Riding to work this morning I heard that U.S. retail sales were down again in April. While the announcer presented this as bad news, I think it’s great news!
There is an inverse relationship between retail sales and national measures of well being - the less we consume the happier we get, which is not surprising if you think about it. Contentment is the absence of wanting. If we decide we don’t need to buy so much stuff the pressure is off. Whether it’s because we can’t afford it or because we are painfully aware of how our insatiable appetites are literally consuming the earth – we can stop worrying about what we don’t have and start appreciating what we do have, including the people and experiences in our lives that make us truly rich.
There is an inverse relationship between retail sales and national measures of well being - the less we consume the happier we get, which is not surprising if you think about it. Contentment is the absence of wanting. If we decide we don’t need to buy so much stuff the pressure is off. Whether it’s because we can’t afford it or because we are painfully aware of how our insatiable appetites are literally consuming the earth – we can stop worrying about what we don’t have and start appreciating what we do have, including the people and experiences in our lives that make us truly rich.
This brings up a bigger question: why are we so obsessed with things like retail sales and Gross Domestic Product as measure of how we are doing as a country? It’s time to jettison that outdated way of thinking.
Look at GDP, for example. It simply measures economic activity, it doesn’t distinguish whether it’s good or bad activity. After hurricane Katrina, GDP spiked because of all the money spent on rescue and repair. The swine flu causes GDP to go up as we spend millions on vaccines and prevention. War causes GDP to go up as we spend trillions of dollars to fight the enemy.
But GDP doesn’t measure things like the value of education, the health of our children, the condition of our infrastructure and buildings, or the negative value (cost) of crime, degradation of the environment or our carbon footprint.
Several new measuring systems are under development and many countries, including France, are working on adopting one. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a good one to check out:
http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm
Look at GDP, for example. It simply measures economic activity, it doesn’t distinguish whether it’s good or bad activity. After hurricane Katrina, GDP spiked because of all the money spent on rescue and repair. The swine flu causes GDP to go up as we spend millions on vaccines and prevention. War causes GDP to go up as we spend trillions of dollars to fight the enemy.
But GDP doesn’t measure things like the value of education, the health of our children, the condition of our infrastructure and buildings, or the negative value (cost) of crime, degradation of the environment or our carbon footprint.
Several new measuring systems are under development and many countries, including France, are working on adopting one. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a good one to check out:
http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm
The image at the top of this entry is from Chris Jordan, a brilliant artist from Seattle. The top image is the entire art piece and the images below are closer and closer details of the art, until you can see that the image is composed of 2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour. All of the plastic in the image was collected from the Pacific Ocean. This will help you visualize the size and impact of our out of control consumer culture.
To see other amazing works by Chris Jordan, check out his website:
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