by John de Graaf; David Wann; Thomas H Naylor; David Horsey; Vicki Robin
▪ Do we receive fulfillment, satisfaction, and value in proportion to life energy spent?
▪ Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with our values and life purpose?
You don’t expect weight alone to measure whether a person is sick or well. Nor would blood pressure, by itself, tell you if a person is healthy. Similarly, a grand total of expenditures (like GDP) blindly measures quantity but not quality. It can’t distinguish thriving from surviving.
MAKING PERSONAL HISTORY
A very simple measurement of well-being, or gladness to be alive, is whether you’re anxious to get out of bed in the morning. But the cold, hard truth is, you may jump energetically out of bed one morning only to be laid off by midafternoon (so much for gladness to be alive). Or worse, you could suddenly find out you have an illness even more critical than affluenza and have only a year to live. Are you really doing what’s most important, such as making connections with people, ideas, and nature? What have you always wanted to do that you haven’t done yet, because you’ve been too busy making and spending money? How can you do more of what you’re most proud of accomplishing?
These are the kinds of questions that enable us to take stock, and take control, of our lives. Honest answers strip away illusions and worn-out patterns. They help get to the heart of what really matters. As Irvin Yalom observed, “Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.”1
A good first step in repossessing your life is to identify what you value most. Record the most significant events of your life in a notebook, including personal relationships, births and deaths, achievements, adventures, enlightenments, and disappointments. Recall the first house of your adult life, the first time you fell in love. Note the relative importance of material possessions. Have they satisfied as fully as the connections, emotions, and actions of your life?
Now, jot down a list of principles that are most important to you—things like fairness, trust, unconditional love, taking care of nature, financial security, fearlessness, maintenance of health. These are the principles to base your life decisions on, because they are your greatest, highest values. Apply these principles in your relationships, your career, and your plans for the future, and ask yourself if the constant pursuit of wealth and stuff isn’t more effort than it’s worth.
When you perform your annual check-up, get out your notebook and review the memoir in progress. Do any events of the past year deserve inclusion in life’s “greatest hits"? With another year behind you, are there events that now seem less important? Which people from the past year of your life do you most admire? Have you followed your personal code of ethics, with maybe a few forgivable exceptions?
WHAT REALLY MATTERS
Now comes the knockout punch—good night, affluenza! By cross-referencing your personal history and values with your annual expenditures, you can determine if you’re living life on your terms. Every year when you file your taxes, also file your self-audit—but don’t give yourself a deadline. (After all, the idea here is to give yourself a lifeline.) Are your consumption expenditures consistent with what really matters? Have you spent too much on housing, entertainment, or electronic gadgets? Did your expenditures cause you to work overtime, in turn reducing family time? Are you happy with the charitable contributions you made? Are you getting anything back from the money you spent?
COMMUNITY CHECK-UP: INDICATORS OF SUSTAINABILITY
A recent issue of the Denver Post reported various surveys in which the mile-high city ranked high, nationally, in terms of “livability." But the same issue reported that Denver’s growing traffic problem also ranked near the top. Sure, you take some bad with the good, but how much bad do you take?
That’s essentially the question community activists asked themselves a decade ago in Seattle, when they pulled together a cross-section of business leaders, elected officials, doctors, environmentalists, and others to create a checklist of sustainability indicators for the metropolitan area. (By “sustainability,” they mean “long-term health and vitality—cultural, economic, environmental, and social.") Keeping track of forty indicators is no small feat, but project coordinator Lee Hatcher is convinced the indicators provide more comprehensive feedback on the health of people, places, and the economy of Seattle than conventional gauges like property values and housing starts. Already, hundreds of Seattle citizens have put in thousands of hours of volunteer time to create and maintain the indicators.
In 2005, Sustainable Seattle began a process of analyzing its indicators and creating new ones where needed. Hatcher points out how linkages among indicators help foster holistic thinking in a community. “Take the indicator for the number of wild salmon returning to spawn,” he says. “That one is linked to the economy—tourism, recreation, and fishing—as well as the environment—logging and runoff from streets that pollute streams. If we begin to see larger populations of salmon, it probably means we’re taking better care of the habitat we share with them.”2
If a community has excellent arts education for children, the juvenile crime rate may fall, high school graduation rates may increase, and overall employment may also improve. However, if the number of children in poverty increases, both crime and sickness may increase, resulting in long-term scars in the community.
For Linda Storm, a Seattle resident for eighteen years, the indicators provide important feedback about specific qualities that she values. “What Sustainable Seattle means to me is being able to find places close to home where I can walk and see my neighbors (Pedestrian-Friendly Streets, Open Space in Urban Villages, Neighborliness), breathe fresh, clean air (Air Quality), and see native plants (Biodiversity, Wetlands).”3 Yet many of these qualities are declining in proportion to the decline in indicators such as Impervious Surfaces (59 percent of Seattle’s land area has now been paved over).
The news isn’t always what we want to hear, but having relevant feedback about community health can at least stimulate intensive care. Says Hatcher, “Indicators are like the gauges and dials of an aircraft’s instrument panel. By designing them carefully and watching them closely, we know the status of our flight and can make good decisions about where to go. Without indicators, we’re just flying by the seat of our pants.”
