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imomus
I'm a post-materialist. Are you? Let's look at the Wikipedia definition:"Post-materialism is an economic philosophy that emphasizes quality of life and environmental sustainability issues instead of earning income and material possessions."
I have a slight problem with that wording; what kind of economic philosophy rejects economic criteria? Surely this is a post-economic philosophy? Anyway, let's continue:
"Post-materialists give high priority to values such as more citizen input in government decisions, the ideal of a society based on ideas instead of money, and maintaining a clean and healthy environment, rather than to values associated with the philosophy of materialism such as economic growth, a strong national defense, and "law and order"."This brings in the idea of the "new economy" people talked about in the 90s, where attention was going to be more important than money. It brings in ecology, and it maps post-materialism to a tender-minded left wing perspective.
"The term "post-materialism" was coined by the political scientist Ronald Inglehart in 1970."
Aha, at the peak of the hippy era! So post-materialists are hippies, or their descendants, the New Agers?
"One of his main hypotheses was that people place their highest interest in things they were relatively deprived of in their youth. Therefore, Inglehart argued that people growing up after the Second World War would generally have a more post-materialist value orientation than people growing up before, because they were not raised in times of material deprivation."
Wait, so we were deprived of deprivation? That gets confusing!
"This hypothesis would imply that the whole of society should grow more post-materialist over time. This has not yet turned out to be the case; in countries with a relatively high level of post-materialism such as The Netherlands or Sweden, the proportion of post-materialists in society hasn't even grown higher than 30 percent, and during some years declined. Still, the concept of post-materialism can be usefully related to libertarianism, (anti-)authoritarianism, egalitarianism, and party preference."I'm interested in the 30% figure. Richard Florida has estimated that his beloved "creative class" is 30% (and growing) of the US working population:
"The creative class now includes some 38.3 million Americans, roughly 30 percent of the entire U.S. workforce---up from just 10 percent at the turn of the 20th century and less than 20 percent as recently as 1980. The creative class has considerable economic power. In 1999, the average salary for a member of the creative class was nearly $50,000 ($48,752), compared to roughly $28,000 for a working-class member and $22,000 for a service-class worker. Not surprisingly, regions that have large numbers of creative class members are also some of the most affluent and growing."
An article in Metropolis (Japan) about Japan's bureoning LOHAS ("lifestyles of health and sustainability", or Slow Life) phenomenon says that surveys show 25.3% of Japanese consumers qualify as "LOHAS" types, when asked about their involvement in environmentalism, health, social issues and spirituality, with an additional 34% sympathetic to the same views, but unwilling to spend extra on fair trade or slow life products.So, a picture is emerging of a few nations with a post-materialist class of around 30% of the population: Sweden, Japan, the Netherlands, perhaps Germany. What about America? Well, according to Metropolis that's where LOHAS started:
"The LOHAS concept is the brainchild of US sociologist Paul Ray and psychologist Sherry Anderson, co-authors of The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World. The popular book, first published in 2000, identified a disparate US subculture with common concerns for such issues as the environment, well-being and social justice. The authors aimed to help these so-called “cultural creatives” unite, and in doing so they pegged a consumer demographic ripe for the picking."
Two warning bells ring for me there: one, the publication date, 2000. This book might belong more to a "record surplus, dot com boom" 1990s mindset than the post-9/11 paranoia-security-war mindset we live with now. Secondly, rather than a "subculture", this might just be a "consumer demographic". But in a market-led world, consumer choices matter, right?
Let's paint a bigger picture. The human world is at a turning point. We've benefitted enormously from industrialization, but we've inflicted serious damage on the planet in the process. What's more, some of us have discovered that, although a little money makes you a lot happier, a lot of money only makes a little difference. As we've seen before on this blog, studies show that there's an optimal annual income of about $20,000 beyond which more money doesn't make anyone significantly happier.
