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Sustainability. POLI 294 Class 8: Fulfillment/Ecology of Commerce P. Brian Fisher. Consumerism and Affluence. In the United States, “public squalor, ” such as the weakening of the education and healthcare systems, paralleled rising private affluence.
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Sustainability POLI 294 Class 8: Fulfillment/Ecology of Commerce P. Brian Fisher
Consumerism and Affluence • In the United States, “public squalor,” such as the weakening of the education and healthcare systems, paralleled rising private affluence. • John Kenneth Galbraith (1958), The Affluent Society. • “Consumer Republic” and “Affluenza” “mobilization of the post-World War II economy for domestic consumption and has climaxed with the current almost pathological fixation on ever increasing consumption, even at the expense of personal and social well-being—a condition many critics term “affluenza.””
Perceptions of Affluence • only 20 percent of a sample of 1,767 Americans in households earning over $75,000 considered themselves “affluent.” • 85 percent of them worried about money at least occasionally (40 percent worry “all the time”). • More than three out of four said they’d need at least a million dollars to con- sider themselves affluent. • Conclusion: “This group, the most affluent 24 percent of the richest country in the world, seems still unsatisfied with their wealth.”
“What is Sustainability, Anyway” (2003) Worldwatch Article • “Only the prospect of a truly sustainable culture offers the universal possibility of human fulfillment. It is the business-as-usual course that leads inexorably to a sad future of inequity, strife, natural and economic impoverishment, suffering, and cultural decline—a future made all the more bitter by the knowledge of superior choices foregone and forever lost.”
How would you rate your level of "happiness"? • 93% were “happy” • Most respondents were “happy” (47%) with 18% “very happy” • National Happiness Survey: 31% “very happy”; our survey “18% “very happy” and 7% “very fulfilled”
How would you rate your level of "fulfillment" with your life? • 85% of respondents were fulfilled • Most are “modestly fulfilled” (39%) and 78% were Modestly Fulfilled or Fulfilled • Less fulfillment than “happiness”
How much do you agree with the following: I find fulfillment through meaningful activities.
How much do you estimate that you spend monthly on goods that are beyond survival basic needs (food,... • Less than 1% believe they don’t overconsume • 62% believe they consume more than basic needs by 10-50% • 45% believe they consume more than needs by 25-100%
I feel that I would be more fulfilled by consuming: • Only 8% felt that consuming more would yield more fulfillment • 34% agree that consuming less yields more fulfillment • Why “neither”?
How much do you agree with following: Affluence leads to greater fulfillment * Very even: 34% disagree, 36% agree
How much do you agree with the following: Consumption beyond our needs has led to greater ecological... * 85% agree (over)consumption leads to ecological damage, only 4% disagree * 26% of respondents conservative, 44% were moderate politically (either liberal or conservative)
Answer only if above age 30. During your lifetime, you have observed:
The world will be a better place for you than it was for the previous generation? • Even split: 38% disagree, 29% agree • But, 71% believe this isn’t true or about same
How much do you agree with the following: "I have found my life's purpose" Even Split: 34% disagree, 36% agree But, vast majority have not found life’s purpose
Data Conclusions • Deeper meaning in life is HIGHLY correlated to fulfillment and happiness • Money plays a limited role in developing fulfillment; Life purpose is a key for finding fulfillment • Mixed results on affluence and fulfillment FINANCIAL SECURITY is more meaningful than money or shopping • Consumption is largely blind – it is NOT tethered to BASIC NEEDS. • The key to deeper meaning is RELATIONSHIPS and PURPOSE (could be religious, spiritual, career, etc) • Vast majority recognize that consumption beyond basic needs leads to ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION • Most acknowledge living FAR beyond their basic needs • Political Ideology plays a limited role in perception of individual daily life and ecological harm; $$ does not. • Religion generates meaning, and could be an important path toward fulfillment and generating ecological awareness • Solutions: Declining trust in public institutions, fewer personal relationships, higher consumption patterns, more destruction, fewer buying into American ideals • Sustainability??
Ways to be happy from $$ • Spend on • activities that help us grow as a person (guitar lessons), strengthen our connections with others (dinners with colleagues, car trips with friends), and contribute to our communities (catering a fundraiser, donating to the needy) • activities and experiences (e.g., rock climbing expeditions, wine tasting family reunions) rather than material possessions • many small pleasures (e.g., regular massages, weekly delivery of fresh flowers) rather than on one big-ticket item (like a new car or flat-screen TV); and • something that we work extremely hard to get and have to wait for (whether it’s a concert, trip, or gadget) and relish the feeling of hard-won accomplishment and anticipation
Sustainability = Fulfillment ? • Can we sustain something without fulfillment? Happiness? Think about an individual activity? • If happier people will facilitate sustainability, then what do we need to generate that? • Q is how can we both address sustainability while also generating a more happy community? • Final Q: Is this an activity or paradigm for the individual? Community? State? Global?
Hawken, Ecology of Commerce (1993) • Thesis: Biosphere is being destroyed by our industrial society and economic system, but same elements that destroy the biosphere—markets and gov’ts, are the solution (if can replace “greed”) • “I have come to believe that we in America and in the rest of the industrialized West do not know what business really is, or, therefore, what it can become.” (p1) • "The promise of business is to increase the general well-being of humankind through service, a creative invention and ethical philosophy. Making money is, on its own terms, totally meaningless, an insufficient pursuit for the complex and decaying world we live in. We have reached an unsettling and portentous turning pt in industrial civilization.” (p1) • The current economic system is not "the inherent nature of business, nor the inevitable outcome of a free-market system. It is merely the result of the present commercial system's design and use."
Ecology vs Commerce • “there is no polite way to say that business is destroying the world.” (p3) • An oxymoron that speaks to the gap between how earth lives and how we now conduct our commercial lives. • “We don’t think of ecology and commerce as compatible subjects. While much of our current environmental policy seek a ‘balance’ between the needs of business and the needs of environment, common sense says there is only one critical balance and one set of needs: the dynamic, ever-changing interplay of the forces of life” (p3) • Ecology of commerce is the unity of them into “one sustainable act of production and distribution that mimics and enhances natural processes” (p3)
What we Need to Do • “Constructive changes in our relationship to the environment have thus far been thwarted because business is not properly designed to adapt to the situation we face.” (p5) • “having expropriated resources from the natural world in order to fuel a rather transient period of materialistic freedom, we must now restore no small measure of those resources and accept the limits and discipline inherent in that relationship. Until business does that, it will continue to be maladaptive and predatory.” (p6) • Today, the liner process of industrialization creates massive amts of waste and its grossly inefficient, resulting a decayed earth. • “the economics of restoration is the opposite of industrialization. Industrial economics separated production processes from the land, the land from people, and, ultimately, economic values from personal values…in a restorative economy, viability is determined by the ability to integrate with or replicate cyclical systems, in its means of production and distribution (p11).
Hawken’s 8 Elements to Solve Enviro Crisis • Reduce energy/resource consumption by 80% in next half century • Secure, productive employment for all • "Be self-organizing as opposed to regulated or morally mandated.” • Honor market principles • Be more rewarding (than our present way of life) • Exceed sustainability by restoring degraded habitats and ecosystems to their fullest biological capacity.” • Rely on current income • “Be fun and engaging, and strive for an aesthetic outcome."