NATIONAL CHECK-UP: THE GENUINE PROGRESS INDICATOR (GPI)
Newscasters, investment brokers, and lenders are among those who rely on the gross domestic product (GDP) as an indicator of national prosperity. But does GDP really tell us if our economy is healthy? Economists with an organization called Redefining Progress don’t think so. In a report titled “Why Bigger Isn’t Better" they write,
Imagine receiving an annual holiday letter from distant friends, reporting their best year, because more money was spent than ever before. It began during the rainy season when the roof sprang leaks and their yard in the East Bay hills started to slide. The many layers of roofing had to be stripped to the rafters before the roof could be reconstructed, and engineers were required to keep the yard from eroding away. Shortly after, Jane broke her leg in a car accident. A hospital stay, surgery, physical therapy, replacing the car, and hiring help at home took a bite out of their savings. Then they were robbed, and replaced a computer, two TVs, a VCR, and a video camera. They also bought a home security system, to keep these new purchases safe.4
These people spent more money than ever and contributed slightly to a rise in GDP, but were they happier? Not likely, in that year from hell. And what about a nation in which GDP continues to grow? Are its citizens happier? Clearly, that depends on how the money is being spent.
A central mission of Redefining Progress is to spotlight the “bads" that are hiding out in the gross domestic product, a yardstick that has for the last half century been a drug of choice for conventional economists. As long as the GDP goes higher, everything’s cool. Politicians point to a swelling GDP as proof that their economic policies are working, and investors reassure themselves that with the overall expansion of the ec
onomy, their stocks will also expand. Yet even the chief architect of the GDP (then GNP), Simon Kuznets, believed that “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement like GNP.”5
Here’s why: although the overall numbers continue to rise, many key variables have grown worse. As we have already mentioned, the gap between the rich and everyone else is expanding. In addition, the nation is borrowing more and more from abroad, a symptom of anemic savings and mountains of household debt. The economic and environmental costs of our addiction to fossil fuels continue to mount.
When a city cuts down shade trees to widen a street and homeowners have to buy air conditioning, the GDP goes up. It also goes up when families pay for day care and divorce, when new prisons are built, and when doctors prescribe antide-pressants. Pollution is a big hitter, too, as Redefining Progress’s Michel Gelobter explains. “The GDP counts pollution at least four times—when it’s produced, when it’s cleaned up, when there are health care costs, and when there are legal fees to settle lawsuits.”6 In fact, careful analysis reveals much of the economy as tracked by GDP is based on crime, waste, and environmental destruction!
In contrast to GDP—which lumps all monetary transactions together—GPI evaluates the expenses, adding in “invisible” assets such as housework, parenting, and volunteer work, but subtracting the following “bads” from the national economy:
As a tool for an annual check-up of the nation, a growing legion of top-level economists propose that the Genuine Progress Indicator be reported right alongside the annual GDP, to show the well-being of the economy.
And additional measures are needed to track our use of natural resources— what we have versus what we use. Measures like RP’s Ecological Footprint help us to see how our consumptive lifestyles are annually eating up resources faster than nature can regenerate them. Like the spendthrift who goes on a shopping spree with a savings account, we won’t have the steady supply of interest coming to us from nature in future years if we keep this up.
Swiss economist Mathis Wackernagel says, “The ecological footprint is gaining a foothold in the market analysis. Some banks have hired us to analyze the security of government bonds. They want to know, Do countries have ecological deficits? Are they overspending their natural wealth?”7
The Genuine Progress Indicator and the Ecological Footprint are really common sense with an analytical, pragmatic edge. National vitality, like personal health and community health, is not really about PowerPoint graphs and mindless business-as-usual, but about real things like the health of people, places, natural capital, and future generations. At all levels of our society, it’s time to schedule a holistic annual check-up.
CHAPTER 30
Healthy again
One word to you and your children:
stay together, learn the flowers, go light.
—GARY SNYDER,
Turtle Island
Everyone knows the feeling of waking up after a long illness and suddenly, miraculously, feeling full of life again! Being anxious to dive back into things that have been neglected and to try new things, too. Not feeling isolated, powerless, or estranged anymore. That’s what happens when we beat affluenza. Imagine a dial on your wristwatch with only two readings—Life and Death. (Wouldn’t that simplify things?) When you shift priorities to pursue what really matters, the needle on that dial buoyantly wobbles back toward Life.
In the course of writing this book, we’ve talked with many people whose ideas became part of our own thought processes. One early reader of the manuscript saw similarities between victims of affluenza and prisoners of war. “Except we’re prisoners of an economy that destroys our environment, our communities, and our peace of mind,” he said. “Imagine what it must feel like when the war is over and we’re liberated. Or when affluenza is purged from our lives. We’ll feel such a sense of freedom and such a sense of lightness.”
After reading about historically low savings rates in the United States, another reviewer imagined fifty million people retiring all at once with virtually no savings and rapidly gearing down their lifestyles. “There’s gonna be one huge garage sale,” he said, shaking his head. “I can see the signs now: Ford Excursion, near-new, $300. Big-screen TV (56-inch), free. Hot tub, free.”
