| — | Henry David Thoreau (via mnmal) |
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
Published on 15 Aug 2010/The Scotland Herald
Oliver James
Last week a friend told me she had received more than 200 applications for a junior job in an audio-visual unit in an advertising agency, salary £12,000, location: London.
With graduates spewing out of universities in unprecedented numbers and with unprecedented levels of debt, there is already an extreme shortage of jobs for the young. And we ain’t seen nothing yet.
When the real cuts in public expenditure are announced in October, the phoney war will be over. Until now the damage has been limited by staggeringly low interest rates – keeping mortgages affordable – combined with the fact millions are taking pay cuts and reduced working hours to avoid redundancy. While pensioners relying on savings interest and company dividends have been hammered, and unemployment has risen, the real extent of the harm done by the collapse of the banking sector to the rest of the economy has been largely invisible.
But for me, the great question is this: will our new relative lack of affluence and shortage of jobs lead to a much-needed shift in values? You might suppose people will become more, not less, obsessed with money. But it does not have to be that way.
For 50 years we have been becoming increasingly materialistic – placing too high a value on money, possessions, appearances and fame. This Affluenza virus, as I call it, has been proven in dozens of studies to directly cause a greater risk of the commonest mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety.
Incubated in the 1960s, the virus was spread wider and in more virulent form by Mrs Thatcher and her Blatcherite successors (Blair and Brown). This selfish capitalism (free market economics) has greatly increased our likelihood of mental illness: we are twice as likely to suffer (23% of us) than our mainland Western European cousins (only 12%), who have relatively unselfish capitalist economies. Another hard piece of evidence came recently from America (and almost certainly applies over here).
Extensive research by San Diego State University psychologist Prof Jean Twenge showed that young people are about five times more likely to be mentally ill today, compared with the young 60 to 70 years ago. The biggest factor may be that they have also become much more materialistic. Twenge showed that the changes were not down to fluctuations in the economic cycle, nor to increased readiness to define oneself as mentally ill.
Rather, she showed that the young were increasingly likely to say they placed a high importance on “having lots of money”. At the same time, they became decreasingly likely to subscribe to non-materialistic values such as “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” and “making a contribution to the community”. Our national obsession with home ownership spread Affluenza widely. Young people came to regard large debts as a healthy, natural way of life. But to some degree, nearly all of us became shop-till-you-drop, credit-addicted consumer junkies, workaholics earning the next fix.
Instead of these materialistic values, we need goals and motives that are driven by real satisfaction of authentic needs. That means a greater concern with the pleasure of an activity for its own sake, rather than possible external benefits. Like children’s play, this kind of activity takes the person into a state of “flow”, where time passes without your noticing, a state of full absorption. I witness this in my children every day, but adults can have lives like that too. It’s often achieved by pursuing paid work that is interesting to you rather than seeking promotion or greater salaries – within a corporation, for example, putting interest in the work ahead of material or promotional gains. Oddly enough, that can actually lead to greater success, although it is not the goal.
Less materialistically motivated populations tend to be more family and community minded. In societies like Denmark, for example, people are much more liable to be concerned about the wellbeing of a child who seems distressed in public. If a wallet is dropped, it’s much more likely to be handed in. There are much higher levels of trust between people of all ages, less cynicism about government.
The shift to healthier values – from having to being – will not happen suddenly. The young have been disastrously ill-educated by a toxic mixture of too much television viewing, parental divorce, emotional deprivation, exam-focused schooling and indebtedness. But there were already signs before the credit crunch that they were kicking their Affluenza.
Based on solid evidence from the British Household Survey, sociologist Geoff Dench recently showed that women in their late teens and 20s are rejecting their mothers’ obsession with work. When asked how they will react if they have children, they are increasingly likely to anticipate putting looking after their small children at home ahead of doing paid work. Equally, there are signs that the young of both sexes are less likely to put earnings ahead of job satisfaction in seeking a career.
The economic downturn means that in the coming years we can be sure there will be a significant decline in household incomes. But the outlook need not be entirely gloomy. For I believe there will be a gradual increase in the extent to which people come to realise that they do not need such high incomes if they spend less. As we rediscover the difference between real needs and false wants – confected by advertising and peer pressure – we will start to wake up and smell the coffee: compared with much of the population of the world, nearly all of us are incredibly wealthy. If we can just get on with enjoying that wealth through better family lives, intimate friendships, communities and enjoyable hobbies, we will be a whole lot more mentally healthy.
Oliver James is a clinical psychologist and the author of several books including Affluenza (see www.selfishcapitalist.com). He is at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this week on Thursday at 10am and 7pm, and Friday at 3pm www.edbookfest.co.uk
