I came across this article tonight and found it interesting on several levels. When I went back to St Albans for a weekend last Summer, I went shopping with my friend Louise in the Maltings - Bruv and Namaste might know it. I was killing time whilst waiting to meet Aunty Pat and sat and had a coffee. While I was sitting there, I was watching everyone passing by looking like they were in a shopping frenzy - I commented on it to Louise and she didn't really notice. The sales had just started and admittedly, I would have perhaps been the same. But, it did strike home to me how much shopping had become an obsession.
One thing I noticed this year on coming back to France was that the January sales do not start until mid January - this leaves time for the staff in shops to relax a little while after the frenzy of Christmas before the sales start and leaves time for the consumer to enjoy and relax over the Christmas period and not feel the need to be tempted to the shops again.
I am not trying to be holier than though - I like a good bargain as much as the next person, but I suppose as the economic emphasis pretty much these days is on consumer spending in the UK this must fuel the desire to get out there and shop.
Its also starting earlier and earlier with young children being encouraged by advertising to spend their pocket money or pester their parents for the latest fad, gadget, game or fast food. This is the most worrying part . How will this affect the next generation's mental well-being? I admire countries like Sweden who recognised the problems that advertising to young children causes and who as a result, some years ago banned all advertising directed at children.
I'd be interested to know what you think about this.
Americans and Britons have the highest rates of mental illness. But why? An obsession with wealth has led to an 'Affluenza' epidemic, says Oliver James
New Year's Day and my last On the Couch column - the new improved magazine will take a different form from next week and with some sadness, I bid you adieu.
During two of the three years in which I have been doing this column, I have been writing a book about global Affluenza and the social vaccines that can prevent it, to be published in September.
The Affluenza virus is a set of values which increase our vulnerability to psychological distress: placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous. Many studies have shown that infection with the virus increases your susceptibility to the commonest mental illnesses: depression, anxiety, substance abuse and personality disorder.
The virus values prevent you from fulfilling fundamental human needs which seem to exist in every society. Whereas you want a better car or greater intelligence or bigger house, you can survive without them; the same is not true of Needs.
The precise content and labelling of such needs is debatable, but four are very commonly identified: security (emotional and material), connectedness to others, authenticity and autonomy, and feeling competent.
Travelling to seven countries around the globe, my main conclusion was that the Americanised, Anglo-Saxon model is peculiarly ill-suited to meeting these needs, because it promotes the virus. Rates of mental illness among Americans are the highest (over one quarter have been ill in the past 12 months, half will do so in their lifetime) but only just higher than in Britain, Australia and Canada.
By contrast, on average, mainland European countries have three times less illness. Within developed nations, there is a clear correlation between high mental-illness rates and high disparities in income distribution - characteristic of Americanised societies. Younger generations are more afflicted than older ones, the young being especially influenced by America's, Affluenza-promoting cultural imperialism.
Around the world, rural communities are less prone to illness than urban ones, nonindustrialised communities less so than industrialised ones.
My explanation (pace Erich Fromm) is that the virus promotes Having over Being and the confusion (through advertising) of wants with needs. Only through getting us to want more and to be someone else can economic growth and the profits of a tiny elite be continuous.
The ecological case against this status quo is well known. My main goal here has been to make the psychological one against it. From the hundreds of emails you sent me, I am glad to know that I am not alone in my views and that, despite living in a crazy society, so many of you are still managing to get on with seeking out what really matters: playful, not partly, living; and being the organ grinder rather than the monkey of your experience.
The mental block
A review (Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry) of the progress of molecular genetics in seeking genes for mental illness by Robert Plomin, the most important single authority, finds very little. While a single gene has been identified as causing 15 per cent of all cases of Alzheimer's, this is the only illness for which a single gene has been identified - there is no fully replicated evidence that schizophrenics, neurotics or depressives have different genes from people without these illnesses, for example.
Plomin declares that it is now widely agreed that single genes, on their own, are unlikely to account for hardly any. Rather, in so far as genes are at all involved, it will be complex clusters of several or many different ones that are entailed. In explaining the longterm goals of all this effort, Plomin offers up the dream of being able to analyse everyone's genes and alter pathological ones. There is also the potential for a drug company's wet dream, in which very specific pills could be given to people with very specific gene combinations.
