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Affluenza summary

Name: Affluenza
Rating: 4.6 (28 reviews)
Author: John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor

John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor

How Overconsumption is Killing Us – and How to Fight Back

4.6 (28 ratings)

19 mins

Brief summary

Affluenza by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor explores how consumerism has led to a society obsessed with material wealth and constant growth. It offers insight into the consequences of this culture and proposes alternatives for a more sustainable and fulfilling way of life.

Topics

Culture Media Overcoming Addiction

Table of Contents

Affluenza
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Learn about our addiction to overconsumption.

How many electronic gadgets do you own? Well, you’re reading this on at least one of them, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume you have more! And when the tech companies come out with another edition, what do you do? Are you still satisfied with what you have? Or would you prefer to have the newest model?

Society as a whole has become addicted to consumption. Our sheer desire for more stuff is inhibiting our lives. It makes us work so much that we don’t have time for things that matter in life, and we’re destroying our planet in the process.

In these blinks, you’ll learn about our current affliction with affluenza, and what we can do to solve it.

You’ll also learn

why Americans are so eager to buy and consume more and more products;
about the damage overconsumption does to our physical and mental health;
why our overconsumption is destroying the planet;
how you can cure your affluenza and lead a simpler life; and
how schools and governments can help reduce and end overconsumption.

The Post-Industrial increase in productivity has created an addiction to consumption.

Imagine if the history of Earth was compressed into just seven days. How much time do you think human civilization would take up? Well, the development of agriculture would take two seconds. The Industrial Age – the last 200 or so years – would take just one hundredth of a second.

In this brief blip since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve consumed more resources than all people in Pre-Industrial human history combined. Americans now spend 71 percent of their $15 trillion economy on consumer goods.

This vast increase in consumption can mostly be attributed to technological advances. The Industrial Revolution dramatically increased our productivity: we can produce a great deal more, with a smaller workforce and lower costs.

People used to think that this increase in productivity would allow us to be more relaxed and have more free time. In fact, in 1965, the United States Senate estimated that by the year 2000, the working week would only be 14–22 hours long.

Instead, we’ve continued to work long hours, and some people work even more now thanks to laptops and mobile phones. Rather than enjoying society’s increase in production, we’ve become afflicted with affluenza.

Affluenza is our addiction to consumption, and it’s taking over our lives. Nowadays, we spend most of our brief free time buying products or consuming them. Affluenza prevents us from giving proper attention to things that make us truly happy, like relationships or exercise, for example.

The United States essentially reached a “happiness plateau” in 1957. Since then, the number of Americans who consider themselves “very happy” has steadily declined. People think consumption brings them joy, but affluenza is actually lowering our quality of life.

We try to compensate for our unhappiness by buying things, but it only makes us feel worse.

Do you have kids? If so, what do you do when you’re not looking after them or working? Do you go out, or are you too exhausted? Do you find you prefer to spend your free time just flopping down on the sofa?

You aren’t alone if you answered yes to that last question – most people would prefer to flop. Because we spend most of our time working to raise money to buy things, we scarcely have time left for our family, friends and communities.

The environmental consequences of overconsumption are devastating.

The social cost of affluenza is massive, but something else is being destroyed at an even greater rate: the environment.

After decades of rapidly increasing consumption, we’ve mined most of the world’s easily accessible resources. This means we have to turn to more dangerous and complicated mining procedures.

Although the poor are affected most by affluenza, inequality hurts us all.

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone that the worst problems caused by overconsumption are felt most by the poor.

In our quest to have cheaper and cheaper products, we’ve shifted a great deal of our production to developing countries like Bangladesh, where wages and working conditions are abysmal. At least 1,800 workers have died in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh since 2005.

Overconsumption is not “human nature,” and there’s a long history of philosophical argument against it.

When people criticize affluenza, they’re often told that overconsumption is inevitable. The desire for material things, people say, is “human nature.” But is there any truth to this claim?

There isn’t. Affluenza is not a part of human nature.

Overconsumption has been systematically facilitated.

One reason that affluenza is so difficult to escape is that it’s actually built into our economy.

Many companies have a planned obsolescence for their products. That means the products are designed to only last a short time, or else be continually upgraded. Gillette's disposable razors are an example of this. Planned obsolescence means that customers are forced to continuously buy a new version of the same product.

Omnipresent advertisements and PR strategies continually seduce us into wanting more stuff.

How long do you think you can walk down the street without seeing an advertisement? Probably only a few seconds, if that.

Adverts are everywhere. We see them constantly: two-thirds of newspaper space and half the mail we receive is advertisements.

You can lead a happier life by reducing your levels of consumption.

So now that we’ve learned about affluenza, how can we move on? How can we cure ourselves of it?

Well, the first step is to identify its main symptoms. Recognize that consumption can’t buy satisfaction, while reducing your consumption can lead to greater happiness.

Media education and subversion is necessary to immunize us against the affluenza virus.

Affluenza is all around us. Every street, every TV and every newspaper we see compels us to buy more and more things we don’t truly need.

As with any other disease, we need a kind of vaccination to protect us. And that means we need to use the virus itself to generate the resistance.

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What is Affluenza about?

This book is about our serious addiction to consumption: affluenza. Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve become addicted to shopping, believing we can buy happiness. Affluenza affects us and our society like a disease, and this book offers advice on how we can immunize ourselves against it.

Best quote from Affluenza

Parents who spoil their children out of love should realize that they are performing acts of child abuse.

—John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor

Who should read Affluenza?

Anyone interested in sociology
Anyone interested in media
Anyone interested in curing our addiction to consumption

About the Author

John de Graaf has won over a hundred awards for documentary film making and is cofounder of The Happiness Initiative. Environmentalist David Wann is president of the Sustainable Futures Society, and the author of ten books, including The New Normal. Thomas H. Naylor was professor emeritus of economics at Duke University, and a radical thinker who was consulted by governments and major corporations in over 30 countries.

Categories with Affluenza

Economics Society & Culture

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