with possibilities and needs.
Great transformations rarely begin with laws. You start new habits. Millions of small decisions are shaping new normals. When moderation is experienced as freedom and no longer as punishment or loss, a quiet but profound revolution in everyday life can emerge. I renounce, therefore I am. This is the narrative of ecological awakening.