The conundrum of material wealth and happiness…

‘The things you own end up owning you’

Tyler Durden, Fight Club

The happiness >< consumption conundrum of our modern lives is fascinating… Whichever way you look at it, we seem to find ourselves in somewhat of a pickle…

Consumption: a strange new religion

Its an undeniable paradox that as GDP rises in the developing world, happiness has plateauxed - we are in fact apparently no happier now than any other time in the last 50 years despite the fact that we are effectively still proportionally ‘wealthier’ than we have ever been. In fact, we are witnessing worryingly high levels of mental health issues, isolation and loneliness is several sectors of society as our new found material wealth ultimately fails to provide us with long term spiritual satisfaction.

The concept of ownership: a curious thing

The concept of material ‘wealth’ and ‘ownership’ is pretty bizarre if we think about it; at the end of the day we are born and die naked and material items pass through our hands in a perpetual cycle as we pass through life, eventually everything is either given away or discarded in favour of newer, better things…Our earliest ancestors inherently lived with this for a long part of our evolutionary journey, existing as nomadic hunter gatherers and restricting their material 'wealth' to items of practical use which they carried from camp to camp. No Ikea storage solutions required there.

So people, why this recent consumption frenzy? 

Anthropologists and social psychologists will tell you our recent consumption frenzy is driven by our social nature and need for security and peer acceptance. When we evolved from living in as hunter gatherers to more sedate pastoral societies in which we built established elaborate physical settlements etc, we began to hoard material items to complement our increasingly complex lives. Some were of practical use and made our daily lives easier and others became a symbol of our social standing, affluence and status. This trend in increased exponentially in line with geographical expansion, population growth and ambitious society building, and 50% of the world's population now lives in sprawling urban centres, plodding away on our various hamster wheels of consumption to feed our desire for more and more material wealth. We are of course, simultaneously, facing a deeper spiritual and planetary resource crisis than ever before so, something is rotten in the state of humanity...

Hmmm. So what now?

If we concur that happiness should be our ultimate goal, we can conclude that the current status quo is leading us down the wrong path. So its time to break out and carve out a lifestyle that works better for the 'modern homo sapien' and takes more of a balanced approach to material wealth and contentment. We evolved away from our hunter gatherer past due to our drive for expansion and ‘progress’ and our next steps need not 'regress' us back to an acetic lifestyle. Hell I'm not ashamed to declare that some of our modern material items are incredibly useful and desirable - I won't be giving up my laptop, Android phone or magic mixer anytime soon! However, there are of course some key values and aspects of the uncomplicated nature of our 'early days' which we can draw lessons and wisdom from. Whatever way we look at it, we have somehow reached a natural crossroads in our evolution at which we will benefit hugely from spend time examining how our hard fought for lifestyles can become more compatible with some very basic human needs which don't seem to be being met...

Cursed to live in interesting times 

We are indeed cursed to live in interesting times. The advent of the Arab Spring and Occupy movements in 2011 for example, taught us that we are perfectly capable of change - bold and ambitious paradigm shifts - if our goals have enough momentum behind them. Our life force is strong and alongside a number of other outdated concepts and behaviours from the 'old world order', our approach to material wealth and consumption needs revisiting... over-consumption is SO 20th century...

How does our new low consumption lifestyle look....

So, some questions for us all - predominantly of course, how could a new, revised, non materialistic lifestyle look for all of us? We all vaguely know the answers to this – less consumption, more reuse, better design, more respect for each other and the planet etc, but what are actually the next steps for us as individuals? The answer to this probably lies in what each of us feel is achievable in relation to our own parameters, circumstances and priorities and as usual there are a plethora of approaches we can take to working this out. One good place to start, as ever, is asking ourselves a few probing questions about our personal attitudes towards consumption and taking it from there. These could for example be as follows…

Some questions…

• When have you been most happy in your life and what was your ‘material’ status during that time?
• How do you feel when you buy things - are you an emotional consumer in search of a 'quick fix' or a practical one?
• Is it owning or buying things that generates the most satisfaction for you, and does the satisfaction last?
• What are your favourite things and which of those do you actually need, value and just simply want to own?
• Think about whether you really need the next few things you buy this week - can you re-use something else, borrow it, go without, etc?
• What three key steps could you take in 2012 to reduce your overall consumption and how would you feel if you achieved these?

What do you think?

It would be fantastic to explore these questions - am really interested in everyone's answers in the comments section below. Lets jointly explore whether we can get somewhere with this curiously peculiar conundrum...

