| Your Comments |
|
| Environment Navigation Bar |
| Happiness, Money and Growth |
| Meditations |
| Environment News |
| Irish Humour |
| Junk Science |
| Global Warming |
| Mad Cow Disease |
| Foot and Mouth Disease |
| Organic Farming |
| Vegetarianism |
| Mobile Phones |
| See also pages below |
| Ireland News |
| Ireland |
| Ireland Disclaimer |
Article by David Korten
Sample "The problem is this: a predatory global financial system, driven by the single imperative of making ever more money for those who already have lots of it, is rapidly depleting the real capital - the human, social, natural, and even physical capital on which our well-being depends. The truly troubling part is that so many of us have become willing accomplices to what is best described as a war of money against life."
more quotes like this
According to the cynics, "Those who say money can't buy happiness either don't have any or don't know where to shop". So does money buy happiness, and if so, how much?
My first job paid £20 (then about $40) per week, and I thought I was rich. I used to take my money home on payday and play with it. How could I spend it all? My pay doubled and doubled again in real terms over the following years, but I no longer felt rich.
"Chinese economist Yew-Kwang Ng argues that once the basics of life are provided for, further consumption can actually make us worse off. 'Our ways to increase happiness further then take on the largely competitive forms, like attempting to keep up with the Joneses,' he says. 'From a social viewpoint, such competition is pure waste. On top of this, production and consumption to sustain the competition continue to impose substantial environmental costs, making economic growth quite possibly happiness-decreasing.'"....full article
more
"Jacob Needleman a professor at San Francisco State University has studied people who suddenly receive a great deal of money. He writes that 'if you are a worrier when you are poor, you will be a worrier when you are rich.' Having money does not change how we feel inside. If we are anxious without money, we are going to be anxious with money."....full article
"When the economic historian Richard Easterlin analysed these surveys in a classic 1974 paper, he formulated what has come to be known as the "Easterlin paradox": Basically, above a very low level, economic growth does not seem to improve human welfare. Later evidence confirms his observation. Americans were no more likely to describe themselves as happy in the 1990's than they had been in the 1940's. Even the Japanese, who went from near-third-world conditions to widespread affluence between the 1950's and the 1980's, did not become happier."....full article
More about Easterlin
"Measured by annual growth in per capita incomes, the West is much, much richer than it was 50 or even 20 years ago. But in the U.S. reported happiness has gone up only fractionally over the post-World War II period, and in Europe reported levels of "satisfaction with life" are only slightly higher than in the mid-1970s. In some countries, including Britain, they're actually lower."....full article
"Another economist, Michael Cox has compared living standards in 1970 with those in 1990.(2)
In 1970, 34 percent of new homes in the United States had central heat and air conditioning. In 1990, 76 percent of new homes had central heat and air conditioning.
In 1970, 7 percent of homes lacked complete plumbing. In 1990, only 1 percent lack complete plumbing.
In 1970, five million homes had cable TV. In 1990, fifty-five million homes had cable TV.
In 1970, no homes had videocassette recorders. In 1990, sixty-seven million households had videocassette recorders.
In 1970, less than 1 percent of American homes had a microwave oven. In 1990, 79 percent had a microwave.
In 1970, less than 100,000 people used computers. In 1990, 75.9 million people were using computers.
In 1970, workers got an average of 15.5 paid vacation days and holidays. In 1990, workers got an average of 22.5 paid vacation days and holidays.
In 1970, 12.7 million people attended performances of symphonies and orchestras. In 1990, 43.6 million people attended such performances.
"With all these material improvements in our lives, people should be much happier. However, in 1990 the same number of Americans said they were "very happy" as said they were very happy in a 1972 study. In spite of all the new ways we have to keep ourselves comfortable and amuse ourselves, our happiness is the same as it was in 1972." ....full article
Economist Andrew Oswald, Warwick University.
Much of the current discussion, such as it is, is based on Oswald's research.
"My results show, for example, that a quarter of European adults classify themselves as "very happy", that money does apparently buy some happiness, and that having a job if you want one has an enormous effect on well-being.
"The worst things that happen to people, according to our data, are unemployment, divorce and severe ill health. These are much more important than money. In terms of happiness, a lasting marriage is worth £60,000 pounds a year.
"Before I retire, I expect concern for Gross Domestic Product to have diminished and happiness surveys and job-satisfaction surveys to have become a central part of British life. The News at Seven in the year 2020 will perhaps feature the country's monthly well-being score. The acronym GDP may have gone. Perhaps it will have become GHL - gross happiness level"
"The bottom line is this. For a person, the evidence is that money does buy happiness (though not very much). For a society that is already rich, it may not.
"One day this sort of evidence will revolutionise government policy in the western democracies. It is my firm belief that surveys of happiness and well-being are here to stay."
