Michael Easter is a how-to writer focusing on certain aspects of human psychology and how to tackle life, and his area of expertise was signaled by his first book, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self, from 2021. His new book, Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough, investigates the same sphere of hormesis (discomfort resulting in benefits). The author writes compellingly: “A scarcity cue is a piece of information that fires on what researchers call our scarcity mindset. It leads us to believe we don’t have enough. We then instinctually fixate on attaining or doing that one thing we think will solve our problem and make us feel whole.” The scarcity loop now “lives” in social media, email, shopping, personal finance, mobile gambling, TV, health, dating, video games, gig work, news. “We can shift scarcity loops into abundance loops.” Much of Scarcity Brain can feel a trifle underwhelming, and Easter’s journalistic style of expanding his personal narratives can feel repetitive, but this is a perky perspective on life that will appeal to many.
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