@clerkenwellgirl 

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Interesting links to explore:

VIDEO: Story of stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

CONCEPT: Maslow’s hierarchy of (human) needs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

BOOK: ‘Free: Adventures on the margins of a wasteful society’ by Kathrine Hibbert

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Adventures-margins-wasteful-society/dp/0091932734

BOOK: 'Enough: Breaking free from the world of excess' by John Naish 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enough-Breaking-Free-World-Excess/dp/0340935928/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329515645&sr=1-1

Dreaming of a green Christmas…

I’m fascinated by this concept. As far as I know, the roots of Christmas as we know and celebrate it in the West, are the old Pagan winter solstice festival, celebrating the shortest day of the year and heralding new beginnings and lighter days to come.

Over time in Christian Western economies, and increasingly non Christian economies, the festival has become harnessed by commercial imperatives and re-branded to suit the tastes of a greedy commercial sector, playing to the essentially imposed needs of the mass public who are pounding away on their frenzied hamster wheel of consumption. Cue image of stressed out zombie shopping crowds in pretty much every urban centre through December.

The economics of Christmas are massive; it’s a relative orgy of consumption. Its typically the largest annual economic stimulus period for western nations, the ‘Christmas season’ starts as early as October and sales increase dramatically in almost all retail areas as people buy presents, décor, cards, food and other supplies. Cue Christmas décor appearing overnight in the shops as the autumnal leaves are still falling outside in the hazy sunshine...

Then consider the fact that by January, in the UK alone, we’re expected to create 3 million tones of rubbish this Christmas most of which ends up in landfill. Strange behaviour right?

But what is this all about? The tradition of gift giving apparently essentially stems from the Christian faith, in a sense copying the actions of the three wise men bearing gifts for the baby Jesus. The original Pagan winter solstice festival was very different, it was a festival of light in the darkest winter days, a time for togetherness and reflection on the year that has passed and the one that is about to unfold. There was no indulgent consumption, because resources were precious, especially through the hard, cold, winter period when the agricultural season was over and people were living off their precious food stores. Cue image of dysfunctional Pagan families sitting round fires, telling stories and arguing about who had raided the apple store…

In these days of economic austerity and planetary crisis, can we begin to steer the determined juggernaut of western consumer culture away from its self-destructive course and begin to reclaim the ethos of this festival? There’s no point in rejecting Christmas, there are such beautiful sentiments at the heart of it, but is there a way we can bring it back to its roots, not in a nostalgic new age way, but re-invent it as a contemporary, progressive version of its original self that fits in with our new circumstances?

I would boldly suggest that it’s possible for those of us who feel uncomfortable with the status quo to calm ourselves down, dust ourselves off and begin to adopt an anti-consumption stance over this period and insist on having a green Christmas with a deliberately low impact on each other and the planet. We might even feel better for it.

What next I hear you ask? Well, there are tons of lists around about how to have a ‘green Christmas’ – here is a selection of some of my favourite ideas. I’ve already personally failed on several of them but am going to strive to live up to as many others as I can in the coming weeks, its not too late. Why not join me in this little experiment? When January beckons, we might just feel a little warmer and somehow less violated in our souls by this unusual and special time of year.

Here’s wishing everyone a very, merry low impact Christmas!

@clerkenwellgirl

Ideas in no particular order…

MINIMISING: Emails/texts instead of cards; avoid nasty, chemical plastic bags, packaging, decorations; travel sustainably to wherever you are going; switch lights and other appliances off when not in use; use candles rather than electricity etc, blah blah…

UPCYCLING and RECYCLING: Give home-made or cooked presents and gifts; sponsor an animal or give a membership to a charity or environmental organization rather than material goods; use recycled/home-made wrapping paper, decorations, cards; rent an Xmas tree (yes really!) or pot an existing one and replant it after Xmas; Free cycle, Ebay or give unwanted presents to charity, blah blah…

GOING LOCAL: Support your local economy and buy presents and Xmas dinner from good local suppliers or farmers market, blah blah…

SHARING and CARING: Cook, eat and be merry together; spend quality time with friends and family you don’t normally see; give love and affection generously; look out for people who might not have the family network you do; do a shift in a local shelter if you have time, blah blah…

CLEANING UP and REFLECTING: After the event, up-cycle, recycle and compost all waste; replant the Xmas tree, take a deep breath and think about how it felt being more conscientious, how you can do better next year and all that jazz…