Simple Prosperity

A Generation’s Journey Back to Health

This is a book about how to recover from the debilitating disease of overconsumption. Although the origins of “affluenza” go back at least to the birth of free-market capitalism several centuries ago, the disease has only become a full-fledged pandemic in the last fifty years. But like other pandemics, it will inevitably run its course, and we’ll create a more sustainable, healthier culture—either by design or by default. The suggestions in this book, including 17 essential assets to beat affluenza, can help bring the fever down, get our strength back, and build up our immune systems.

Back when I was a teenager in the 1960s, I felt queasiness lurking in the euphoria of the American lifestyle. Gandhi once said, speed is irrelevant if you’re traveling in the wrong direction, and it was obvious to me that the accelerating pace of life in the United States didn’t have a real direction. Everything was becoming automatic, comfortable, and “convenient,” yet other than going to the moon, banishing germs from our kitchens, and scrapping with the communists, we seemed to be floating up and away from reality like soap bubbles. We each wanted to expend as little effort as possible but still get paid handsomely for it so we could live the good life, before we … popped.

But somehow the cost and dimensions of the good life kept morphing, first into a “new, improved life,” then a “better” life. (There was always a better life.) Americans began to send all household hands into the workplace, and soon we were working longer hours than employees of any other country in the world. In fact, we worked longer hours per year than medieval peasants did! A few politicians in the 1950s and ’60s proposed federally mandated, shorter workweeks, because technology had doubled our productivity and we could have the same standard of living for less work. But instead of choosing the door marked life/time, we chose the one marked money/stuff.

I began to notice that people whose lifestyle didn’t center on money were often healthier and more interesting. They seemed more caring and unselfish, and they were passionate about doing active, celebratory things like playing music, dancing, playing chess or bridge, embroidering, fly fishing, cooking delicious meals, studying history, gardening, and staying current with political issues. TV wasn’t a central part of their lives; they were less distracted by commercial hype and less detoured by all the products. What they earned seemed less important than what they learned. I watched how they focused directly on the tasks at hand and accomplished them with finesse and artistry. I was fascinated that in many cases, the ordinary, American Dream-life was much more expensive than the extraordinary lives of these unique, self-creating people who lived their lives rather than trying to buy them. They had real wealth, or you might say, the right stuff.

Still, it was confusing to see most individuals stretching and contorting to climb beyond the good life to the more coveted better life. Was the better life any better, really, or was it just a variation on a theme: creativity as a commodity purchased from various technicians and persuaders who brought us Twinkies, air conditioners, and a Technicolor way of thinking? It seemed like all that was new or improved were the colors and shapes of the products, the increasing number of cars on our streets, and okay, the introduction of breakthrough technologies, some of which were brilliant. (As a guy who first experimented with writing on an Underwood typewriter and compiled research data on index cards with rubber bands around them, I thank the gods for computers and the Internet!)

But despite the technological miracles, it felt strange and threatening that our world was being shaped by corporate returns on investment rather than by passionate political leaders who listened carefully to us, the people who live here. I wondered how companies and industries could possibly provide a humane, integrated vision of the future and a strategy for getting there, since their focus was both narrow and vested. Yet federal government, increasingly on the leash of big business, seemed to be forbidden to do it.

And I wondered if this economy that kept accelerating was equipped with brakes … ?

It boggled my mind to think of the seventy-five million people who hurried to work at roughly the same time each morning, clogging highways, trains, and buses—somewhat like the cholesterol in our arteries. Very few of us had any real sense of what we were building—and more ominously, what we were tearing apart. It felt like we were converting the planet’s richest and finest resources into products of dubious quality, busily drilling holes in the environment and living systems to do it. What was the point of all the commuting and consuming? What was the economy for? We were burning up our time and our lives pursuing happiness but it seemed like we were happier before the pursuit began. For example, the more successful my father was in his work, the less time he had for Boy Scout weekend activities with me or even walks in the nearby forest with the dog, like before—and the same story unfolded in millions of other households. Once we were proud and hardy producers, living by our instincts and skills, but in my generation we’d become passive consumers, living in 115 million overstuffed households that some federal agencies now refer to as “consumer units.”

I saw so many people pour their energy into making and spending money while other important aspects of life were neglected! Because the better life required so much of their attention, they stopped learning about the way other cultures and other species live; they stopped eating fresh food and cooking traditional family recipes; stopped going to national parks and even neighborhood parks; stopped learning about political candidates; stopped voting. They stopped saving, and they stopped learning how to fix things. They just threw everything away that needed repair and got replacements at discount chain stores.