by John de Graaf; David Wann; Thomas H Naylor; David Horsey; Vicki Robin
ANOTHER VIEW OF WEALTH
The more real wealth we have—such as friends, skills, libraries, wilderness, and afternoon naps—the less money we need in order to be happy. Throughout history, many civilizations have already discovered this truth, as author Taichi Sakaiya describes in The Knowledge-Value Revolution. As the cedars of Lebanon and the topsoil of northern Africa disappeared, people in those areas finally wised up, learning to substitute knowledge, playfulness, ritual, and community for material goods. Their cultures became richer. “Circumstances had changed, and they moved away from a guiding principle that happiness comes from consuming more things. . . . Working oneself into the ground simply to produce and consume more things was not the thing to do. . . . The truly high-class lifestyle was one that allowed free time in which to enrich one’s heart and soul—and this led to a groundswell of interest in religion. The people of the medieval era stressed the importance of loyalty to and faith in a communally held vision.”3
During resource-scarce periods, the Japanese culture developed kenjutsu (fencing), jujitsu (martial arts), saka (tea ceremony and flower arrangement), go (Japanese “chess"), and many other cultural refinements. The culture became so highly evolved, according to Sakaiya, that the firearm was banned as too crude and destructive a method of settling differences.
When humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow observed the Canadian Blackfoot Indian culture in the 1930s, he too found evidence that the concept of wealth is a social construct, based partly on instinct and partly on the strategic pursuit of such socially laudable goals as equity, diversity, and resourcefulness. In short, wealth is far more than just money. “The rich men of the tribe accumulated mounds of blankets, food, bundles of various sorts, and sometimes a case of Pepsi-Cola. . . . I remember the Sun Dance ceremony in which one man strutted and, we would say, boasted of his achievements. . . . And then, with a lordly gesture of great pride but without being humiliating, he gave his pile of wealth to the widows, to the orphaned children, and to the blind and diseased. At the end of the ceremony, he stood stripped of all possessions, owning nothing but the clothes he stood in.”4
Maslow contended that this concept of wealth is based on higher values than material gratification. “It would seem that every human being comes at birth into society not as a lump of clay to be molded by society, but rather as a structure which society either suppresses or builds upon.”
LOWER ON THE HIERARCHY?
Everyone knows a few unique individuals—usually elderly—who are healthy, wise, playful, relaxed, spontaneous, generous, open-minded, and loving: people who focus on problems outside themselves and have a clear sense of what’s authentic and what’s not. They are people for whom life gets in the way of work, on purpose. For them, work is play, because they choose work they love. Abraham Maslow termed these people “self-actualized” individuals. He placed a lot of faith in the human potential to meet basic needs and then progress—under one’s own guidance—up a hierarchy of needs toward fulfillment. Before he died in 1969, Maslow concluded that most Americans had met the basic physical (the only ones that are primarily material) and security needs, and had progressed to at least the “love and belongingness” rung of the hierarchy. Many individuals were higher than that.
MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
The question is, has America—weakened by affluenza—slipped down the hierarchy in the last thirty years? It seems the rungs of Maslow’s ladder have become coated with slippery oil, as in a cartoon. According to polls, we’re more fearful now. We’re more insecure about crime, the possible loss of our jobs, and catastrophic illness. More than fifty thousand Americans die every year from medical malpractice, making us all the more insecure about our health.
How can we meet intrinsic community needs when sprawl creates distances between people? How can we feel a sense of beauty, security, and balance if beautiful open spaces in our communities are being smothered by new shopping malls and rows of identical houses? (Sometimes the only way to find your new house is to push the “house finder” button on your garage door opener, and watch which door opens.) How can we have self-respect in our work if it contributes to environmental destruction, social inequity, and isolation from living things? (The highest incidence of heart attacks is on Monday morning; apparently some would rather die than go back to work.)
