Quality of Life in The 21st Century

                            http://www.allaboutlivingwithlife.com                                

Are humans just hard wired to consume as much as possible or is moving out of consumerist lifestyle the coming next big thing in human society ? This was the question we wondered on in the last post

Those who are new to this, also refer to this one and this and this, You will be fully armed with the context and ready to do damage!

We buy stuff mostly after falling victim to advertisement and marketing (whether we admit it or not). Advertisements are not just stuff we see in TV. Advertisements are in everywhere, some stays inside our minds from childhood as concept level, some get transmitted as fashion, advertisements even shape our thinking patterns and value systems.

We live in an era which preach consumption, consuming more means being more successful. Purchasing and owning more means more success. Ownership and consumption, those are the things which define us. What we own, in a way defines us, so we try to own better things more and more. Why do we try to earn more? Either to continue buying or to pay debts for the things we have already bought!

If everybody owns more things than really necessary and if every household is having more things which are not actually needed or not being meaningfully used, then it's obviously a big waste. More than that, it means we consume just for the sake of consuming as if we don't have any other meaningful goal in our lives. Do we live to buy that fancy car, own that big house and to use those handy gadget? Is there no other real purpose which drives us ?

Next problem is, can all of us (even if we have money) really own all those things we like? everything takes energy to get produced, every thing takes resources to get produced, only a part of those resources (if at all) get recycled back. While our craziness for owning things has no limits, resources the world has got to produce them, certainly has limits. Amount of waste the environment can absorb (generated by consumption) too certainly has limits.

The so called economical growth which drives from consumption is simply an impractical model to continue further. It is not that we have a dislike or a disagreement with the way current economies run, just that we will need something deeper and something more practical and sustainable in coming decades. Current systems may be ones evolved in last centuries and survived those times because they were suitable for those times where our ability to use up resources were too low to worry about. It is no longer the case now, will be no longer the case in future!

We need some new philosophy which help us not to run after accumulating things to be happy. Some new economical or social concepts/theories which produce more outlets to humans than just consumption.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all is that our own minds have accepted this as the reality and as the only (or main) worthwhile goal to pursue. So to make our minds happy and achieve that always illusive contentment, we are driven towards consuming more and more. If not by consuming, what else will motivate us ? What else can provide us with a drive to grow ? That raises an even more interesting question! What is growth really ? Is that the GDP ? Monthly salary we earn ? value of property we own ?

Going down the path of economic growth as defined in theories (produce more, consume more) is proving a dead end. All citizens of the world can not simply live as Americans do! Yes, even if everybody somehow manage to get 'rich', the world Eco system can not take additional vehicles on road, additional factories which require additional resources and emit additional CO2 and other waste, additional cutting down of forests to make way for additional houses, roads etc We have come to a place where we are using too much of world resources and emitting too much waste the world can take. A new practical philosophy is needed to take the world forward!

Can there be such a economy/society or a system which doesn't rely on people consuming more for it's own survival ?

I believe yes, there can be. Think about this.....

There are other goals, things we can achieve without owning physical goods. Things like having knowledge, enjoyment from sports, arts. literature etc, improving our minds whether it be mediation or positive thinking or any other psychological activity which help us feel good, feel important and makes us happy. Who says we have to earn more, spend more, buy more and own more to happy? That's the thinking advertisement has put in us for decades (for generations!)! and it's a myth! We don't necessarily need money, ownership and more things to be happy.

Is gaining more knowledge less important than owning a car ? Is improving our selves with better attitudes and mental qualities is not important than making our houses bigger ?  Is improving our brain capacities (to learn, to memorize, to analyze etc) not as important as buying things for our living rooms ? Improving our emotions and the way we react to things and compassion we can show to others, is that not as important as buying more expensive clothes to improve our outside appearances ? Is spending quality time with your family and friends inferior to spending time on increasing our spending capacity ?

There are so many better ways to enjoy the life and live happier and in a more meaningful manner without buying/owning/holding things. If that's the case whats the point of putting up a staggering amount of time on making money ? After all, the sole purpose of money is to increase our capacity to buy things. When we have more time we will be more able to appreciate the little things in life which we have missed all this time. We can make more friends, express ourselves more, love more, live more... Quality of life for the 21st century!

