From the Investopedia website:
What Does Affluenza Mean?
A social condition arising from the desire to be more wealthy, successful or to "keep up with the Joneses". Affluenza is symptomatic of a culture that holds up financial success as one of the highest achievements. People said to be affected by affluenza typically find that the very economic success they have been so vigorously chasing ends up leaving them feeling unfulfilled, and wishing for yet more wealth.
A social condition arising from the desire to be more wealthy, successful or to "keep up with the Joneses". Affluenza is symptomatic of a culture that holds up financial success as one of the highest achievements. People said to be affected by affluenza typically find that the very economic success they have been so vigorously chasing ends up leaving them feeling unfulfilled, and wishing for yet more wealth.
Investopedia explains Affluenza
Affluenza is arguably present in the United States, where the culture is one that prides itself on possessions and financial success. Mainstream media outlets, such as television broadcasts, tend to show how pervasive the idea has become.
While affluenza cannot be quantified easily, those wishing to avoid the condition should look to be the master of, not a slave to, the things they have or wish to obtain.
Affluenza is arguably present in the United States, where the culture is one that prides itself on possessions and financial success. Mainstream media outlets, such as television broadcasts, tend to show how pervasive the idea has become.
While affluenza cannot be quantified easily, those wishing to avoid the condition should look to be the master of, not a slave to, the things they have or wish to obtain.
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Ron and I were having a conversation about economics, something he understands much better than I do, and the conversation came around to this idea. I was trying to explain my cynical view that if we didn't value having stuff so much, that we wouldn't need bigger and bigger houses, and maybe people wouldn't have tried to get into houses they really couldn't afford, and so on and so on. Maybe. And what if our values as a culture were to change so that the intangible became more important than the tangible? Would that make everything better? If competitiveness in all individuals were to theoretically come down a notch or two all at the same time, would that change in values "trickle up" to the top of the biggest companies; would the economy be healthier? (I tend to think in these unrealistic simplistic terms, whereas Ron understands the complexities of these things much better than I do.)
My cynicism also leads me to bemoan the fact that while we complain about the high prices of things, we also complain when labor is shipped overseas to make those things cheaper. We fail to understand the cause and effect relationship between our demands, and the continued efforts of businesses to meet our demands, feeding the vicious cycle. It takes a strong, confident company with vision to be able to choose to sacrifice some profit initially for the sake of keeping its workforce local on principal and/or because it sees that as the best way to serve its customers, ultimately increasing profit. The more we demand that kind of practice, the more it will happen, but we may have to pay more for it. The same goes for other business practices that we deem to be more responsible in some way. It's called voting with our dollars. We have the power to influence the market in the way we want to see it go.
My cynicism also leads me to bemoan the fact that while we complain about the high prices of things, we also complain when labor is shipped overseas to make those things cheaper. We fail to understand the cause and effect relationship between our demands, and the continued efforts of businesses to meet our demands, feeding the vicious cycle. It takes a strong, confident company with vision to be able to choose to sacrifice some profit initially for the sake of keeping its workforce local on principal and/or because it sees that as the best way to serve its customers, ultimately increasing profit. The more we demand that kind of practice, the more it will happen, but we may have to pay more for it. The same goes for other business practices that we deem to be more responsible in some way. It's called voting with our dollars. We have the power to influence the market in the way we want to see it go.
That led to a discussion of the natural human desire to continue economic growth indefinitely, to continue improving the quality of life, and for countries coming out of poverty to keep on growing economically. Putting a ceiling on growth is not something that we are inclined to want to do. It doesn't seem natural to restrain ourselves in that way. Plus, to the individual, who is not constantly aware of resource limitations, population growth and environmental degradation, in their everyday life, it may be hard to imagine a ceiling even exists, or should exist.
Being the idealist that I am, I still cannot help wondering if injecting a little moderation into some point in the vicious cycle would take the edge off the crisis. Ron and I discussed the idea of "self-correction", the idea that the markets tend to correct themselves over time, sometimes painfully, as people learn and adapt. But history tells us that some societies have self-corrected by totally collapsing, before they could learn and adapt. So we know it does happen. Just as the body can only heal itself up to a point, so a society may only be able to count on natural balancing up to a point.
Being the idealist that I am, I still cannot help wondering if injecting a little moderation into some point in the vicious cycle would take the edge off the crisis. Ron and I discussed the idea of "self-correction", the idea that the markets tend to correct themselves over time, sometimes painfully, as people learn and adapt. But history tells us that some societies have self-corrected by totally collapsing, before they could learn and adapt. So we know it does happen. Just as the body can only heal itself up to a point, so a society may only be able to count on natural balancing up to a point.
Our faith teaches us that there is more to life than what we see here, that a better life awaits us. But what do we do while we are here? I guess we could accept the fate of collapse as the natural order of things. Or we could at least go down fighting to keep history from repeating itself. Whatever we don't know, we can know this, that the earth is finite, that population growth is continuing, that resources, even renewable ones are being depleted, and that because of this, future wars may likely be over those resources. In fact some already are.
I'm certainly not an expert on this, but maybe the global nature of many of our problems is exactly what could help us. If we are all faced with the same basic issues, and we are all dependent on each other, the motivation for a concerted effort might be all the greater, and the pool of knowledge and innovation all the deeper to draw from. We can hope that that is the case, and we can try to insure that it is, can't we?
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