Since America became a nation of consumers spoon-fed by automated products, fewer of us are now able to use our hands, or a sense of craft, in our work. As a result, creative satisfaction gets lost in the shuffle, along with knowledge, meaning, beauty, and balance —all higher rungs on Maslow’s ladder.
Psychologists, anthropologists, artists, and the distant voices in our own heads tell us that both the potential and the urgency exist for a new definition of wealth in America. If we enrich our own nonmaterial sources of wealth, how much less money—and less paid labor—will be necessary? If we “produce” our own entertainment, perhaps by learning to be musicians, master gardeners, or woodworkers, informed conversationalists, or sports participants rather than ticket-purchasing fans, we’ll reduce our financial needs substantially. If we provide some of our own transportation (and exercise) needs on foot—by living closer to work, stores, and recreation—we carve a large chunk out of the $7,500 spent annually by the average car owner. In effect, instead of working from January 1 to March 10 just to cover transportation costs, we can knock off in February.
Good diet, satisfying work, and regular exercise will keep our shopping carts free of side effects from expensive medicines we don’t need (as well as preventing some of the more than thirty thousand deaths in America annually from fatal reactions to prescription drugs). Cooking with healthy ingredients can make our taste buds, synapses, and white blood cells happy enough for us to raise our health insurance deductibles and lower our premiums. Living in an energy-efficient home will shave at least $300 off a utility bill and make the home more comfortable. Changes like these are not about deprivation but about increasing the richness of our lives— and decreasing bills, stress, and waste. Quality satisfies more deeply than mere quantity.
Maslow termed the basic physical needs deficiency needs and assumed that as long as you ate, your food needs were being met. If you lived in a house or an apartment (as opposed to the street), your shelter needs were being met, and so on. However, his concept of deficiency didn’t explore the quality of the food or shelter, or whether the needs were being supplied in a way that preserved the systems— the farms, forests, and fisheries—that met those needs. Individual satisfaction ultimately banks on the stability of the system.
Maslow didn’t consider sufficiency and the implications of overconsumption of the basic needs. Nor did he really get into efficiency in meeting needs—the technologies and pathways of production and use. If technologies are wasteful and destructive, they can’t deliver overall satisfaction, because they leave scars in nature. In our free market, waste itself has become an important product, and it’s hard to feel proud of that. Loans and incentives offered by bankers, tax-policy makers, and regulators guide us toward wasteful designs and approaches, further frustrating our search for self-actualization. In summary, our economic system is programmed for dissatisfaction!
‘MAY THE FORK BE WITH YOU’
Even with its shortcomings, Maslow’s hierarchy is still widely used as a tool to explore personal and cultural growth. We use it here to look at how affluenza gets in the way of satisfaction. Imagine carrying a bulging sack of groceries from the supermarket to your car. What kind of value does the sack contain? What kind of health does the food provide? Between 1950 and 2000, America attained the lowest cost per unit of food in the world, as a percentage of income, but also the highest health care costs per capita. What’s the connection? Are the items in our grocery sacks toxic? Are our habits—and the habits of industry—also toxic?
In America, obesity is a greater health threat than starvation. Because the typical diet is too high in fats and sugars and too low in
unrefined, slow-release carbohydrates, 71 percent of Americans are overweight by an average of ten pounds. An estimated four hundred thousand Americans die each year from unhealthy diets in combination with chronic inactivity. The GDP swells in proportion to our waistlines, since at least $150 billion is spent to control obesity and to treat related diseases. While we continue to gorge, the contents of our grocery sacks deliver diabetes, gallbladder disease, hypertension, cancer, and higher risks of stroke.
The weight-control and health care industries in particular grow large as America tries, unsuccessfully, to grow lean. Our grocery sacks are filled with brightly packaged frustration! On average, we gulp about a 55 gallon drum of soft drinks every year, eat 150 fatty pounds of meat annually, and ingest the equivalent of 53 teaspoons of sugar every day.
