Our American lifestyle

The Challenge for the New Millennium by David T. Suzuki 

As we reflect upon the recent dawning of a new millennium and the important challenges our species faces at this unique point in time, it might be worthwhile to examine what progress, or rather lack of progress, was made last century in terms of our relationship with the earth.

Ten years ago the Worldwatch Institute designated the 1990s the "Turnaround Decade" to emphasize the fact that it was urgent that we abandon our ecologically destructive ways within ten years if we were to avoid a catastrophic collision with the planet’s life support systems. As if to punctuate that pronouncement, the largest gathering of heads of state ever to assemble in human history, converged for the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 to sign Agenda 21, a plan to turn humanity onto the road to sustainability.

Now as we embark upon a New Year, century and millennium, it is important to recognize that our 1990’s consumption patterns actually accelerated the degradation of the planet’s life support systems. If we look at the loss of topsoil, forests, fish and ozone, alteration of the atmosphere, water pollution and the ubiquitous spread of toxic pollutants, the state of the world is far more perilous now than it was in 1990.

In the past 100 years, the world has been transformed by improvements in health, transportation and material convenience and wealth. Most people alive today were born after 1950, so their entire lives have been during this period of spectacular growth and change that is without precedent in the entire history of our species. As a result, most people today only know that change is a constant and predictable part of their lives. Indeed, we are hooked on change - we expect and demand it. But those changes come at a cost - that have impacted on and altered the nature of traditional families, communities, businesses and ecosystems and substituted an outpouring of consumer goods.

I grew up in southern Ontario in a town called London that had a population of 70,000 when we moved there in 1949. My teen years were spent fishing for food in the Thames River, watching foxes and skunks on my grandparents’ farm at the edge of the city and experiencing magic moments in a beloved swamp near our house. Today London boasts a population of 300,000 that is still growing steadily and supports a strong economy. The Thames is now so polluted no one would think of fishing in it, let alone eating a fish that lives in it. My grandparents’ farm only grows high rise apartment buildings while my enchanted swamp is now covered with a huge shopping plaza and parking lot. Today’s youth must find their pleasure and inspiration in shopping malls, video games and the Internet.

I am perplexed and humiliated by the fact that in the past forty years, the average size of a Canadian family has decreased by 50% while in that same period, the average size of a Canadian home has doubled. So each occupant of a house today has four times as much space. In Texas, entire subdivisions are devoted to houses with 4 to 6 car garages! Apparently we need all of this space to fill it with stuff, all of which is coming from the Earth.

The global economy since 1950 has expanded six fold, but are we six times more fulfilled or happy? If we were dying of old age and reflecting back on the joys of our lifetime, would we think about all of the stuff we owned like big houses, cars and TV sets? I doubt it. Surely we would revel in family, friends, and community and the meaningful activities and interactions we shared with them.

And what of our sense of place, of belonging in a larger community of life? I travel a lot to different parts of the world and wherever I go, I try to meet elders so I can ask them what it was like when they were young. And everywhere the answer begins the same way - "It used to be so different…." They go on to describe the fish, insects, birds or trees that were once abundant and no longer are. But there isn’t empty space waiting for displaced species of plants and animals to occupy and fill up. Earth is fully occupied and fully developed. If plants and animals are no longer found in an area, chances are, they’re gone. Rachel Carson warned in her prescient classic, "Silent Spring", those other species that are our companions and genetic kin, share the air, the soil and the water with us. Somehow that web of biodiversity cleanses and replenishes the very things that sustain us. If the source of our survival and livelihood is disappearing, why do we not pay attention and realize that we too will be affected?

The challenge for the new millennium cannot be to increase consumption or material wealth in the industrialized world. The president of the World Bank recently informed us that 1.3 billion human beings today live on less than $1 a day while 3 billion live on less than $3! We in the rich countries suffer from the consequences of hyperconsumption - obesity, diabetes, alienation, violence, family and community breakdown, etc. Our challenge is to find ways of living more meaningfully as social and spiritual animals, to rediscover communities and caring, sharing and cooperating in ways that bind us together. We must reconnect with our biological roots that will teach us that without clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and a diverse mix of species around us, our lives will be fundamentally impoverished if not imperiled.