This could be a new philosophy which will guide this century. We simply do not need to consume more to be happier!! Sometimes letting go of things, be free from things is the best form of peace and happiness. That will be good for the environment too! Probably we will hear more and more about concepts such as Gross National Happiness

Does this mean going back to the stone age ? certainly not! Moving away from materialistic view open ways and new adventures for the mind and body. There are so much to achieve, so much to gain and so much to grow in the area of improving our own minds. We could foresee an intense competitive future where humans are driven passionately toward ever more challenging tasks for the mind and body, whether it be sports, self expression, arts, science, enhancing the IQ, improving attitudes, improving memory capacity and analytical thinking...

There is an endless world of possibilities, probably even more so and certainly much more satisfying and beneficial goals for us to achieve than just pursuing after material goods, stuff. Human mind is currently just trapped in a very limited materialistic world where it strive only about pursuing consumerist dreams. Imagine a world  where the human mind body and soul is unleashed and free to achieve it's true potential!

In the industrial age, we have transformed into a efficient societies which produces more and consume more, we proved ourselves as very good at it. Now that it's limitations are becoming obvious, isn't it any wonder that the next great age to come would be moving away from consumerism and pursuing goals of self growth, real happiness and advancements in mind and mental faculties? Pursuing happiness and greatness! In this sense arguments such as ones on socialism vs capitalism becomes outdated. All current economical systems and theories are for increasing production and increasing consumption. What we are discussing is a fundamental mental shift from that world.

Also, letting go of things is much more complicated than it sounds.... Sometimes you need the technology to make that feasible! How to get rid of bulkier things which need more resources and energy ? How to invent things which absorb human minds (which are no longer going after physical goods) and provide it with challenges and objectives to engage in with passion ? In fact, we will have a higher set of challenges for the technology which will have to play an even bigger role!

In a future post we will discuss the shape of those technological advances together with emerging trends, and wonder whether things are already moving in the direction they should be moving.....

PS : Services to Rescue the sequel of this post.

A continent of mistakes

                                                                           (http://www.dailygalaxy.com)
There is a new continent forming in the pacific ocean! A vast new continent twice the size of Texas and it's growing each year!!

Unfortunately, this is not good news, as the new continent is formed by waste we throw away, things which are not bio degradable. When we made them, we knew these stuff (polythene, plastics) would last long and causing problems but we have simply thrown them away from our immediate neighborhoods and looked the other way pretending the problem is non existent.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a testament for human selfishness, ignorance and mad consumerism. Something we all should be ashamed of. A child born out of : ignoring a problem, laughing out early indications of a problem, pretending the world has unlimited natural resources and pretending the world has unlimited capacity to take on the waste we produce.

A continent of a monument to show, remind and alert us the on our greedy lifestyles and the direct results of consumerism! For more about this continent and to know why we are already powerless to reverse the damage, visit here and here. 

An interesting thing to note is the list of surrounding countries of the proud new continent. America, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan...  So called developed world and few countries who have achieved fast economic growths recently.

However, the biggest tragedy of all is may be the fact that even a continent of mistakes is not enough to waken us up! Instead of consuming less, producing less, re-use and recycle, we are still thinking of how to continue and even accelerate our proven faulty life style....

If this issue is so real, why don't we discuss about it more often ? Why is media silent about this ? There lies the other tragedy of current generations. Mass media is not acting as a solution, it's a part of the problem. Media needs consumerism to survive! If the real answer is to Restrict our usage and consumption, how many people will really like to hear that ? If the consumption and production to go down,  what will happen to our lifestyle and 'economic growth' we are so taught to believe in ?

OK, let's look at this from a different angle, What we just discussed was one result which we are powerless to reverse anymore. Let's start from the point of generation and see what produced this, how and why ...  

Let's Imagine a house with just the basic little amount of furniture, less electrical equipments and gadgets.. think about a place with only most needed equipments and nothing else. Such a place would have empty spaces to move about, less clutter, less amount of cleaning and maintenance. It will have simplicity and would serve to add a sense of serenity and peace of mind.

Now compare it with a house full of gadgets, equipments, furniture and what not. When we imagine, we have to be realistic (the things TV adds won't tell us), some of things in such a house may not be working. Some of things may be missing among number of other things. Some things may not be as clean as we would like them to be, for keeping all those things in an orderly manner, in working condition and keeping them clean at  all times need time and attention. Not just once or twice, but daily! Things demand time and attention from us don't they?

Things we have, sometimes tend to define who we are, if we have way too many things, we are bounded, restricted and limited in freedom because we have to maintain those things while a person without them is free of that burden! If we  have a car, we have to wash it regularly, make it clean, keep it serviced, get it repaired when it breaks etc. Now, what happens if we have 2 vehicles? it's even more of work. Those tasks of maintaining our cars eat up our time, energy and focus. In a sense, car will start to own us that way since it get us to do things for it. More things we have, more slaves we become of those things we own.

