Today’s post is by regular contributor, Richard Jurin. Before his retirement, Richard led the Environmental Studies programme at the University of Northern Colorado, where he launched a degree in Sustainability Studies. His academic interests are environmental worldviews and understanding barriers to sustainability. As ever, with our blogs, the views expressed are not necessarily shared by NAEE.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” Eleanor Roosevelt. “If you want your creative people to reach stars, give them space” Eric Zehnder.
Like a fabled Genie’s trick wishes – be careful of what you measure as success, because what you measure is what you focus upon. This is as true individually as it is for whole societies. We might say we want to be successful in some endeavor, but then, like the tricky genie wish, focus on all the wrong metrics that define what we truly want as an outcome. Inevitably, with a material-consumer mindset in a global market economy, return on investment and economic outlay and outcome are the primary factors used to determine the feasibility and likelihood of any environmental or sustainability project being considered.
Curiously, the main metrics (out of many used by economists) used to describe how well we are living, is standard of living (SOL) and gross domestic product (GDP). Yet, both metrics are incredibly misleading. Standard of living “broadly refers to wealth, comfort, and access to material goods. At its most basic level, it is a measurement of income and consumption.” Investopedia – i.e., how much money you have and how much ‘stuff’ you buy. And GDP is basically measuring how much money is moving within the market – this doesn’t differentiate between positive or negative outcomes – i.e., recovering from a devastating earthquake that levels a town killing thousands is still a positive GDP.
The point here is that the present global societal focus of success is only on a positive economic outcome – i.e., spending and profit generation. A most basic assumption therefore is that increasing SOL indices equal an equivalent increasing quality of life (QOL). As I have written before in this blog, this is a deadly assumption when trying to heal the planet of its ecological problems. While people living in extreme poverty, within a material-consumer mindset, do improve their life circumstances when they have more money, it is only a linear relationship for a short time. This linearity levels off with more increasing affluence. When psychologically framed QOL metrics are used, the most economically advantaged people often have a diminishing QOL with increasing affluence. For instance, when life satisfaction and GDP from 1945 to present are measured in most developed countries, the peak of life satisfaction was 1957, whereupon it leveled off or even declined depending on the specific QOL indices used even as GDP climbed steadily. What happened in 1957? That year is significant in that most basic material needs were met by large sections of populations in the developed world (often equated with a growing middle-class). After that, more radical material consumerism began with an unprecedented hedonistic focus on increasing luxury and comfort. The focus of success was financial security and material acquisition for an increasing SOL. What was lost long the way, since it was not measured per se, was QOL. This is what sociological and psychological researchers over the decades have always stated is what most people truly want.
As the Terrance McKenna quote in my last NAEE post emphasized, we cannot solve our global problems using economic metrics, because these metrics (and hence our focus) are a major component of the whole problem. If we want QOL, then we need to focus on measuring it as the primary factor for what constitutes real ‘success.’ It is highly unlikely that any governmental group will commit to measure QOL. That will have to happen at the local and at the grassroots level, and is probably the only way that real change could happen quickly and effectively. As I have emphasized often, we need to ignore the hierarchy and do it our own way as a kind of parallel society. The hierarchical system – especially most economists, large businesses, and politicians – accept this mythological linear correlation of SOL and QOL without question thus perpetuating global problems. If we change our personal values and our community foci to QOL, then what can a hierarchical system do but follow along?
Much research shows that material-consumerism is a conceptualized consumer value with three components: acquisition centrality, acquisition as the pursuit of happiness, and possession-defined success. In validation tests, subjects who scored high on a consumer-value, placed high emphasis on money but had lower QOL needs met. An instrumental material belief therefore is how do I become secure in an insecure materialistic world where money is seen as security? Any solutions are merely addressing symptoms of our global problems. An alternate question for a sustainable world could be, how do we serve the whole that heals the biosphere? This latter question is best addressed through a QOL focus that addresses root causes.
Of course, unlike easier to measure economic factors, measuring QOL is amorphously complex. SOL is tangible and about monetary wealth and material goods. QOL is more intangible and about intrinsic values of compassion, honesty and integrity, personal growth (happiness, purpose), and creativity (expressing yourself uniquely). Psychologist, Kim Kasser, The High Price of Materialism, offers revealing insights into how materialistic beliefs are detrimental to QOL. A short video about Kasser’s interpretation of the imbalance between materialistic and intrinsic values explains this nicely – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGab38pKscw&t=171s
The key then is about using the metrics of QOL and applying them at the community level. To Be Continued …..
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Richard can be contacted at: richardjurin@gmail.com