The Poverty of Affluence revisited
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Posted on June 17, 2006
Filed Under Justice, Deep ecology, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Inspiration and reflection
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Pulled out an old book, The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life, by Paul Wachtel. Came out in 1989 and many of us were reading it back in the 90s. As you can imagine, Wachtel delves into the consumer culture and all the varieties of ways — environmental, social, political, psychological, etc. — in which it is destructive of the human person.
For one thing, our culture of affluence and economic growth has formed us to believe that there is no limit to growth, that every generation can be richer than the one before, and that even the poorest can aspire to wealth, if they are just clever enough and work hard enough. This is the American Dream and who wants to be the one to say, it's over.
But Wachtel describes how this kind of "more" becomes a whole lot of "less" in terms of quality of life. While we construct our lives around the frenetic competition of the economic system, and around acquiring more consumer goods which take up more of our time, and longer work hours to pay for it all — we are losing what matters most, a life of spiritual richness, a life steeped in relationships — community and family — time for re-creation, time to be with and restore our love of nature and of life itself in all its goodness.
I opened the book to page 18 and found this: speaking of graduates from elite Ivy League business schools and their expectations, he writes, "They are already…enjoying a standard of living in their twenties and thirties that their parents did not attain until their forties or fifties. But they are dissatisfied because 'our present material worth is irrelevant if we can't expect our future gains to surpass it.' This is as eloquently stated a formula for personal and environmental disaster as one is likely to find. And unfortunately, the author is probably right when she says that is the cornerstone of what her generation was taught by teachers and parents."
He writes this before the debt boom of the past several years, where consumption is now driven by greater and greater personal and public debt, irrational financial speculation, and a trade deficit that is in the stratosphere.
Speaking of this angst of the affluent young, Wachtel writes, "Their situations highlight with unusual clarity how little the sense of economic distress and disappointment currently sweeping America has to do with real deprivation and how much with assumptions and expectations."
It is also a bit of an insult in a world where more than two billion people live on less then $2 per day.
But what he writes is real, and the rage that spews forth whenever anyone suggests that it is not only perhaps wrong to have these expectations, but no longer even possible given the limits of the earth's resources, is indicative of the problem we face in this still-richest country in the world.
The privileged who can afford more than one home and McMansions with cathedral ceilings and fancy low fuel efficient vehicles and who can fly off to wherever around the world and have whatever they want and buy gazzillions of gallons of water in little pastic bottles and buy fancy food from all over the world at high-end grocery stores (and this is a lot of us here in this country) are leeches sucking out the life blood of this earth. At some point, you have to pull off the leeches to save the patient.
This sound like judgment — it is not. The leeches are just a dramatic metaphor for the reality of our situation. The earth has just so much to offer us to sustain the balance of life. If we consume to the point where we drain down the available resources, life as we know it begins to die.
It would take two earths to support current levels of consumption — TWO. We in the affluent post-industrial societies are going to have to decide what kind of people we are going to be as we come to the limits — Social Darwinists whirling around in a downward spiral of survival-of-the-fittest chaos, trying to hold on to what we have while demanding more and more, or human beings of compassion, eager to share, to relinquish, to surrender a way of life that no longer works, in order to re-create human life that restores the true meaning of the human journey (which is not, not, not to go shopping).
Poverty is also growing in the land of affluence and the priorities of the federal government right now are to increase the wealth of the rich right in the face of this other reality. But the hard truth is this — the poor of the world cannot aspire to our levels of consumption. The earth will die in the attempt. No, there is no path that bypasses the need for the rich countries to give up much wealth and to move away from economies of "growth."
I am not optimistic. We are addicts of consumption. But hope is not optimisim, and I keep on running into people who appreciate the spiritual death that comes from this economic way of life. Folks are looking for a way out, many simplifying their lives, scaling down, getting rid of things they don't need, spending more time with their kids and communities, volunteering in programs that give hope to impoverished populations or this degraded earth.
You know who you are — and I thank you.
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I just saw my first stretch Hummer the other day!
I wonder how we will explain to our children why we allowed our world to come to this, when they’re trying to survive in a much different, more fragile world than we can even imagine.
How do we break through all the consumerism when we’re inundated day after day, with what we should be striving for if we want to be really successful, beautiful, happy? Our society does not appreciate those who don’t have big homes, fancy cars, who don’t ride in STRETCH HUMMERS!! We don’t see value unless there’s a price tag attached.
What happened to work that filled your soul, as well as fed your family? I think of my immigrant Sicilian grandparents who were happy to have a place where they could live in peace, to build their own home, grow a wonderful garden, make their own food. Family and friends were their entertainment. How do we share the joy we felt on those Sunday afternoons, with fresh food, and my granfather playing the mandolin and everyone singing?
We’ve lost far more than we’ve gained.
We need to reclaim values that sustain not only our lives and souls, but the world beyond ourselves. Perhaps it’s time for a Year of Jubilee.