Economics of The Weight.
The Weight isn’t just a psychological burden. It’s not only decision fatigue, the scattered anxiety of a thousand small obligations, or the cultural noise of The Complex. The Weight also has an economic dimension, one that presses down hard and shapes how much agency many people can actually exercise in their daily lives.
If you are working two jobs, scrambling shifts, or stuck in a gig cycle just to cover the basics, The Weight is likely heavier for you than for someone with leisure time, savings, or reliable income. That’s obvious, yet we often fail to name it. We talk about wellness, resilience, mindfulness—as if everyone had the same hours available to cultivate themselves. They don’t.
Time itself is the most fundamental economic unit. How much of it you have for yourself is the first determinant of your well-being.
The irony is that The Complex feeds directly on this scarcity of time. When you’re exhausted from twelve hours on your feet, the easy convenience of consumption—streaming, scrolling, choosing DoorDash—is irresistible. It feels like relief, and sometimes it is. But the relief often deepens the cycle, because it consumes the same scarce resources—time, money, energy—that you already have too little of.
The Weight, in this sense, is not distributed equally. Economic circumstances determine to what extent you can choose cultivation over drift. If you have disposable income and discretionary time, you can invest in practices that reinforce your well-being. If you don’t, you’re cornered into quick fixes, distractions, and the illusion of rest that never actually restores.
The philosophical edge shows up here too, as economic scarcity invites its own commentary. and in those debates it never takes long before philosophy steps in with its predictable critics. Materialists will automatically object that self-cultivation is for those with enough leisure to pursue it, and perhaps that’s true. But most people will at least try to find time for self-improvement whether they realize it or not. Most people don’t live the life that Materialists cast upon them, which is one reason Marxism ended up being less of a threat than most of the world once thought it was.
While certainly a person with means can do more of what they like, even economically disadvantaged people make something of their lives. Just because it’s harder doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Obviously, the ability to self-cultivate is available to everyone, admittedly to a limited degree for many, but not for most. The fact remains that even under heavy burdens, humans look for cracks in the wall, small spaces where they can plant something of their own. That drive is irrepressible.
I can speak to this from my own life.
After college I lived in what you could call semi-impoverished conditions. I had a low paying job because I was a partyboy who carried no real responsibilities. I picked up a second job to cover my rent. When I wasn’t working or partying, I poured the rest of my time into spiritual pursuits—dabbling across traditions, trying a little of everything, reading voraciously.
Eventually I went to India and lived at an ashram for four months. I had little money. I traveled third-class. But when I returned I found a job and slowly worked my way up career-wise. Through all of it, my spiritual quest never left me. It is the same drive today as it was then, woven into the whole of my life, though the specifics have changed considerably. I had the luxury of choosing difficulty. My “poverty” was self-imposed, not structural. I could walk away from it. Many people can’t. That difference matters, and it’s part of what I mean when I say poverty is a social condition—it’s not just about having little, it’s about having no way out. I don’t claim my circumstances were comparable to abject poverty, only that economic challenge in and of itself doesn’t prevent spiritual pursuit. Economics dictates much, yes, but it does not erase your capacity for cultivation. The Materialists are too cocky when they assume otherwise.
Self-cultivation is available to everyone, and my own experience is just one example of how agency can persist even when options feel narrow, not just the privileged. In some ways economic burdens strengthen cultivating within your life. When options are limited, the smallest intentional practices matter more, not less. Taking ten minutes to write, stretch, or simply breathe becomes an act of resistance against the economic grip. The recognition that you are cultivating anything at all is proof that you still have some agency in a system that wants to consume all of it.
The economics of The Weight remind us that well-being is not only an individual practice. It is also a social condition. How a society organizes work and money directly affects the depth of drift and the possibility of cultivation. The Complex controls much of you but that is, oddly, your surrender by choice. We willfully choose everything The Complex offers: fun, great stuff, and, perhaps most of all, ease. Poverty is usually not a choice. That’s the side of The Weight I did not stress enough in Constant Becoming.
When we speak about flourishing, about harmogenics, about building a life practice, we should keep this in mind. The Weight is not just internal. It is carried in paychecks, rent deadlines, childcare bills, and the stubborn math of hours in a day. To name that honestly doesn’t diminish the possibility of cultivation. It makes it real. It shows why every act of cultivation—no matter how small—can be meaningful. Because it is wrested from the most basic economy of all: your time.