In Daring Greatly Brown shares a wonderful analysis about how scarcity sits at the heart of our emotional, relational, and social ailments. Brown describes scarcity as "the never enough problem," and it's a great way to share the insights we've walked through over the last two posts. If you don't think terms like "basic anxiety" or "neurotic anxiety" will preach, just start quoting Brené Brown on "the never enough problem." People will sit up an listen.
Here's Brown describing the impact of scarcity upon our lives:
We get scarcity because we live it…Scarcity is the “never enough” problem…Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants.Brown goes on to share this assessment from Lynne Twist:
For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is "I didn’t get enough sleep." The next one is "I don't have enough time." Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of…Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn't get, or didn't get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack…This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.
Notice how these two quotes trace the exact psychology we've described over the last two posts, how scarcity as the "never enough problem" pinches both basic and neurotic anxiety. The basic anxiety: Never enough safety, resources, time, or sleep. And also neurotic anxiety, an "internal condition of scarcity" of feeling inadequate and losing games of social comparison. And we also see the moral fallout described, failures of greed, jealousy, and prejudice. It's everything we've observed over the last two posts, how basic and neurotic anxieties, driven by the experience or perception of scarcity, become the power of the devil in our lives.
With my students I map "the never enough problem" onto basic and neurotic anxiety this way. Basic anxiety is not having enough. These are the survival concerns about having enough security and resources. Neurotic anxiety, by contrast, is not being enough. These are the self-esteem concerns about being successful enough in your hero game.
This is how scarcity, the never enough problem, becomes the power of the devil. Back to the puppet master analogy, there are two strings the devil pulls to control us. Not having enough. And not being enough.
And if this is so, I think it sheds some light upon the psychology of Jesus.
We'll turn to that analysis next.
