[Neurons] Meta Reflection - A World without Consumerism

[Tom Kelsall]

From: Tom Kelsall
Re: Meta Reflection - A World without Consumerism


How is our search for happiness through consumerism effecting the  
environment?...


How often have we thought if I just get ‘that’, then I’ll be happy?  
Sometimes it becomes even unconscious... we just feel excited about  
the new purchase we are about to make, right?  Last week I even  
overheard a women lamenting to her friend, "I just spent $80 on a  
beach umbrella, I don't know what happened, I just had to have it!"

What if many of the things we seek are simply us trying to fill the  
void of unhappiness? If you just stop and think for a moment or  
remember a time when...? Yes thats right... we’ve all done it haven’t  
we... bought something to ‘make’ us feel happier! Clothes, homewares,  
computers, music, gadgets, cars and even homes!  As Michael says in  
his Meta Reflection, we are using lower needs to try and fulfill a  
higher order need - in this case happiness.  Because if we go further  
up the logical levels of whatever we are seeking we will come to  
happiness.  You can test this by asking yourself this chunking up  
question, and repeating it for each response you come up with, until  
you find your highest level - "if I got this, what would it give me?"

I know an architect who says, "You will be surprised by how many  
clients come to me to renovate, extend or build homes in order to save  
their marriage"

When we look at truly happy people, what is it that they want for?  
Researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of  
Pennsylvania stated that, in a 1985 survey, respondents from the  
Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans and the Maasai of East Africa  
were almost equally satisfied and ranked relatively high in well- 
being. The Maasai are a traditional herding people who have no  
electricity or running water and live in huts made of dung - and  
certainly not much in the way of consumerism!

"It follows that economic development and personal income must not  
account for the happiness that they are so often linked to," the  
academics note (Source: Forbes.com, 2006)

If you look at your friends, who do you feel are the happiest? Is it  
those with the most money? The biggest houses? The luxury cars?

Now, you can probably sense where this is heading... when we take this  
individual search for happiness through ‘external’ gratification and  
consumerism to its natural conclusion we have large populations of  
people who want bigger and better things and this all requires  
resources. Resources that ultimately come from the environment.  
Resources to manufacture, package, distribute and market products to  
make people ‘happy’

The final syllogism is quite simply this... when we are being happy on  
the inside we won’t continue to seek happiness on the outside, in  
people, events, places and things, and when we do this we will want  
for less and make less demands on the environment

Ultimately, to save the environment would we be best to 'save'  
ourselves first? To solve the problem at the level of the problem?  
Encouraging people to be environmental conscious may help a bit and it  
doesn’t address the underlying problem that when we are happy in who  
we are being (on the inside), we simply will be happy with far less  
because we already have what we really need

A world without consumerism - it would be a happy one, wouldn't it?
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