Ironically, extreme capital accumulation is
actually unproductive of real
happiness: Human happiness and wellbeing are demonstrably
and empirically tied to factors other than capital accumulation. The extreme poverty that results, for some,
from this lopsided accumulation, is clearly unproductive of happiness; but after a certain point of accumulation, so
is wealth itself unproductive of ever more happiness. This happens just as soon as wealth goes past
a relatively modest level. This is not
speculation: Through much study and gathering of data, sociologists
have found that happiness, contentment and human fulfillment are most
widespread in those societies where:
a) there
are guarantees that basic needs will be met for all,
b) wealth
is more equitably distributed, and
c) bonds
between people and the natural environment remain stronger than the desire to
accumulate wealth.
Skeptical
about such claims? British
epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson has compiled an impressive body of research that
demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that economic and social inequality is
detrimental to human physical and mental health and happiness--even for the very
rich. Relatively equal societies are empirically
healthier on virtually every indicator of individual and social health and
well-being. That is empirically based
fact.
In our "capitalist
utopia," it doesn't actually matter who or where you are on the socioeconomic
ladder as long as you buy and don't get in the way of others buying. You can keep whatever trappings of subculture
or individuality you have, . . provided
they don't hinder consumption, commodification, or access to the resources
needed to produce the things you are supposed to consume. Unless you are a rare and truly exceptional
person, advertising will (constantly) instruct you on what those things are, that
you are supposed to buy, and will convince you that your happiness,
wellbeing, and most importantly, your identity, are based on buying them. The hyper-production, hyper-consumption treadmill society that is thereby destroying
our environment, polluting our air, food and water, and squandering our
resources, is by this means kept in motion.
Meanwhile,
ever-growing productivity inevitably creates
ever more in the way of surplus labor.
But the problem of surplus labor and the poverty that results from it, is
externalized by those who profit from our hyper-production, hyper-consumption
treadmill society, and is falsely portrayed as a failure of individual
initiative or, even more perversely, as an insufficient application of
capitalism! Problem is, the only way
that capitalism can even begin to
create the number of jobs that are required is by finding some way to constantly
produce ever more in the way of relatively superfluous goods and services, and then find some way to get people to earn
and spend money buying all this superfluous new junk. But as Bertrand Russell once said about this process,
"Can anything more insane be imagined?"
Not only are
personal ethics and a sense of connection-to-nature extrinsic to global corporate capitalism; in fact, the very idea of a fully developed human
consciousness (which would prioritize this connection-to-nature over and
above the ever-increased consumption that this sick hyper-production, hyper-consumption
system requires) becomes extrinsic as well.
In fact it becomes taboo.
Yet this
critique of hyper-consumption and hyper-production, fundamental to Mander's
book, is not really a critique only of capitalism. Why not?
Because unlimited economic growth, for all its ecological danger, is not
necessarily unique to capitalism: a socialist society, also without an
ecological consciousness, might well also view nature as infinitely exploitable.
(Remember the USSR?)
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