Much of our dietary dissatisfaction comes from the lack of vitality that processed food delivers. The loss of control about food choice is also dissatisfying. Sugar is a good example. In 1997, Americans consumed three-fourths more sugar per capita than a hundred years ago, when most of the sugar produced went directly into our homes. In those days, we prepared most of our own meals and determined the amount of sugar that went into them. In today’s world, we’ve lost control, in many ways! More than three-quarters of the sugar produced today goes into the prepared, processed foods in our grocery sack.
Our high-protein diet is a prime example of meeting needs imprecisely. Livestock eat 70 percent of the grain produced in America, yet if humans ate more grain directly, our diet would be seven to eight times more efficient per pound. Essentially, we wouldn’t waste the grain’s energy in the production of mountains of concentrated cow, hog, and chicken manure that pollute our waterways.
As Japan and China adopt a Western diet, previously rare Western diseases like arteriosclerosis and coronary heart disease come with it, explains health guru Andrew Weil. “Japanese women on traditional diets have one of the lowest rates of breast cancer in the world, but when they move to America and eat like Americans, their breast cancer risk quickly rises.”5
Weil notes that there’s far more to eating than the well-known consumer food groups (are those greasy, crunchy, sweet, and salty?). Food has always been a medium of social activity, he explains. The word companion means literally “with bread.” High-quality food delivers satisfaction and contentedness, but low-quality food delivers poor health, irritability, pesticide residues, cancer, farm erosion, and the loss of rural communities as agribusiness giants take over. Simply put, junk food reduces our chances of reaching the top of Maslow’s ladder. Sadly, our excessive diet too often produces lethargic and hyperactive humans who lack the energy and motivation to climb toward peak potential.
IS THE OBJECT SEX?
Monetary wealth is not a prerequisite for self-actualization, but authentic, vital connections are. In our culture, sex is another physical need that sometimes becomes an obstacle, rather than a stepping-stone, to self-actualization. Because sex is so instinctively compelling, it has become one of affluenza’s most virulent carriers. Sex sells. But like food, it’s also a fundamental social bond. Writes Erich Fromm, “The experience of sharing keeps the relation between two individuals alive. . . . Yet the sexual act—the prototype of shared enjoyment—is frequently so narcissistic, self-involved, and possessive that one can speak only of simultaneous, but not of shared pleasure.”6
How much more self-involved can sex be than “cybersex,” an emerging icon of isolation and unreality? “The affordability, accessibility and anonymity of the Internet have spawned a new psychological disorder among men and women who seek sexual stimulation from their computers. Some of these addicts spend hours each day masturbating to online pornographic images or having online sex with someone they have never seen, heard, touched, felt, or smelled.”7 We might call cybersex gratification, but in no way can it be termed satisfaction.
CULTURE CRUNCH
An old story about a native Pacific Islander rings true in the Age of Affluenza. A healthy, self-motivated native relaxes in a hammock that swings gently in front of his seaside hut, as he plays a wooden flute for his family and himself. For dinner, he picks exotic fruits and spears fresh sunfish. He feels glad, and lucky to be alive. (Think of it—he’s on “vacation” most of the time!) Suddenly, without warning, affluenza invades the island. Writes Jerry Mander, “A businessman arrives, buys all the land, cuts down the trees and builds a factory. He hires the native to work in it for money so that someday the native can afford canned fruit and fish from the mainland, a nice cinderblock house near the beach with a view of the water, and weekends off to enjoy it.”8
Like Pacific Island natives, we’ve been cajoled into meeting most of our needs with products brought to us courtesy of multinational corporations—what you might call take-out satisfaction. “Almost every facet of American life has now been franchised,” observes writer Eric Schlosser, “from the maternity ward at a Columbia/HCA hospital to an embalming room owned by the Houston-based Service Corporation International—which today handles the final remains of one of every nine Americans.”9
What’s good for America is good for the world—that’s what the CEOs will tell you. One of the seven modern wonders of the world, the Golden Arches of McDonald’s now grace thirty thousand restaurants in 119 countries, an empire on which the sun never sets. A friend of Dave’s recently returned from China, where he observed a culture clash beneath the arches. “McDonald’s missionaries spread the gospel of high-volume, low-cost fast food,” he says, “but the Chinese don’t really seem to want fast food—although they’re intrigued with American burgers. They want to sit and leisurely drink tea. They don’t get that they’re supposed to be in a hurry. And they can’t go out and sit in their cars to eat, because many came on their bikes.”10
