| Growth Fetish |
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| Monday, 01 August 2005 | |
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For
the first time in human history we have the opportunity to live
authentic lives, free of preoccupation with the basic needs of
survival, writes Clive Hamilton in his recent book, Growth Fetish.
Yet just as it becomes possible to take the hero's journey of
personal growth without demanding heroics, we are allowing ourselves
to be seduced by the trivial indulgences of consumer society.
"Most
of us are now freed from the daily need to put food on the table and
worry about economic security, because the fact is that most people
in rich countries are very wealthy by any standard, Dr Hamilton told
Future News.
"Constraints of social class, gender and race have largely fallen away, and we have the opportunity for the first time to find our authentic identities -- to live out who we are rather than responding to the dictates of society and the economy. And yet just as this opportunity emerged in recent decades, the marketers stepped in and started manufacturing identities for us. "My book is about imagining a post growth society in which we cast off our obsession with material consumption and try, each of us, to find what our lives are meant to be about." While Hamilton's book was described as "radical" by one reviewer, his central theme rests on principles that have been accepted as self-evident wisdom in many societies over many centuries. And it will be familiar to members of today's change community, whose profile makes a comfortable fit with the emerging social class dubbed "creative", and who have been embracing alternatives to the consumption society since the 1960s. The good news is that Hamilton presents these ideas with the kind of logic and evidence that make it easier for traditional thinkers to join the seachange, as he challenges them to ask themselves "how should I live?" rather than "what should I buy?". He reminds us that our private obsession with more income and better goods, and our societal obsession with "growth", are not likely to make us any happier. A substantial body of research shows that after leaving the classification of genuine poverty, more money does not increase happiness (see notes on the Easterlin Paradox in Future News, April 2003). Instead, by stretching the gap between what we have and what we want, affluence can increase dissatisfaction. The alternative, says Hamilton, is to abandon the pursuit of more things and seek instead the goal of meaning and happiness in life. He borrows the term "eudemonism" from Aristotle, to describe the notion that there is a spirit within each person and the purpose of life is to find, be true to and live out that spirit or inner purpose. Or, to put it in the more formal language of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, to adopt "a system of ethics basing moral obligation on likelihood of actions to produce happiness". "That is an idea that resonates with me and many people," Hamilton said. "Joseph Campbell summarised it in that powerful phrase, 'follow your bliss'. This is what I see as authenticity, the pursuit and enjoyment of an authentic life, the path that calls each person to seek their purpose of life and to live out that purpose." |
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