It's very important to decide exactly what things we really need and not committing to too many physical things in our lives. Even when we see a moderate convenience of having something, we should question ourselves, is it really worth the trouble of having it? How will it be few months after purchasing, will it still going to be that useful and look that pretty ? will we really use it that many times as we expect to ? or will it be like that exercising machine under a bed which we haven't taken out in a month?

Just buying something is not the end, paying the monetary value is not the end, things have hidden price tags attached to them. Every thing needs some time and attention from us. This untold price is mostly go unnoticed when we buy something. We are trained to see a purchase as a win if it's 'cheaper' than the market value. Well, come to think of it any price would be too expensive for something we really don;t have a need for. We are not entirely at fault for getting blinded for that simple fact, for we are being continuously attacked day after day by media and social peer pressure to buy this and buy that. Advertisements! If we have some extra money at hand, resisting the urge to buy something is simply not as easy as it sounds. Not only us who get those urges, our kids, spouse, brothers/sisters they also get the urge to 'take something home'!

So eventually any quite peaceful house becomes a junk yard over the years. Full of things which are either not used regularly or can not be used effectively for some reason or simply we don't anymore have time  to sacrifice for them.

What if we clean our houses of stuff which are not absolutely needed ? that is good but it's not the proper answer. When we buy a thing which is not absolutely needed, we have already done the damage! Getting rid of them from our houses means we are simply putting the burden on somewhere else and going to selfishly look at the other way. This was exactly what produced the continent of waste we just saw!

Proper answer is to limit the consumption and produce less, then reuse and recycle the rest! So called 3 R's of Green Peace. Restrict, Re-Use and Recycle.

After all, 80% of stuff we think are useful and must haves are really not! we could easily and more conveniently and more freely live without them! Still doubtful about the real 'value' of stuff we have and what it is doing to us? read here on the subject of stuff. To identify the shallowness of buying and owning stuff and to move away from it, one does not need to be an environmentalist or a socialist! Just stopping being a mindless slave (following the fashion) to consumerism is enough so it seems.

In a future post, we will look closely for the ways out of consumerism and how to live happy and healthy lives without destroying the world. Is it possible at all? Are humans just hard wired to senseless consumption or is moving out of consumerist lifestyle the coming next big thing  in human society ?

Meanwhile, here are few past related posts.

Middleground on Capitalism and Socialism, Where have you gone ?

End the burning, Cool down and Clean up!

Lighting Up The Dark!

 

PS : Added two sequels to this :

How to reduce consumption and still enjoying the life and

Current trends which are already taking us in that direction.
 

Middleground on Capitalism and Socialism, Where have you gone ?

                                                                  (chrismadden.co.uk)

In an earlier post, we discussed few fashions in our society and why certain fashions are harmful. Looks like there are more and more subtle not so obvious types of fashions for those we all fall into at one point or the other. Nothing terribly wrong with that either, as that's the usual way human beings learn, by trial and error. However it will be useful to be aware of our thinking process and be alert to occasions when we want to say or do something just because that is the fashion of the day to do so!

This thought occurred to me when following a particualr topic in the renown blogs of Chanuka Wattegama and Aruni Shapiro, where both were claiming to be capitalists but seems like there is a disagreement on the level of capitalism. Now, I don't mean any disrespect to those authors, infact I read them regularly and even learning new things from them, Chanuka of course we all know from Vidusara days, among other things. The thought occurred to me was something entirely different and nothing directly related to above bloggers.

It is not too long ago that we saw similar arguments and races to show and prove who among us are the real and most genuine socialists. The resulting irony of comparison of times (present against that of about just 2 decades ago) is too hard to go unnoticed. Do we remember those speeches we heard from stages, discussions, arguments on stage, arguments on TV and even on arguments in news papers ? Now, those days were the times where claiming to be a socialist was the order of the day. Socialism meant more progressive, more philanthropic, more advanced less greedy and purer. Different marxist parties actually fought over the rights of being true left. Intellectuals were no different! Openly and publicly claiming to be a capitalist was an unheard of thing those days.

When CBK wanted to introduce her new economy policy she had to choose the words carefully and offer something like a 'humane look for the open economy'. Just acknowledging to be a raw fan of open economic policies was a taboo. Do you support open economy.. no way! it's the cause of all evil that's why there is a war in north, the degration of social values, erosion of humanism and so on.. Fashion was to be against capitalism and open economy but to sound like a socialist. There was even a jargon, set of terms which sounded more socialist than others. Now, all this was not just among ordinary folks like you and me, it was the fashion also (or should we say 'specially') among intelectuals!  

