Alternative Perspective
 Afflicted by Affluence
Issue 48, March 23rd, 2004
Compiled by Madhukar Shukla

 Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media. Please feel free to share/ forward/ distribute this newsletter to others who may be interested.

The Paradox of Our Time in History is that
we spend more, but have less;
we buy more, but enjoy it less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
more medicine, but less wellness.
We read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
These are the times of tall men, and short character;
steep profits, and shallow relationships.
These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce;
of fancier houses, but broken homes.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life;
we've added years to life, not life to years;
we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
 - from a 1999 internet chain mail



Note: The URLs of sources used in the text are numbered and given at the end of the Newsletter.

In This Issue:
  • Affluence: When More is Less
    The advantage of being affluent is that it increases our choices... and since some amount of choice in life makes it good and wholesome, we tend to believe that the more choices we have, the better and happier the life would be. And thus, we get caught in this Paradox of Choice[1]; searching for happiness in having more choices with lesser time, more possessions with lesser satisfaction, more to eat with lesser health... Poverty and hunger may be an ill for a vast number of people in the world, but, as this article points out, in the developed and developing countries, social problems and complaints stem from economic growth and affluence as well.
    http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4522583

  • The Affluent Society
    More than our decades back, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote: "The final problem of the productive society is what it produces. This manifests itself in an implacable tendency to provide an opulent supply of some things and a niggardly yield of others... the survival of poverty is remarkable. We ignore it because we share with all societies at all times the capacity for not seeing what we do not wish to see." But besides, income disparities and poverty, affluence has other social costs as well, e.g., The Double-Income Trap[2], which paradoxically makes families financially less stable and secure; an increasing drain of envoronmental/ natural resources[3], an unbalanced lifestyle[4] which seems to be becoming an epidemic, etc.
    http://www.wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/ext/ap/chapter28/28.1.affluentsociety.html

  • The Malignant Self-Actualization Syndrome
    Perhaps, every age has its own unique forms of popular neurosis. If the ailments of the past stemed from unsatified needs, the contemporary form of collective neurosis is rooted in an illusion of having gone "beyond the needs." The key symptoms are: a "life-style", constructed around personal conveniences, an obsession with appearance, a need to seek the recluse in the "shopping therapy", etc.... A unique symptom of this disease is the compulsive need to "remain young"[5], and a refusal - in fact, abhorance - to grow old.
    http://www.newint.org/issue355/ishop.htm

  • The Tyranny of Choice
    With affluence, life, in all its facets, becomes a shopping-mall. As we are busy making our choices ranging from vacations to go to, food cereal to consume, or courses to take, it also reinforces a sort of invisible cause-and-effect relationship: more affluence leads to greater freedom to make individualized choices, which leads to more privatised and secluded lives. What get sacrificed in the process are the social ties - since, after all, social commitments reduce personal freedom... and unlike earlier times, when certain relationships were socially given, even these are now subject to personalized choices... it is sometime worth thinking that most things which give us happiness (family, valued relationships, satisfying hobbies, fulfilling work, etc.) actually bind us down and reduce our choices in life!!!
    http://www.sju.edu/academics/cr/Print%20The%20Chronicle%201-23-2004%20The%20Tyranny%20of%20Choice.htm

  • Being Affluent is not same as Being Happy
    If one is living with the assumption that affluence will bring happiness, even the studies (e.g., this one by London School of Economics) show no - or in some cases, a negative - correlation between the two. That Bangladesh can be the happiest nation in the world (or that people in countries like Ghana, India or Croatia are happierthan those in richer nations such as US or UK), can cause one to question either the nature of happiness or entertain doubts about the validity of affluence as its indicator. In either case, the age old dictum holds good, viz., money can't buy happiness in the marketplace[6].
    http://www.inspirationalstories.com/cgi-bin/printer.pl?302


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2004-01-20-paradox-of-choice_x.htm
    [2]: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0917/p12s03-lign.html
    [3]: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/11/1050777289095.html
    [4]: http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?art_id=11083525
    [5]: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1079824207503
    [6]: http://www.commondreams.org/views/052800-105.htm


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