A third reader commented that each of our homes seems to have an elephant in the living room that we try desperately to ignore: it represents our preoccupation with an excessive and often obsessive lifestyle. “We can’t figure out how to chase it out, so we learn to just live with it,” he said.
But maybe we don’t have to. There are thousands of actions we can take to beat the Bug—and oust the elephant. Though largely out of sight of the mainstream media, much is already being done, in classic grassroots style. There are major changes in the workplace, from dress codes to employee ownership. There’s a resurgence of faith and spirituality, and a growing commitment to better health, including high-quality food, alternative medicine, and personal-care products “green" enough to eat (skin cream made of oatmeal, shampoo made from rice and ginger). A recent poll conducted by professional homebuilders found that energy efficiency has in recent years become one of the top considerations for homebuyers. Connections are being made between what we consume and what’s happening to the environment. Clearly, our economy is in transition.
We hope this book equips readers with remedies for affluenza that have already worked for millions of people. A common thread in the recovery process is being able to admit we have a problem —which is equally true at the scale of the individual, the community, the bioregion, and the nation.
COMING BACK TO LIFE
Systems thinker Joanna Macy urges our civilization to take a deep breath, admit we have a major problem, and collectively go cold turkey. She’s working to create a new world ethic based on the way nature —and human nature —actually work (lifestyles based on reality—what a concept). In the past, as she discusses in the book Coming Back to Life, we’ve looked at the world as a collection of parts and pieces, but now we’re ready for a Great Turning, a new way of understanding.1
The idea that life is interdependent and self-organizing has always been perceived on a spiritual level, and now that perception is manifesting itself in biology and physics. Faith, says Macy, is becoming fact, as scientists compile evidence that the world’s living systems “are not heaps of disjunct parts, but are dynamically organized and intricately balanced—interdependent in every movement, every function, every exchange of energy and information.”2
Macy points out that the earth’s systems use feedback just as a thermostat does, to stay healthy. But she believes human feedback is being squelched by an economy with a one-track mind. “It’s natural for us to be distressed over the state of the world,” she believes. “We are integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When that body is traumatized, we feel it. . . . However, our culture conditions us to view pain as dysfunction. A successful person, as we conclude from commercials and electoral campaigns, brims with optimism. . . . ‘Be sociable,’ ‘Keep smiling,’ ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’”
But until we acknowledge that our environment and many aspects of our culture are sick, how can we take focused action to heal them? “The problem lies not with our pain for the world, but in our repression of it,” she concludes. “Our efforts to dodge or dull it block effective response.” Similarly, our voluntary separation from political and social participation diminishes the collective power of citizens. When we operate strictly as “me” rather than “we,” we’ve essentially been divided and conquered.
We live our lives in the shadow of delirious assumptions such as “We own the earth,” and “Faster is better.” (To this latter belief, Gandhi responded, “Speed is irrelevant if you’re traveling in the wrong direction.”) A vintage Doritos commercial typifies our flu-contaminated worldview: “Crunch all you want, we’ll make more.” But Macy and many others present new ways of seeing the world
that strengthen our immune systems against this conveyor-belt mind-set. They see beyond the glitter and glitz to a more grounded, abundant reality. Instead of window-shopping (or e-shopping) to buy life, they urge us to more passionately live it.
DREAMING A NEW DREAM
Betsy Taylor, director of the Center for a New American Dream, consciously operates in the “we” mode. She has the courage to see the damage we’re doing and work actively to counter it. “Our house is on fire,” she says with conviction, “and there are children inside.”3 (Like many of her colleagues, she believes the smoke alarm went off when the Industrial Revolution began.) “Global warming now threatens the very fabric of life,” she says. “Yet humanity remains in denial.”
“Individuals acting alone can’t solve the problem,” Taylor says, though she acknowledges the critical role that each of us plays. She envisions a positive future—a new dream —shaped by a combination of technological innovation, policy reform, and a significant shift in consciousness. “In twenty-five years, we will have new government policies that provide incentives for us to use materials and energy differently,” she predicts. “New policies for transportation, waste management, recycling, and taxes will help individuals and institutions consume wisely. . . . Prices of goods will reflect the true environmental costs of natural resource use and waste. Government will use its purchasing power to create markets for environmentally friendly products.”
In effect, Taylor sees strong evidence that our sleepwalking culture is right on the verge of waking up! “Go into any bookstore and you’ll see hundreds of books about values, balance, meditation, and simplicity,” she says, adding, “Our Web site is another example. This year we’ll have eight to ten million hits on it, as people learn more about sustainable living.” The overall goals of the center are not just to reduce consumption, but also to redirect it with smarter choices about how to purchase sustainable products. In other words, if we’re smart, we’ll increasingly substitute better design and more complete information for consumption. For example, we’ll support sustainable farming in which natural pest control—a biologically rich bank of information—substitutes for pesticide applications. We’ll support better design of walkable communities, reducing the need to spend hours lost in wasteful gridlock.
