Part of the challenge of being both curmudgeonly and frugal is to devise ways to do without much that other people seem to crave in life. To do without these things, one must learn to enjoy the pleasures that come with self denial.
The words “self-denial” can mean many things to different people. The term can be used to describe foregoing pleasure for a higher cause. It can be a test of your own will-power and strength of character. It can characterize a wholesale rejection of popular culture and the marketing of desire. Or, it can represent a sublime act of becoming conscious of and understanding your own desires. To some people, self-denial is simply a logical, enjoyable way to live.
To avoid becoming a slave to popular culture, it is important to understand the techniques used by marketers of products and services to convince average people that they need those things to live life more completely, to fit in, to “be cool” and to be a valid and important part of contemporary society. Merchandisers tell us that the advertising of products and services is designed to educate and inform us, but it’s also designed to wear us down through repetition.
The only way to completely stop the onslaught of advertising messages is to disconnect completely from advertising. This is effectively impossible in a country where 98 percent of households own television sets. Having no TV is one option, but newspapers, magazines, billboards and internet ads all contribute to the nearly 3,000 ad messages reaching us daily.
Because avoiding these ads altogether is nearly impossible, we must adopt a position of vigilance toward an industry that invades our home as an army might invade a castle. Developing a sense of awareness and caution toward the purveyors of ad messages is step one in using self-denial to reject those messages and do without the products and services they promote.
Many people relate self-denial to religious devotion or the sexual aspects of life. Self-denial conjures up visions of monks at isolated monasteries leading lives of prayer and devotion. Rejection of earthly concerns has traditionally been viewed as a way to show devotion to religious beliefs and God. Self-denial of sexual activities is seen as a sign of moral strength in a world lacking self-control and individual responsibility.
The early Christians shunned meat and fish for six weeks a year during Lent. The Spartans were known for discipline, simplicity, and self-denial; to this warrior culture, civilization brought disorder, weakness, and a decline in moral values. The practice of asceticism by some Buddhist, Christian and Indian sects is a form of self-denial involving renunciation of worldly pursuits to achieve higher intellectual and spiritual goals.
Whether warrior or monk, no one practices self-denial for the sake of practicing self-denial. It is practiced for the purpose of achieving greater enjoyment at a later time. Even monks take vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty for a reason – it’s because they hope to achieve eternal life in heaven. If you forego a bowl of ice cream, you may have lost the pleasure you would get from eating it, but you gain the pleasure of knowing you are not consuming all that fat and sugar. You also gain a great deal of pleasure from having exerted self control.
Self-denial offers psychological rewards such as the sense of accomplishment of having achieved one or more goals; character, by doing something you know is hard for others to do; and a feeling of autonomy through disregarding the expectations of others. Physically, self-denial builds stamina; if real danger or deprivation arrives, the person who has practiced self-denial can better weather it. Self-denial sharpens the senses in the same way that instant gratification dulls them.
Look forward to future blogs explaining how to deny yourself what others crave, all the time enjoying it.
Tags: frugal, Popular Culture, saving money, self-denial
