And at the heart of mustachianism is doing things because we've made examined decisions, rather than because of what others think, and yet there's this desperate need for validation from the world anyway. How is that really much different than someone buying a $60k car because he thinks it says something positive about him to the world at large? If we are in it for the admiration of others, buying a fancy car or a McMansion or a $1900 espresso machine isn't really much different than biking to work and packing lunches. Sure, it makes our bank balances look better, but the motivation is just as unhealthy.
TheGrimSqueaker is in with the following clinical diagnosis. Too many people have developed severe subluxation of the fornication. In layperson's words: our ducks might be in a row but our fucks are seriously out of alignment.
In order to save, you have to be able to prioritize, organize, say no to what's unnecessary, and acquire and maintain skills that other people think are worth paying you for. But there's another entire side to the lifestyle. In order to be
happy as a Mustachian, or in life overall, it's vital to have your
fucks in a row too. Caring about the right things is important, but it's just as important to avoid caring about the
wrong things.
Consider for a moment Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This can serve as a template for where fucks should be directed and allocated. The base of the pyramid is the largest, and it represents where the majority of our fucks need to be directed: toward survival needs. Stuff like food and shelter, and the things you use to provide food and shelter for your family are on this tier. This means your job AND your 'stache belong on this bottom, fundamental tier. The job provides immediate resources for food and shelter, whereas the 'stache provides those resources in the long term. Building your 'stache, therefore, is just as important as putting food on your plate today.
Farther up the pyramid are the non-survival needs related to emotional and social development. These too receive an allocation of fucks. Family, spiritual development (for some), security, and other things that help make us human reside here. The higher up the pyramid you go, the less critical the "need" is. In fact, you pass through the "want" territory and start edging into "nice to have". At the top of the pyramid is
an all-seeing eye world domination the sort of nice-to-have that we would like but never expect to completely attain.
(Except for the world conquest and domination bit.) What healthy human beings do is instinctively assign resources and attention (in other words, fucks) to the base of the pyramid first and then work their way up. When more than one option exists for satisfying a need, a frugal person selects the minimum necessary to do so and thereby obtains the biggest bang for the buck (and the best return on his or her fuck-investment). This conserves fucks and makes it possible to direct the swive surplus elsewhere, such as toward the 'stache for long-term payoff.
Another important thing to realize is that life sucks. I don't mean that it's bad. I mean that things in life to which you direct fucks draw them continually like an electrical load connected to a voltage source draws current. Send forth one fuck toward an issue, and you're basically directing not just one fuck but a stream of fucks that can lead to an ongoing commitment. This is a good thing, because whether your family gets to eat NEEDS to be an ongoing commitment. Some things, like the rent or the phone bill, suck only limited resources. Other things, like an active addiction (yours or somebody else's), suck down all available resources and then some. They're like a short circuit in your life.
People whose lives are short circuited due to incorrect fuck alignment eventually develop compassion fatigue. People who are scrambling to meet their basic needs after financially exhausting themselves for nice-to-haves eventually hit a wall and are incapable of giving a fuck. They get to the point where everything is a major nuisance and a major inconvenience. That waiter or desk clerk who acts as though serving you is a major pain in the ass? Overloaded and burned out. That person who's too emotionally out of shape to get a job? Likewise. They're paralyzed. Eventually they snap, and they do what it takes to make the drain on increasingly limited resources go away. They hit their kids. They divorce. They quit their jobs. They do inappropriate things with firearms. They abuse drugs, alcohol, or video games to escape from reality. They blame the unavailability of fucks, resources, and attention (correctly) on everything around them that sucks, without realizing that they're the ones who connected all the power sinks. They also instinctively follow and support people who tell them that more resources will be made available to meet their needs (having been taken from other people who are inappropriately withholding them), or that all the power sinks are the fault of a clearly identifiable enemy that can be made to go away. Result: political polarization.
The higher up the pyramid you go, the more fucks things tend to draw. Non-Mustachians practice a form of priority inversion: spending on nice-to-have items without first establishing financial security. This can lead to bankruptcy, loss of resources for legitimate need, or a cat food diet in one's old age. But there's another mistake that can wreck even a Mustachian, and that's to direct fucks toward anything where the need expands to consume all available resources and attention.
Fucks, like financial resources or electrical potential, are finite. You self-replenish to a point, but your rate of fuck renewal is limited. When you exhaust your supply or let the fucks wander off, you won't be able to summon up the drive or focus to go after anything more
including the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You just don't care: the battery is dead. This kind of exhaustion comes on very quickly and it takes a long time and lots of rest before people recover. Some call it burnout. Others call it compassion fatigue. But what it really is, is critical depletion of the fornication reserves. It's impossible to predict exactly when the collapse will occur, although there are entire fields of management devoted to trying. You can actually die from it: it leads to major depression and all the bad health that goes along with it. Fuck exhaustion also leads to extreme behavior wherein a person will do just about anything in order to make the drain go away.
Fuck misalignment, therefore, is a life or death issue. That's one of the reasons we give each other facepunches: it's like going to the chiropractor for a fuck realignment. It's also why it's vital to cut off the fuck supply to things that can and will draw infinite resources. Enabling behavior, like chasing the monkeys in someone else's circus, is one example. So is sticking your nose into other people's business, or caring about whether a person with radically different values from you is keen on how you're running your life. You'll notice that neither of those things appear anywhere in Maslow's pyramid. There's a reason for that.
I'd venture to say, in closing, that correct fuck alignment is the essence of Stoicism. It's also the essence of intelligent life management.