The essential promise of a consumer society is that virtually all satisfaction can be purchased. This promise runs so deep in us that we've come to take our identity from our capacity to purchase: I shop, therefore I am. The dependency on shopping is not just about things, it includes the belief that what is fulfilling or needed in life can be bought -- from happiness to healing; from love to laughter; from raising a child to caring for someone.
In our effort to find satisfaction in consumption, we're converted from citizens to consumers. The implications are profound. Consider the impact on just two parts of our lives: the family and the community.
Families have lost much of their function; communities have become incompetent. The family is no longer the primary unit that raises a child, sustains health, cares for the vulnerable, and assures economic security. What's more, we are disconnected from our neighbors and isolated from our communities. Hence, community and neighborhood are no longer competent -- competence is the capacity of the place where we live to be useful to us, to support us in creating those things that are best produced in a connected community.
Competent communities support the capacity of a family to fulfill its functions. They provide a safety net for the care of a child, attention and connection for the vulnerable, economic survival for the household, and the social tools that sustain health.
In a consumer society, these functions are removed from family and community and provided by the marketplace; they are designed to be purchased. We now depend on systems to provide our basic functions. For example: we expect the school, coaches, agencies and sitters to raise our children. We expect doctors to keep us healthy. We believe in better living though chemistry. We think that youth, a flat stomach, a strong heart, even sexual desire are all purchasable.
Consuming has its attractions, but for true citizens it is not the point or provider of the good life. We know how to do without. Make ends meet. Make do. We do this together. We take care of our own. There are no foster kids, only grandmothers and cousins. These are beliefs of people who live in a competent community, who live in a way they have chosen and who experience a more satisfied life. They are less dependent on the material culture and its requirements and call. They do not work in systems nor reap the benefits of them. They think they have enough; their mindset is abundance, not scarcity. Their families have a function, and they have the power to provide.
The way to the good life is the way of a competent community recognizing its abundance. We see that if we are to be the creators of our future, we must become citizens, not consumers. Consumers are dependent on the creations of the market; and in the end, they produce nothing much but waste. Citizens are those who choose to create the life, the neighborhood, the world from their own gifts and the gifts of others. It is the shift from consumer to citizen that will restore vital functions to the family and the neighborhood and reconstruct the competence of communities -- all of which come under assault in a consumer culture.
Adapted from The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. A version of this post appeared in Leadership Excellence, June 2010.
John McKnight is author of The Careless Society. Peter Block is founder of Designed Learning. They are coauthors of The Abundant Community (Berrett-Koehler). www.abundantcommunity.com
When we extract resources from the earth faster than the earth/seas can recover we get economic collapse, environmental destruction, disease and poverty.
Often high economic growth rates are placed high above environmental stewardship and sustainability, placing irreversible damage on earth's natural systems.
We should make better efforts to honor sustainability and stop worshipping on the altar of perpetual high growth rates/job creation.
Jobs will come when we do what's right. Piles of gold will not make us happy when our water, air and land is destroyed.
Economists have not told us why today's America needs a two-income family. Despite what many write, need for two-incomes in a family are priorities and life-style. If we solved this issue - or rather made it easier (tax incentives if needed) to survive on a one-income family, we would:
1. Solve the unemployment crises.
2. Solve the education dilemma with a high (50%) school drop-out rate (and 70% in big cities).
3. Shrink the healthcare crises caused by lack of illness-prevention and end-of-life care; costing 50% of all healthcare costs; which is 2 trillion dollars.
4. Reduce the cost of managing chronic illness and nursing home which accounts for 75% of healthcare costs and 70% of deaths.
5. Reduce the 50% divorce rate.
6. Reduce the high incidence of depression in adults and children.
7. Reduce the high incidence of stress and stress-related disorders.
8. Decrease the consumption of junk, fast-foods, prepared foods and alcohol.
9. Rediscover the value of family, (near and extended), neighborhood and society.
10. Rediscover the importance of cultural values and ties.
Any one of the above should give us pause to realize what we are doing to ourselves; and how history will judge and evaluate present civilization. Yet long before history judges us, our children and grandchildren will judge us by the type of America we leave them; including the massive debt.
Single earner may be the woman who commonly is the higher earner.
The alternatives are equally sub-optimal.
Nursing home care for 24 years bankrupts the indiviudal, family, county and state govt; because of the costs of skilled 24-hour service and care (whether needed or not).
Every human being as part of their existence will be called on to challenging situations. That is wy we have a CIRCLE of first and second degree relatives. It appears to me it is that circle that let you down.
This book will be on my list of must reads! Thank you both.
Please share this new years article on a similar vein:
http://www.backyardmystic.com/2010/12/this-year-i-am-where-i-need-to-be/
Prosperity is a better goal than wealth.
Altruism builds Greed/Selfish destroys.
We can rebuild our country when we begin to believe and trust that each of us cares and understands that helping the 'weakest' of us lifts us all up a bit.