Personally, I feel that we will never truly succeed in combating Climate Change, pollution of our seas and air, over-consumption and addictions, human violence done in anger, homelessness, poverty and other examples of weak human empathy for the suffering of others ... until we change the human heart and mind, the selfish and violent animals who only recently (in anthropological terms) stepped out of the jungle. Otherwise, it is a fool's errand. Now, for the first time, through our new understanding of human neurology and biology, we have the ability to change what we have been, the beast within, and to save our species and our children for generations to come.
There are social thinkers, economists and philosophers who point us in the directions we need to go in order to improve things, no matter how we are to arrive there.
Here is an interview with the great social philosopher Kate Soper on "Alternative Hedonism," with ideas that overlap (not perfectly, but overall) with Zen and Buddhist Teachings on simplicity, moderation. better choices and their consequences, and moving beyond our present market-driven consumerist focus on purchase, material pleasures, consumption and excess.
Many of Soper's ideas overlap with those of the so-called "Buddhist Economists" (E.F. Schumacher, Clair Brown and others) who emphasize our knowing what is truly harmful and what is beneficial in the range of human activities involving the production and consumption of goods and services (see Clair Brown's presentation in the Youtube below):
Soper emphasizes that the market is driven by choices largely based on self-interest, thus points to emphasizing more the pleasures and benefits from changes in our lifestyles, maintaining a rich lifestyle but with alternative choices, the carrot, rather than the stick of threat, punishment and warnings. A summary of her ideas on "Alternate Hedonism" is here:
- The concept of ‘alternative hedonism’ identifies self-interested motivations for less environmentally destructive practices, as well as the altruistic motives more commonly associated with green and ethical consumption.
- It encompasses two aspects of the critique of consumerism: the displeasures of the high-speed, work-dominated, car and air-flight dependent mode of existence; and the pleasures that consumerism denies or pre-empts, including many that are more sensual than ‘spiritual’.
- Representations in contemporary lifestyle television and magazines resonate with both of these aspects: in narratives of escape from city congestion to rural nostalgia and of quests for convivial and ‘authentic’ eating, or for spiritual values which question those of the market. ...
- Appeal to the seductions of consuming sustainably is more likely to win adherents than threats and alarms about ill-health or environmental destruction. The point is not to advocate a restricted and reduced mode of living, but to emphasize the pleasures consumerism denies or conceals and the displeasures it generates. Policies (such as congestion charging [charging fees from driving or entering congested areas]) that are initially relatively unpopular can win enhanced support as a consequence of the improved experiences they provide.
Affluent patterns of consumption are now widely regarded as both compromised by their negative byproducts (congestion, pollution, noise, ill-health, excessive waste) and as destroying or preventing other forms of happiness and pleasure. The project explores the other ways of thinking about the ‘good life’ implicit in these forms of ambivalence or disquiet and presents these as highly significant for the political and ecological conditions and demands of our time. Whereas predictions of environmental collapse can often lead to a carpe diem fatalism, the ‘alternative hedonist’ argument, by contrast, is premised on the idea that even if consumerism were indefinitely sustainable it would not enhance human happiness and well-being. The chances of shifting to less rapacious ways of consuming, and hence of reducing social and environmental exploitation, are thus presented as dependent on the emergence and embrace of new views of human pleasure and self-realization, especially, in the first instance, on the part of the affluent global elites. ‘
Alternative hedonism’ is here theorized as an immanent critique of ‘consumerism’, and the impulse behind a new ‘political imaginary’ or vision of the ‘good life’ that might influence (along with other developments) the move to a more socially just and environmentally sustainable and enjoyable future. In line with this approach, the research provides an analysis around its core concept of ‘alternative hedonism’ that is critical of both neo-liberal and Marxist understandings of consumer formation, identity and agency. It departs both politically and theoretically from much earlier opposition to commodification in refusing to ground its critique of ‘consumerism’ in an essentialist distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ or more or less ‘natural’ needs. It thus rejects the presumption that the ‘excesses’ of modern consumption can be corrected through a return to a simpler and supposedly more ‘natural’ way of life. So far from calling for a more cyclical or reduced existence, it fully recognizes that diversity, change and self-development are indispensable features of human fulfilment. It also differs from many studies of mundane consumption in recognizing how problematic even the most ordinary forms of consumption (of food, transport, leisure etc) are now becoming. Indeed the main focus is neither on consumption as a bid for personal distinction or individualization, nor on consumption as a relatively unconscious ‘form of life’, but on the ways in which a whole range of contemporary consumerist practices are being brought into question by reason of their environmental consequences, their impact on health, and their distraints on both sensual enjoyment and more spiritual forms of well being.
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The research suggests that a sense of pleasures and rewards is important in campaigns aiming to redirect consumption towards more sustainable practices. It proposes a new conceptualization of ‘the good life’ that policy makers and politicians can draw on. This exposes the more backward, puritan and dystopian aspects of a work-driven, high-speed and materially encumbered existence and questions many of the gains of the age of ‘speed,’ ‘comfort’ and ‘convenience’. It dwells on the joys of travelling and eating more slowly (and more locally) and of a life less dominated by car use, airflight and computer screen. Consumption in the future, it argues, should be built around less damaging methods of farming and commodity production, the recycling of all waste, the shortening of the working week, and the promotion of cultural and æsthetic modes of self-realization rather than the expansion of shopping. The media study demonstrates that this vision is acquiring a broad cultural resonance, beyond marginal and alternative sites. This ‘mainstreaming’ of concern about the quality of the ‘goodlife’ provides a democratic grounding for those seeking to implement more sustainable policies on consumption.
stlah
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