One view of this 30%, then, is that it's an emerging post-industrial class (call it "creative class" or "cultural creatives" or "post-materialist class", or what you like), and that, as more and more people get over material values, and more and more economies switch over to information and culture rather than production, this class will grow. Another thing that will make the class grow is the increasing evidence that the world has been damaged by industrialization, and that our priorities have been wrong.This suggests that economic developments and climate change will only make this class more powerful. And there is evidence of that; enviro-politicians like Al Gore and David Cameron are, at this moment, limbering up, convinced there are election-winning votes in sustainability. Modern national elections can be won with percentages of around 40%, so getting our 30% of post-materialists on board could be crucial.
In my Wired article Japan Grows a Beard I wrote:
"Perhaps Japan's young "free spirits," together with the older, more affluent Slow Lifers, have something in common with the "tree-huggers, organic fructarians, solar-powered scooter riders, water-birth enthusiasts, Tantric-sex practitioners, world-music listeners, teepee dwellers, hemp-trouser wearers and Ayurvedic massage addicts" described in "A Brief History of Cranks," an excellent essay by Paul Laity in the current issue of Cabinet magazine. But, as Laity says, "Environmentalism is increasingly the cause rather than an eccentric distraction from it ... we are all sandal wearers now."
But are we all sandal-wearers now? Or only 30% of us? And what if we lose this battle to bring the world, presumably following us admiringly, into a post-materialist garden of Eden? What, in other words, if climate change produces nightmarish resource war, or what if post-materialism is simply an illusory consolation for outmoded Westerners as actual production shifts to China?There are attacks on the post-materialist mindset from all directions.
"A century ago," writes James Woudhuysen, "Britain had ‘gas-and-water’ municipal socialists, whose most radical gesture was to take the supply of local household utilities into public ownership. Today we have spatial-cultural determinists, who believe that giving a spatial twist to artistic, recreational and educational pursuits is the key to urban regeneration and, more than that, economic revival. They miss the point. In 2005 you cannot, as economic professor Richard Florida famously has suggested, squeeze urban competitive advantage on the world economy through getting a diverse ‘creative class' to dynamise a city through its ideas. This gets the direction of causality entirely wrong. A city becomes prosperous because of the size and productivity of all its economic sectors. A city's fate depends also, quite obviously, on the performance of the national economy that surrounds it. To devote so much effort to one rather small and indistinct sector – creative and cultural industries – is to push water uphill. It is a habit that does little for local living standards, and instead only flatters urban planners. Do we really believe that a museum district will shower riches on local inhabitants? Or is what happens in workplaces the more central determinant of urban regeneration?"
There you go: the argument that there's no post-industrial economy on the way. That only old-fashioned industry (or financial services) can regenerate cities, and that old-fashioned gas-and-water socialism is needed to offset its excesses, rather than green and cultural politics.It's often this development argument, coupled with rhetorical appeals to industrial era socialist concepts, which people make when they want to hit the 30% where it hurts. Why should people in developing countries listen to you, hippies, when you say that a wealth you've already attained isn't the right goal? Why kick away the ladder?
To answer this sort of argument, ambitious schemes have been devised. Carbon trading or offsetting and energy rationing schemes, for instance, reward the poor by imposing energy taxes on those whose eco-footprint over-reaches. The other side rejects these as "middle class guilt":
"I'm really unsure about these schemes," says Grimly Fiendish in an I Love Everything thread about enviro-guilt. "I mean, they're a good idea at heart, but the whole thing seems in danger of becoming a dreadful middle-class get-out clause: "Oh, I can afford to drive to work now without any guilt because someone somewhere is planting a tree."This guilt-by-association reaction is a major problem; it seems the conscientious 30% are very unpopular with everyone else, partly, no doubt, because they're more affluent, but also because they occupy high moral ground. A BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze debate about climate change, for instance, saw Easyjet corporate affairs director Toby Nichol saying:
"There's been a fairly fundamental swing, it could co-incide with David Cameron talking about green issues more than they were talked about before. I think it could co-incide with a slightly middle class, post-materialist world. We don't see this debate in Germany, where unemployment is five million, we certainly don't see this debate in the accession European countries, Poland etc, where people have seen the benefits of aviation. In that sense it's a post-materialist, slightly guilty middle class perspective." (He was later corrected on the point about Germany, where of course there's a significant and influential Green movement, though it only gets 8.1% of the national vote. It has, though, been quite successful in pushing the essentially post-materialist argument that what has traditionally been called industrial policy should instead be renamed and pursued as environmental policy.)
