Finding Real Wealth: From a Consumer Culture to Social Well-Being

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The principles of simple living compiled in this collection from editors Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska will resonate with a huge percentage of the population suffering from consumption-fatigue. COVER: NEW SOCIETY PUBLISHERS

The following excerpt by Dave Wann is from the collection Less is More (New Society Publishers, 2009). This compilation of essays comes from some of the most respected voices to grace the simple living movement over the past few decades. 

Taken as a whole, we North Americans are overfed but undernourished. Socially, psychologically and physically, we are not fully meeting human needs. Although the TV commercials would have us believe that every itch can be scratched with a trip to the mall, the truth is we’re consuming more now but enjoying it less. According to surveys taken by the U.S. National Science Foundation for the past 30 years, even with steady increases in income, our level of overall happiness has actually tapered off. Why is this?

Deficiencies of a Consumer Culture

Many believe it’s because a lifestyle of overconsumption creates deficiencies in things that we really need, like health, social connections, security and discretionary time. These deficiencies of a consumer culture leave us vulnerable to daily lives of dependency and passive consumption — working, watching and waiting. The typical urban resident waits in line five years of his or her life and spends six months sitting at red lights, eight months opening junk mail, one year searching for misplaced items and four years cleaning house. Every year, the typical high-school student spends 1,500 hours in front of the tube, compared with 900 hours spent at school. And this in not just an American addiction: a 2004 French survey representing 2.5 billion people in 72 countries documented an average of 3.5 hours of TV watched every day!

Yet, the game is changing. Just as we approach an all-time peak in consumption, converging variables such as shrinking resource supplies, necessitate changes in the way we live. Here’s the good news: reducing our levels of consumption will not be a sacrifice, but a bonus, if we simply redefine the meaning of the word “success.”

Instead of more stuff in our already-stuffed lives, we can choose fewer things but better things of higher quality, fewer visits to the doctor and more visits to museums and the houses of friends. We can choose greater use of our hands and minds in creative activities like playing a flute or building a new kitchen table. If we are successful as a culture, we’ll get more value from each transaction, each relationship and each unit of energy; by reducing the waste and carelessness that now litter our economy — energy hogs like aluminum cans and plastic bottles, huge thirsty lawns, excessive airplane travel, feedlot meat and suburbs without stores — we can finance the coming transition to a lifestyle that feels more comfortable in the present and doesn’t clear-cut the future.