Yet even McDonald’s occasionally makes concessions. In 2001, the company introduced seafood soup, and in 2004, sales jumped when stores modified their generic look and feel with large wall-mounted Chinese characters signifying “happiness.” Affluenza continues to infect Chinese culture, with a hundred new McDonald’s restaurants every year. (In fact, as Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute documents, “Among the five basic food, energy, and industrial commodities—grain and meat, oil and coal, and steel—consumption in China has eclipsed that of the United States in all but oil.”)11
Now that the Great Wall has cracked, can the Taj Mahal be far behind? Will India’s sacred cow become the sacred burger? Culture crunchers have already scored a huge victory in Spain, with a surgical procedure to remove the siesta. In her book, Leap, Terry Tempest Williams describes a conversation she had on an airplane with a Procter & Gamble executive who boasted to her of his role in squeezing out the Spanish siesta. For a thousand years or more, the Spanish had enhanced their quality of life with a luxurious midday break that doesn’t cost a single peseta. Yet in the eyes of commerce, siestas are a complete waste of time. What the world needs is more production, more consumption, less relaxation, and more money. Wake up and get rich! An English friend informs us that the British afternoon tea is also vanishing, along with the traditional sit-down dinner.
However, commerce’s most successful culture coup to date has taken place in the once-fertile frontiers of the American mind. Accounts of North America in the 1600s speak of a forest so vast that a squirrel could travel from what is now Virginia to Illinois “without ever touching the ground.” Today, by virtue of a media-happy free market, it may now be possible for a person to travel from one week to the next without thinking an original thought unshaped by manipulative messages! Much of the territory between our ears has now been commercially “colonized.” The question is, if we get evicted from our own minds, who are we?
WANTING WHAT WE HAVE
Let’s assume you’ve somehow satisfied physical, safety, and security needs, and even Maslow’s “higher” needs for giving and receiving love. You’ve avoided junk food, the carelessness of the health care industry, and the battlefields of wounded rel
ationships that stifle love and belongingness needs. Watch out, because the next rung, esteem, is teeming with viruses. Better wear gloves when you get to the esteem trap. How much of our consumer behavior is dictated by needs for self-esteem and peer approval? In our search to fulfill these needs, we often contort ourselves into human doings rather than human beings.
We look outside ourselves for approval, talking loudly about what we have rather than what we know or what we believe in. Having what we want becomes a more important goal than wanting what we have. And appearance too often becomes more important than reality. Partly as a spin-off from TV programs like Extreme Makeover and The Swan, plastic surgery is now seen by many as an escalator to higher self-esteem. In 2003, plastic surgeons performed just under three million cosmetic procedures, and the number of girls under 18 who received breast implants tripled from 2002 to 2003. Sadly, many of these media victims received cosmetic surgery as a graduation or birthday gift—yet another example of how we try to purchase happiness instead of experiencing it.12
As we identify ourselves with the social species “consumer,” our sense of confidence becomes dependent on things largely out of our control. For example, we suffer mood swings with the rising and falling of economic tides. As of this writing, our “consumer confidence” is bobbing up and down from month to month, down slightly from its peak that preceded the 2001 stock market bust. Our current “poker face” is a bit hard to read. Tellingly, the same issue of the newspaper that reported our highest-ever level of consumer confidence featured an article explaining “Why the Ignorant Are Blissful.”13 David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, demonstrated that people who do things poorly usually appear more confident and self-assured than those who do things well. “Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices,” wrote Dunning, “but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.” The study documented that subjects who scored the lowest on logic, English grammar, and humor tests were also the most likely to overestimate how well they had done.