So forgive me having a fun time watching how the world has changed. Today, the fashion is to be a capitalist! race is to be the biggest and most daring capitalist of 'em all! Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make fun of any one. Just enjoying observing the social movements and changes in society which unravel rapidly in front of our own eyes. I myself was mildly following the socialism fashion for a time being. (Well, who wouldn't like to be little stylish when they are young? Unfortunately it wasn't fun for those who didn't survive in 87/89, some just didn't make it after following that particular fashion of socialism back then.) However, this time I will be extra cautious! Just following a fashion is not so smart when one is no longer young and expected to posses a balanced mind. Fashion these days is to sound like a firm capitalist, to talk about the benefits of freemarket and how the demand and supply going to solve everything, be against all form of subsidies and welfare etc. When so many of our people and politicians getting together and saying the same thing with lot of assuarance, that usually mean something is wrong!

Sometimes fashions can be correct too. Can this be one such occasion ? Whole world, after so many experiments have evolved economically and found the one true and real system which actually works. Capitalism. Can that be the case ? This, is an argument beyond the scope of a single (or a series of) post, I'm not even trying.  For fashion lovers, we will just show that even capitalism has it's limits and will become outdated much sooner than they might think. 

Capitalism grows when the consumption grows. When consumption goes down, capitalist creatures go into that hibernate mode of theirs call recessions. In fact, consumption is the metric used to measure how developed a economy is. How much do you consume per a month? a lot more than you neighbor? ah, then you are richer than him! that's how it works. So when we grow yearly, we get used to consume more and more and more. Why is milk food expensive now ? because Indians and Chinese have got rich and has started to consume more milk. Why is fuel prices going up ? because we are consuming more and more fuel, actually to sustain economic growth, it will be needed to consume more and more fuel. (at least until solar energy become cheap, but till that happens, there will be a deep recession if not enough fuel is available to consume). There is a saying that price of fuel will sky rocket to new dimension if all Indians take a fancy to driving own cars. With what Ratan Tata is upto, that just might really happen!

So what's the problem? we will continue consuming more, standard of living will go up, advance of science will find ways of consuming more and more things cheaply. There lies the problem.... There simply is not enough resources to go on doing this forever at this pace and acceleration! At one point, the world and it's limited resources will go on strike, that will be a one strike which will need little more than a pay hike to those socialist workers to subdue. The world, it appears has it's own few trade unions to talk through. Climate change is one, increased carbon emissions as a direct result of consumption is another. Rising sea levels, polluted air and water resources, dwindling forests.. wait! some minimum land mass will be needed to keep as forests to preserve the balance of nature. As of fossil fuels, all types of metals etc they would be non-reneawable sources, that is they have a cap. Once you use them, they are not going to come back again (not in our life time that is)

So, the capitalist consumerism dream is not going to be a one which can be sustained with a steady growth forever. If we have an endless source of resources, then one might argue even a greed (consume) based system might last long, but we haven't got one. Science will advance and help us to increase the efficiency of how we are using the limited resources but even that pace can't cope with the unlimited potential of greed. Greed has no bound, even if we increase our consumption levels by each day, we will then complain about the rate of our increase in consumption. The one who grows in the higher rate would be the man to beat then!


This is not a new argument or another doomsday forecast. The world eco system simply have a limit which it can endure, the world can support only upto a certain number of humans at a time, for instance. Similarly it can support only upto a certain levle of consumption by those humans, we will eventually need to limit our consumption and limit the amount of waste we produce and amount of carbon dioxide we produce. (Every production produces CO2, so consumption is linked to carbon emissions which is linked to global warming which causes rising sea levels which warm things even further etc.) Therefore the world will eventually need a new way of thinking which transform our mindset to check our desires, consume less and be contended. That will not be a choice but a necessity.

Now, all that was just to show that there is a limit to capitalism beyond which it too will have to be discarded. That particular thinking can be a fashion in future! When capitalism go out of fashion, who knows, we all might be trying to be the most 'greener' person instead! Well, if that were to happen, at least that will be a fashion which is actually a relief for the worn out world and the environment! Meanwhile, let's not scare off anybody yet and let us generously give the capitalist dream (so called American dream!) another decade or two. Like I said, this post is not about economy, it's about fashion!

Just one last caution for fashion lovers. It's the second mouse which gets the cheese! so let's not rush, let's wait and observe the first mouse a bit.


Feel free to express your burning, flaming disagreements (and meek agreements too!) and let all of us learn something from them.