This is a false dichotomy. I'm not advocating for living in the woods, but just taking a hard look at the choices you make everyday and how much actual utility and satisfaction you get from them. Are those expensive clothes and cars worth it to you? Maybe they are. But you have to compare them to the months or years of labor you could avoid if you saved that money instead, or perhaps even invested it.
Perhaps our world is extremely proficient at generating insane amounts of envy, but that doesn't mean you are completely powerless to respond in a life-affirming way.
Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me. I seriously doubt that there is an innate barrier against regulating your consumption at least a little bit. If you blame external factors exclusively then you will obviously never change anything about your life and never discover what was inevitable and what wasn't.
You can try your best and still fail, but what you can't do is pretend that you don't have a choice presented to you from the outset.
Perhaps our world is extremely proficient at generating insane amounts of envy, but that doesn't mean you are completely powerless to respond in a life-affirming way.