David T. Suzuki, PhD, an Advisory Board member of CNAD, has been Prof of Zoology at the Uni. of British Columbia since 1969 and is an Associate with the Sustainable Development Research Institute. Dr. Suzuki is the host of the CBC's "The Nature of Things" and "A Planet for the Taking"; a past recipient of UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for Science, the UN Environmental medal and UNEP's Global 500; as well as co-author of The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature (1998) and Wisdom of the Elders: Honoring Sacred Native Visions of Nature (1992).

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Wealth, Well-Being, and the New American Dream by David G. Myers

Does money buy happiness? Not! Ah, but would a little more money make us a little happier? Many of us smirk and nod. There is, we believe, some connection between fiscal fitness and feeling fantastic. Most of us tell Gallup that, yes, we would like to be rich. Three in four entering American collegians - nearly double the 1970 proportion - now consider it "very important" or "essential" that they become "very well off financially." Money matters.

It’s the old American dream: life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness. "Of course money buys happiness," writes Andrew Tobias. Wouldn’t anyone be happier with the indulgences promised by the magazine sweepstakes: a 40 foot yacht, deluxe motor home, private housekeeper? Anyone who has seen Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous knows as much. "Whoever said money can’t buy happiness isn’t spending it right," proclaimed a Lexus ad.

Well, are rich people happier? Researchers have found that in poor countries, such as Bangladesh, being relatively well off does make for greater well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, social contact.

But a surprising fact of life is that in countries where nearly everyone can afford life’s necessities, increasing affluence matters surprisingly little. The correlation between income and happiness is "surprisingly weak," observed University of Michigan researcher Ronald Inglehart in one 16-nation study of 170,000 people. Once comfortable, more money provides diminishing returns. The second piece of pie, or the second $100,000, never tastes as good as the first.

Even lottery winners and the Forbes’ 100 wealthiest Americans (when surveyed by University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener) have expressed only slightly greater happiness than the average American. Making it big brings temporary joy. But in the long run wealth is like health: Its utter absence can breed misery, but having it doesn’t guarantee happiness. Happiness seems less a matter of getting what we want than of wanting what we have.

Has our happiness, however, floated upward with the rising economic tide? In 1957, when economist John Galbraith was about to describe the United States as the Affluent Society, Americans’ per person income, expressed in today’s dollars, was $8700. Today it is $20,000. Compared to 1957, we are now "the doubly affluent society" - with double what money buys. We have twice as many cars per person. We eat out two and a half times as often. In the late 1950s, few Americans had dishwashers, clothes dryers, or air conditioning; today, most do.

So, believing that a little more money would make us a little happier and that it’s very important to be very well off, are we indeed now - after four decades of rising affluence - happier?

We are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are "very happy" has declined from 35 to 32 percent. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has nearly tripled, the violent crime rate has nearly quadrupled (even after the recent decline), and more people than ever (especially teens and young adults) are depressed.

I call this soaring wealth and shrinking spirit "the American paradox." More than ever, we have big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger.

These facts of life explode a bombshell underneath our society’s materialism: Economic growth has provided no boost to human morale. When it comes to psychological well-being, it is not the economy, stupid.

We know it, sort of. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow reports that 89 percent of people say "our society is much too materialistic." Other people are too materialistic, that is. For 84 percent also wished they had more money, and 78 percent said is was "very or fairly important" to have "a beautiful home, a new car and other nice things."

One has to wonder, what’s the point? "Why," wondered the prophet Isaiah, "do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" What’s the point of accumulating stacks of unplayed CD’s, closets full of seldom worn clothes, garages with luxury cars-all purchased in a vain quest for an elusive joy? And what’s the point of leaving significant inherited wealth to one’s heirs, as if it could buy them happiness, when that wealth could do so much good in a hurting world?

As we enter the new millennium more and more people are asking such questions. A new American dream is taking shape. Having secured our human rights and achieved affluence, we now long for connection and purpose. We seek better balance between our needs for independence and attachment, liberty and civility, me-thinking and we-thinking. Such transformation in consciousness has happened before, and can happen again.

David G. Myers is a psychology professor at Michigan’s Hope College. Excerpts from his latest book, The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (Yale University Press, 2000), can be read at www.davidmyers.org. In April, he will facilitate the Center for a New American Dream's quarterly listserv conversation. 

These articles are distributed courtesy the Center for a New American Dream’s bi-monthly syndicated column which explores the connections between consumption, quality of life, environment, and values. For more information about the Center, check out its website at www.newdream.org, email newdream@newdream.org or call 1-877-68-DREAM.