"Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind?" - John Stewart Mill
"The costs of economic growth, which fall largely outside the marketplace and so do not appear in the national accounts, have become inescapably apparent-- in the form of disturbing signs of ecological decline, and array of social problems that growth has failed to correct, and epidemics of unemployment, overwork, and insecurity."
"Economics textbooks suggest wellbeing is produced by pouring goods and services into a receptacle marked 'human being'-- as if people were production processes that convert commodities into happiness."
Will a higher GDP really make us more happy?
2 years ago
8 comments:
I really like that last quote. However I do think Alan Greenspan is one of the great geniusses of our time.
Well, even in this country, most people still feel that the core problem of lives is that they don't have enough stuff, where stuff is mostly material. Whether they really do or not is a value judgment that I'm not comfortable making for them.
Saying that if I didn't want so much stuff, I might have more free time to enjoy life, is easy. Telling someone else that they shouldn't want something that they really do (from their perspective), is hard. Maybe we would all be better off if we were different, and most of us wanted fewer material things, but since we are the way we are, we might as well work and have an industrialized society and all that.
Visions of the post-industrial society, where everyone important is a 'knowledge worker', are extremely compelling to me. I think we are moving forward, maybe not in increasing our leisure time, but in having to solve different problems than past generations. We really are building on our past efforts, but where we are going ultimately is never very clear. I'm comfortable with the idea of a democratic society where nobody is powerful enough to be forcing their ideas about what we should be doing on us, though.
Something else that is a little more troubling is that our generation does not seem to have a great challenge to rise to. We have a lot of small, personal challenges, but as a society, our way of doing things has pretty much vanquished everything else. With our power and wealth at their ascendency compared to other systems, is turning inward to find neurotic self-analysis and gnawing doubt the only path left to us?
I hope not.
- Will
To Will, whom I do not know:
"Something else that is a little more troubling is that our generation does not seem to have a great challenge to rise to."
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Are you saying that all previous generations did, and we don't? NO generation in our past has been handed a memo: "rise to this challenge." The idea that generations in the past have "risen to a great challenge" is something that historians place on time periods retrospectively. In other words, I think our gnerations is facing just as many as as equally important challenges as any other generation. We just don't know how our (re)actions to them will be viewed in the future, rather adequate and courageous or un.
Another way of saying this: human progress is a myth.
In response to you Mary, all I can say is no, a higher GDP is not what we need. All I have to say is that as much as I dislike reading Thoreau, I think he may have been right about something: "Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!"
I'm going to have to side with Will on this one. When I read "Something else that is a little more troubling is that our generation does not seem to have a great challenge to rise to." I related. Though it is easier to see a challenge and how a generation has risen to it after the fact, that doesn’t mean they didn’t know it was happening. If I was in the Depression, WWII, or the Civil Rights Movement I hope I would realize it was a challenge and the life I was trying to lead would make a difference.
I can see in the past how citizens of this country have had to put a lot of time and effort into something larger than themselves, but at this time, I don’t see that. Maybe I am neglecting some big thing- but Iraq- how many of our citizens are integrally involved in that. Defiantly the families and individuals who are serving there, but the average teen or young adult in this country does not think of what they can do, or are doing much about it. Again, I don’t want to discount those great people who are making an effort- on my campus we have multiple activities and such geared toward supporting the troops, etc.
I think we all have our individual challenges to rise to, and maybe that is what the modernized world is rising to- individual accomplishment. Is that what we want? I’m not sure.
I'm going to have to say that the very fact that we're having this conversation indicates that average teens and young adults in this country are thinking about what they can do, how they can rise to the occasion of our generation. A cousin of mine is in Africa researching sustainable agriculture. Mary is writing a paper about globalization and education. Another friend of mine joined the peace core. Another runs a non-profit organization to help orphan children in Romania. Another goes door to door to raise money for causes she believes will help benefit our government and society. Mass communication has opened our eyes to a larger world than previous generations have experienced. While the president, during the time of the depression, may have been thinking about the American population as a whole, I'd imagine he also viewed it as an individual problem to him, something for which he felt some responsibility. I don't think Americans, in general, felt that responsibility. Rather, they had individual problems, like getting food on the table. With globalization becoming more and more of a reality, I'd have to say, from my point of view, there is not any shortage of "challenges to rise to." Rather those challenges are just now coming into view and the vastness of them is daunting.
I am Alan Greenspan.
To Lindsey:
As for activities "geared to support our troops" I certainly hope that you were not giving that as an example of how our generation has rised to a challenge. Troops don't rise to a challenge, they eradicate it, and I mean this is the worst sense of the word. The also destroy other, potentially beneficial, by no means "dangerous", things along the way (included but not limited to people).
To Emily:
You make some good points. If I'm sided with anyone on this one, it's my big sister Em. :)
If I'm sided with anyone on this one, it's Jared!
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