Hardly a day goes by without someone writing or saying that we need to save the Earth. But does the earth really need saving? It is doubtful that the consequences of human actions, however extensive, could wipe out the existence of life on Earth. Dinosaurs dominated the Earth for over 150 million years, but they’re gone and the life on Earth is still here.
And while we can do our part to prevent self-destruction, some things are currently out of our hands, like natural calamities and extinction of species. What we can work on is improving the quality of life while we are here. This has largely to do with our engagement with human and other – than – human; landscapes or ecosystems, plants or animals, animate or inanimate features of the environment.
In the last several centuries, our newly acquired technological power has increased our consumption patterns, thereby depleting the natural resources and the human carrying capacity of the earth. Overpopulation along with overconsumption is the central environmental crisis facing the world today. And we will gradually inhabit a planet where life becomes increasingly untenable with global warming and depletion of natural resources.
While technological efforts are being made to conserve natural resources – such are alternatives to fossil fuel energy — switching to ultra-light, fuel-efficient cars, the impact of such efforts can only be short term and it will soon be depleted with excessive consumerism. Implementation of government regulation on population control and consumption has its limitation and can lead to social and political unrest .Thus our efforts towards conserving our natural resources is more a cultural issue, shaping our thought, beliefs and behavioral pattern.
Today we have inherited a consumerist culture which is a hurried culture where one seeks instant gratification and satisfaction and has no use in delayed results and long term implications. It is a culture where the single most important measure of success of a society is economic growth, measured by the gross national product (GNP), the sum total of goods and services produced by a given society in a given year.
Such a consumerist culture thrives by feeding a constant sense of dissatisfaction and because of our compelling need of being on trend, or even ahead of the pack, we are constantly on the lookout for new ways to revise ourselves through consumer purchases. Consumerism becomes excessive when it extends beyond what is needed. It promises happiness, but never delivers. Instead, it results in a desire for more.
Excessive consumerism leads to bigger houses, faster cars, trendier clothes, fancier technology, and overfilled drawers. And along with it comes debts as personal credit allows us to make purchases beyond our income levels. This debt causes mental and emotional stress in our lives and robs us of our creative expression by forcing us to work jobs that keep us away from our greatest passions.
It is time to take a step back and realize that consumerism is not delivering on its promise to provide happiness and fulfillment. Consumption is necessary, but excessive consumption is not. And life can be better lived and enjoyed by intentionally rejecting it.
Freeing ourselves from the grip of excessive consumerism requires a shift in what we define as success. From mere economic growth to a more inclusive social development considering the overall wellbeing of communities, individual self-expression and dialogue and understanding between people, giving us more space to live fulfilled and satisfied life with deeper and meaningful connection to our environment.
The 1970s, the former King of Bhutan challenged conventional, narrow and materialistic notions of human progress. He realized and declared that the existing development paradigm – GNP (or GDP) – did not consider the ultimate goal of every human being: happiness. He declared Gross National Happiness as the index to measure the collective happiness of the nation as an alternative to GNP. The four pillars to measure GNH iares economic self- reliance, environmental conservation, cultural preservation, and good governance. Though it is largely an intuitive measure, it reminds the government and people alike that material progress was not the only, and not even, the most important contributor to well-being.
An increasing wave of eminent economists, environmentalists, psychologists, religious and political leaders in the wake of global social, financial and environmental crises, are deeply concerned about how our current GNP-based development paradigm is failing to serve the well-being of people and are in pursuit to design new measures of growth.
Such a cultural shift will result in investing in creativity, innovation, local capacity building and sustainable creative enterprise development across the value chain thereby improving the quality of life and the well-being of our environment.
