Book Review: Affluenza

Usually, the book comes before the movie or the TV show; in this case, the TV show preceded the book, and it shows. Affluenza reads like a TV documentary: quick snappy scenes without much content, vast conjectures drawn from little evidence, and significant-seeming coincidences passed off as meaningful without much corroboration. For example, pp. 44-45: "...the experience of time famine intensifies, driven by longer, or at lesat more demanding, working hours, and the competing time requirements associated with the care and feeding of stuff. Something has got to give. For many Americans, it's sleep. Many doctors say more than half of all Americans get too little sleep--an average of an hour too little each night. We average 20 percent less sleep than we did in 1900." How many doctors? What's their evidence? What's the counter-argument? Is it really because of work and consumption, or is it television and computer games? It's impossible to say, because that paragraph is the sum total of the sleep argument. I will admit I was gratified to find another source validating my consumer/citizen pet peeve ("'We've mutated from citizens to consumers in the last sixty years,' says James Kuntsler..." p. 65).

But don't listen to me, I never watch television. The back of my head is telling me that if this is a new subject for you or if you enjoy watching TV, then you'll probably like the book. For those of us who have been certain now for a decade or more that we overconsume and not only is it terrible for the environment and for social justice but it also makes us deeply unhappy, the book will probably offer little that is new. Self-rated happiness plateaued in the 1950s, you say? We have more stuff than ever but rates of depression are rising? Ecosystems are being ploughed under for shopping malls, factories and highways? Most of us can't name five local wildflowers? Our demand for ever-increasing quantities of inexpensive merchandise is being off-shored to third-world countries where lax labour and environment laws allow them to externalize the tremendous costs of our lifestyles, culminating in the ultimate irony of five-year-olds in Disney sweatshops producing mountains of cheap plastic crap that they themselves will never be able to afford to buy even as they spend their lives making it?

Is this old news for you? Then don't read the book. Is it new? Then do. It's a good introduction, but if you're already committed to the values, ideas or solutions the book espouses, it is probably not worth your time. The main problem of the book is that the very people most likely to purchase and read it are those who least need to hear its message. Here's a quick test:

Did you know that in 1970, Americans spent four times as much time shopping as Europeans did?

Did you know that Kellogg's used to hire full-time workers at thirty hours per week?

Did you know that many of the science groups routinely interviewed in mainstream media about environmental problems are actually PR front groups funded by the very industries and companies creating the problem to begin with?

Did you know that 90 per cent of the waste we generate never even makes it into products and services, but is a byproduct of the material extration and product creation process, remaining at the mine or oil field or factory?

If the answer to all or most of those questions was "yes," then this book is too simple for you. If you're not quite sure:

Hey, you: do you believe that money equals happiness?

Do you believe a bigger house will solve all your problems? Do you think your life will be complete if you can only lose those 20 pounds and fit into the pretty clothes in the magazines? Are you waiting for life to begin once you cross some material threshold, some border of income or prosperity beyond having enough to eat and comfortable clothing and shelter?

Studies show consistently that any increase in material prosperity over the baseline necessary to feed, clothe and house a family in basic comfort and enough security not to be facing an eviction notice does not lead to increases in happiness. Our houses are twice the size they were in the 1950s, our food is cheaper, we own more cars, we go on more vacations farther afield, we own many more clothes, we have iPods and DVD players and big-screen TVs and laptop computers and microwave ovens and dishwashers, and polls of self-reported happiness have shown no increase. So why then we go and buy all this extra stuff--and I'm not excluding myself from this criticism--when five decades of research have shown that it has no effect on our happiness but a consistent effect on our workload, I cannot fathom. (I'm tempted to say "advertising," but I don't have the time to develop that argument right now, and besides--it's an easy target.)

If you're not convinced, read the book. It's a good start. If you are convinced and are looking for more meaningful resources about how to effect those changes in your life, I'll let you know as soon as I find one. (And I know that many of you are already well down the path, so if you have resources of your own to suggest or share, go ahead and leave them in the comments.)

Posted by Andrea at July 13, 2006 11:18 AM under Books

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