"All such work lies at the important border between economics and psychology. As western society becomes richer and richer, we will give increasing attention to the quality of life. I expect the traditional approach taken by many economists and politicians - one looking only at real income - will gradually fade away. A broader vision of human well-being will be needed.".....full article
"...the growth process is making life worse for a significant proportion of the world's population and no better for all but a tiny minority of the rest.........those who argue that existence of widespread poverty makes growth necessary are either blissfully ignorant of what the process is currently doing or are cynically manipulating us for their own selfish ends. A fairer distribution of wealth and income would be a far more effective way of dealing with poverty than growth in its present form..........opposing the present pattern of growth by standing firm against the erosion of income levels, social structures and the environment that globalisation is bringing about is, quite literally, a matter of life and death for millions of people."....full article
From "Good Growth and Bad Growth" by Richard Douthwaite.
Which Crash Are We Revisiting? , also by Douthwaite.
More about Douthwaite.
If the pursuit of money hasn't made you happy, or even if it has,
you might like to learn something about the real world .
More about Planning/Environmental issues in Ireland
Having apparently failed to increase the sum of human happiness over the last 30 years at least, the mad scientists and engineers learn nothing and are hard at work on new monstrosities.
See British Telecom Futurology
for their latest plans.
SAMPLE : -
"...the remaining lifetime of both Darwinian evolution and Homo Sapiens are both short and limited........we are about to enter an era of explosive technological development.......Technologies which were thought to be far in the future will be brought much closer........Computers will probably surpass us in intelligence around 2015....
"....computer evolution will reduce the value of brain power - to zero. One by one, jobs will be lost to machines, whether robots or computers. Our corporations will be run and staffed entirely by machines. Those using humans will not be able to compete and will go under. People will have fewer and fewer attributes to sell.....this age will not last long as we are absorbed into the higher existence offered by the machine world.
"....Those people who accept this technology will instantly have a great advantage over those who do not (and there will be many). In the same way that people rejecting IT today are a dying species, excluded from a new workplace and society by their own hand, then future rejections will be more exaggerated and speedy........they will be so far removed from Homo Sapiens that they will in effect be the start of a new species, which we call Homo cyberneticus. As the technology rapidly develops, the differences between Homo cyberneticus and Homo Sapiens will increase....
"....It is likely that many of the people who accept cybernetic enhancement would lend themselves to genetic enhancement too, or would allow enhancement of their offspring. We call this species Homo hybridus..... the first generation of Homo cyberneticus would become obsolete, since the human bodies connected would be inferior to those of Homo hybridus.
"....As the human mind gradually moves further into the machine world, it would become apparent that the organic body is redundant. If it died, it would be a minor inconvenience, requiring a cybernetic replacement to be commissioned. As the bodies die out, Homo hybridus would too, becoming a non corporeal being, which we call Homo machinus....when we exist only as information within a machine, we could be copied into a very small device, encapsulated in a very small shell with some nano-technology machines, nanites....We may have an alter ego in the machine, or many. We may try out different situations or life decisions, or different personalities. These alter egos could occasionally make trips into the ‘real world’, time sharing robotic bodies. These bodies would not necessarily be humanoid....
"...Changes generally bring stress, and this often leads to conflict. The many new species would not coexist easily with Homo ludditus....", (That's you and me, folks) "....and there would be some competition for resources between these species too. Whether peaceful coexistence is possible or not, it would seem unlikely, give the well known nature of Homo ludditus. Science fiction has already begun exploring this conflict, with The Forbin Project, Terminator 1 & 2 being famous examples. However, in Terminator, Homo ludditus wins, which seems an unlikely outcome. Perhaps the 2200 estimate for human extinction"... (That's you and me again) "....seems optimistic in this light".
"....It is certain that there will be strong reaction to this tinkering with the human species. Not everyone will welcome it, either for religious or ethical reasons, or simple preference. Many people will dissociate themselves from genetic manipulation or cybernetic technology. These people will remain as conventional Homo Sapiens (we will rename them Homo ludditus for obvious reasons). They would at best have to co-exist with these other human offshoots, who would dwarf them mentally and physically. They...." (That's us again) "....would not be able to compete, and they may have the same relationship to the human variants as pets do today".
So there you have it. Obsolete. Extinct or Pets. Starting now.
Italian Scientist Will Clone Human Within Year
Even the tinkerers behind Dolly the Sheep say that "There is abundant evidence from animals that it would not be safe in humans. It is being reckless and criminally irresponsible to attempt it."
(That should stop the Italian guy in his tracks.)
Here's another example of what we're up against, this time from one of the money men.