Implication: the most important contribution of gene research may be to prove conclusively that they play little role in causing the vast majority of mental illness. Studies of changes in rates over time, or between nations, suggest that social processes, especially patterns of childcare, economic models and values, are far more significant.
Oliver James, On the Couch, The Observer
5 comments:
No sooner do i suggest to Swan that she is good at initiating new topics than I log on and find this one that goes to the heart of the matter.
What an accurate name is Affluenza to describe a disease that can grip us all if we let it. And how appropriate that we were discussing intoxication. Surely shopping is another type of addiction, if not taken in moderation.
I will not mention Ciariad and her shoe-obsession, other than to say that she has a room in her lovely house which should be renamed the Imelda Marcos room! And when Namaste says she has to get to the Sales only a fool would stand in her way. But seriously, I am sure we have all suffered from Affluenza to some degree or other.
But as Swan's article points out this disease has far reaching effects. Particularly for the children. So if we accept it is unhealthy what can we do about it.
We need to educate our children that the happiness that comes from possessions is only fleeting, whereas the beauty of a sunset or a poem or a song or even just being peaceful is uplifting and positive. Much of the thrust of Buddhism is in changing society by changing yourself. Look at yourself and your own behaviour. Are you able to set others and your children an example of how to live. It is too easy to go along with the crowd, but I believe you will be more respected and will certainly respect ypurself more if you say 'no, that is not my way'. I would certainly respect someone who had made that stand.
Love and Peace in this time of Massive Discounts!
I was also very interested in Swan's article on Affluenza, I think the media and advertising have a lot to answer for here and the American influenza (pardon the pun)is strong too. When we are bombarded with latest gadgets, if you are young you are easily influenced. I have afriend in her sixties who is still a compulsive spender. She is a depressive who probably gets comfort, however momentary, from her purchases.
It is a standing joke with my sister Jude, that I am put through a 'punishing schedule of shopping' when I visit this lady.
I think we should only buy what we need, easier said than done!
That reminds me, I still have £15 of M&S vouchers to sepnd, Byeee!
I remember the first time I heard the expression 'retail therapy' - I thought it very witty; people now seem to take it seriously! I often hear people expressing their affection for their children by saying 'they want for nothing' yet they mean only consumer articles. Swan - I'm sure you have encountered Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs' (A S Maslow 1963)that seems to demonstrate a fast-fading priority of 'self-actualisation' over 'stuff' in terms of what rewards us.
We are trying to make ourselves happy with the wrong rewards.
Hello Baroque good to see you on our blog. You are quite right the expression 'they want for nothing' is used too frequently, and why shouldn't children want for something. Of course, there are other expressions used for 'giving' to children these days like 'I give my children quality time' which really means that I work all week and sit down with my child for 15 minutes at the end of the day to read them a bedtime story.
Retail therapy and retail experience are expressions I came across quite a lot when working with companies in the UK who wanted to change the ambience in their stores to entice people to stay in their stores longer, and to make shopping a relaxing, leisurely experience.
And unfortunately too many people these days pass their Saturdays shopping with their families as a 'day out'. Shopping IS now a leisure activity - and the 'high' experienced from shopping lasts all of 2 minutes I expect.
I have come across Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs I had forgotton though that it was developed in 1963 - how's that for foresight!
I hope that you will come back to Dao and add your thoughts to other issues.
Swan
Well, unless I am very much mistaken, Baroque is our old friend Mrs Jensen, as she is our first contributor to add references and dates of theory publication!
Assuming my guess is correct, may I offer on behalf of all of us, a very warm welcome to you Mrs J and ask you to contribute often and tell your friends. Let me know if you want a formal invitation, which will allow you to raise your own posts as a 'contributor'.
I always remember a lesson by a Buddhist monk in which he marvelled at the advertising slogan for a well known credit card which said "It takes the waiting out of wanting". He thought this typified all that was wrong with our society's values.
But how do we inculcate a set of values that are not commodity driven? Does it just boil down to education and self-example?
For me money is a false idol. I have had it and didnt like it. My view is that sufficient money is enough money in life.
Yet when I see people slavering over a potential Lottery (or Stupid Tax as it is known) win, I wonder what on earth the man in the street would actually do with £7 million other than, in effect, destroy his family with misplaced kindness. I am yet to hear of one of these winners endowing a hospital or hospice with the money.
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