Just splurge a little
Even a bad economy is no excuse for hyperfrugality
Hard times produce neurotic behavior.
There's nothing neurotic, of course, about the brute fear that consumes parents with three children who have both lost their jobs. There is nothing neurotic about trading down from meat to SpaghettiOs for dinner, or staging a family vacation in the backyard. Nothing neurotic, in short, about doing what you have to do to get by.
But there is something neurotic about people who are not in extremis eating lentils and roadside greens to prove some point.
People living comfortably who suddenly embrace the current fad of eating little, spending less, and crow about it. What we have here is a calorie race to the bottom. What we have here is overreaction.
(The fad has nothing to do with the committed chicken-breasted men and X-ray thin women who want to live forever. Their daily caloric intake would be problematic for Mini-Me. One woman I recently saw on TV said she enjoys the feeling of hunger.)
The party was over last year, but it became official in January, when the strange and famous clothing designer Karl Lagerfeld famously announced to the BBC, "Bling is over."
It's time, he said, for modesty. I'm all for modesty. I have no choice because I don't have the dough to live otherwise.
But the gap between modesty and extremism is huge.
The new hyperfrugality we read and hear about is the new Botox. It's a trend that will be hot until something else comes along, as collagen did for all those women who wanted clown lips. Maybe driving at 7 miles an hour will become hip, who knows?
Whenever this crisis ends, prepare to watch a disturbing number of people return at warp speed to angus beef and yellow fin tuna.
There lurks a dark joy among simple-life true believers, who planned ahead for hard times and were ridiculed for doing so. They have no time now for those who couldn't be bothered.
They watch with wry amusement as the rest of us face collapse.
I have a friend who has lived a very simple life for decades. Much of what he ate he grew. He's always scoffed at large consumption. He was on an austere energy program long before it was cool - no running water while doing the dishes, things like that.
I remember him telling me back in the late '70s that he wouldn't mind a crash. Americans must experience it, he said, before they can find balance in their lives.
Speaking of extremist behavior, an article in The New York Times last week caught my eye. It was about lunatic people - my adjective, not the Times's - who have unplugged their refrigerators in the name of energy efficiency.
As best as I can get it, they survive with a small freezer in the basement and a steady rotation of ice water bottles from said basement freezer toted up into the dead refrigerator in the kitchen to keep it cool enough to preserve some foods. Meat for hungry mouths? Try
This whole thing is nuts. It has far less to do with survival in hard times than it does in trumpeting extremism in the name of energy savings. I know a lot of serious environmentalists who would blanch at the thought of losing their refrigerators. Think of a family of five eating two or three meals a day sans refrigerator. Powdered milk, anyone?
Other suggestions I've stumbled on include: using 20-watt bulbs at your desk (I'd go blind.) Use cold water in the washing machine. (Sometimes.) Keep the refrigerator at 40 degrees. (We're at 32 degrees to keep that Prosecco ice cold.) Cook small items in the microwave instead of the oven. (Like a veal chop?)
I'm also reading that you can cut your electric bill significantly if you unplug in the morning all of the passive energy eaters - TV, computer, toaster, microwave, coffee machine - and plug them back in the evening when you need them. Are most Americans going to unplug and replug all of them every day? What part of "no" don't you understand?
It goes on. A guy named Jeff Yeager, whom Matt Lauer called "The Ultimate Cheapskate" on "The Today Show," is riding high, wide, and handsome these days. He has been living insanely close to the bone for years, and now, proud as punch, stands as a guru to the herd of neophyte Scrooges. His diet is based on massive consumption of lentils, which he calls "the perfect food." Rock on.
I have a friend who frequents a boot exchange. He can easily afford new hiking boots but checks out the used men's hiking boots because he's cheap.
I actually harbor some sympathy for the well heeled who have taken the big fall. They've developed a brave new vocabulary to explain their new plight. To wit: "It feels great to be living in only one house again." And: "There's nothing wrong with public school for the kids."
And: "We never used the third car anyway."
Look, we all need to cut consumption and live moderate lives. People have been ready to change for ages. But we shouldn't lurch from one extreme to the other either. That's called crazy.
Correction: In last week's Observer column, the last name of Anthony Zuba was misspelled. The organization he works for as a lead organizer was misspelled, too. It is the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.
Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com. 