According to its website, the World Bank's objective "is to improve poor people's health and livelihoods and reduce their vulnerability to environmental risks both today and in the future - by helping to enhance environmental quality, achieve sustainable natural resource management, and maintain global ecosystems".
And here's what they really think : - "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [less developed countries]?... The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that. I've always thought underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. The concern over an agent that causes a one-in-a-million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under-five mortality is 200 per thousand." Memo by Lawrence Summers , World Bank chief economist (1991)
SOME OTHER EXAMPLES
"I don't necessarily agree...that the Human Being is the only pollutant, or indeed the major pollutant, in the world today. Being a scientist by way of background I am aware that nature itself is a very major pollutant..." Dr. Danny O'Hare, Chairman of Ireland's Food Safety Board.
"It isn't pollution that's harming our environment, it's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." George W. Bush, paraphrasing Dr. O'Hare.
I don't have any children myself, although I love my nieces and nephews. I watch family and friends rear their children, sweating blood over their health, spending a fortune in time and money on their happiness and education, trying to protect and insure their futures. And though I know they may be destroying their childrens' futures, I can't really get this idea through to them. Maybe the following quotes might clarify things for someone out there : -
QUOTES
"Our numbness, our silence, our lack of outrage, could mean we end up the only species to have minutely monitored our own extinction. What a measly epitaph that would make: 'they saw it coming but hadn't the wit to stop it happening.'" - Sara Parkin (1991)
"Growth is the heart of the environmental problem. The National Environment Plan (of Holland) will never succeed because it is embedded in growth. People's whole idea of progress is tied up with that damned evil figure, GNP, which was never meant to be used that way by Jan Tinbergen and Richard Stone, the people who developed it. It's not written in the Bible that we have to have economic growth. It's obvious what we have to do, so why all the fuss about a figure in a book?" Roefie Hueting.
"The reason pollution always seems to get us in the end is that, however much emissions...are cut, there will always be some......If industrial growth takes place year after year, the level of emissions will grow enough..to outweigh the gains...surprisingly quickly. Suppose an industry cuts pollution by half. If it is growing at an average rate of 6% a year, it will be back up to its old level in twelve years." Richard Douthwaite, Economist, in "The Growth Illusion".
"Since GNP only measures things which are bought and sold for cash, it ignores clean air, pure water, silence and natural beauty, self-respect and the value of relationships between people - all of which are central to the quality of life". Douthwaite again.
"We have become addicted to our way of life and to our way of thinking. We must drive our cars, use our clothes dryers, smoke our cigarettes, drink our alcohol, earn a profit, look good, behave in a socially acceptable fashion, and never speak out of turn or speak the truth, for fear of rejection.
"The problem with addicted people, communities, corporations, or countries is that they tend to lie, cheat, steal to get their 'fix'. Corporations are addicted to profit and governments to power, and as Henry Kissinger once said, 'Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.'
"The only way to break addictive behavior is to love and cherish something more than your addiction. When a mother and a father look into the eyes of their newborn baby, do they need a glass of beer or a cigarette to make them feel better? When you smell a rose or a gardenia, do you think of work or do you forget for a brief, blissful moment everything but the perfection of the flower? When you see the dogwood flowers hovering like butterflies among the fresh green leaves of spring, do you forget your worries?
"Now, try to imagine your life without healthy babies, perfect roses, and dogwoods in spring. It will seem meaningless. We take the perfection of nature for granted, but if we woke up one morning and found all the trees dying, the grass brown, and the temperature 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and if we couldn't venture outside because the sun would cause severe skin burns, we would recognize what we once had but didn't treasure enough to save." - Helen Caldicott (1992)
"That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set." - Robert Bellah (1975)
"...the truth is that market fundamentalism is itself naive and illogical. Even if we put aside the bigger moral and ethical questions and concentrate solely on the economic arena, the ideology of market fundamentalism is profoundly and irredeemably flawed. To put the matter simply, market forces, if they are given complete authority even in the purely economic and financial arenas, produce chaos and could ultimately lead to the downfall of the global capitalist system." George Soros (1998) (Yes, THAT George Soros !)
"Is there anyone who believes that making more money in a nation already gorging on record wealth will emancipate us from our moral deficit? More spending hasn't improved education. More income hasn't enhanced the quality of family life. Great wealth has failed to cure our cynicism about nearly everything. We enjoy new conveniences and more leisure time, but have less time for developing our character and human relationships. Might prosperity contribute to many of our social ills rather than cure them?" - Cal Thomas (2000)
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession...will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices affecting the distribution of wealth...which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we should then be free, at last, to discard.... I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. - John Maynard Keynes (1938)
"He who knows he has enough is rich." - Tao Te Ching
"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it, Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." Goethe.
(But try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem!)
Back to top
All images and text are copyright and may not
be reproduced without written permission.
|
|