Both sides of this argument use the poor to justify their positions. The industrial developers say we should learn from what the poor want to become (as rich as us... so doesn't that just mean "We should learn from us"?), whereas the post-industrial deconstructionists (they want to dismantle the system from within, using their middle-class guilt) say we should learn from what the poor actually are right now (model low-to-no consumers with slim environmental footprints). But, as Jonathan Porritt, Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, says in the Moral Maze programme, it won't do to assume that the future belongs to those who don't give a damn about the environment, or that the nation currently growing fastest in material production is disregarding the environment (Bush's argument for not ratifying Kyoto): "The political class in China," Porritt says, "is much more focused on issues of climate change than most governments in Western Europe."
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 10:38 am (UTC)Nope, I'd disagree with you here. It's very obviously an economic philosophy and it certainly does not 'reject' the particular economic criteria it's proposing. Economics deals with resource distribution. There is no such thing as 'post-economic' unless you're proposing we spiritually ascend and become some sort of self-sustaining trandescent creatures of light.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 10:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 11:18 am (UTC)It is actually imperative for humans to get beyond an obsession with money and material possession. We adapt or we die.
And of course, this means a shift to spiritual values, or, if you object to the word 'spiritual', then 'humanist' will have to do for now.
There are reasons to be very scared. But there are also reasons to hope.
Al Gore's film (http://www.climatecrisis.net/) has been predicted to make a big impact in the States:
In China, Dongtan (http://www.arup.com/eastasia/project.cfm?pageid=7047) is being designed and built as a sustainable city.
These are small reasons for hope, but we must hope, and we must support those reasons. I do believe that these are just the beginning of what will be a great wave of environmental concern and disillusionment with industrial materialism.
My feeling on real/intellectual property
Date: 2006-07-31 12:02 pm (UTC)I gave up the mortgage, I rent now, because I am not willing to own real property in the U.S. I gave up the appliances, too, because they took up too much space on my shelf (I still have a fridge and toaster oven).
How can anyone be happy without the shopping mall, in America? Especially if they have no money?
My feeling is that the sooner poor people in America learn to exploit the intellectual property laws at their fingertips, they can gain power in this country. I guess I'm dreaming, but when I go to http://uspto.gov/ , I find I can trademark any little term I like (if the mark is still unregistered).
Another facet of 21st c. America that may help poor people is the extent to which anyone can be an artist, and, if they're smart, make some dough, using tools that can be downloaded for free off the net. Publishing companies can be circumvented. Anyone can get their art out there, anyone can get on LiveJournal and prattle about their ideas, and anyone, if so inclined, can make money doing so.
I'm willing to be an intellectual property baron if that's what it takes to get power in the U.S. today. But I'll skip the real property and chattel; that stuff weighs me down.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 12:03 pm (UTC)UK, Calif. to strike global warming deal (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060731/ap_on_re_us/blair_global_warming;_ylt=AncrTir5cL0r6mzPWpmC5LKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM-)
Obviously, a big chunk of America's creative class lives in California. I always think of us as a separate nation (taken as a separate economic entity, California's GDP ranks as about #5 in the world, I think), so it's nice to see us bypassing Bush's silly rejection of the Kyoto protocols.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 12:13 pm (UTC)thanks for the cite, la aquarius
Date: 2006-07-31 12:15 pm (UTC)I am so proud of Arnie! Leapfrogging right over Bush when needed! I am proud to be in Oakland, Calif!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 12:48 pm (UTC)Taking the physical perspective
Date: 2006-07-31 12:51 pm (UTC)Christian
Re: My feeling on real/intellectual property
Date: 2006-07-31 01:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 01:46 pm (UTC)As though a person can be pegged by exactly how many thousands (or millions) of dollars they make than someone else, or some "average".
But still, we can never forget human nature, and that what comes with it is the power of incentives.
Re: thanks for the cite, la aquarius
Date: 2006-07-31 01:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 01:52 pm (UTC)Don't you agree?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 01:55 pm (UTC)We can be environmentalists without being nutbags. But I realize that you weren't saying that in the mode of condoning it, just pointing out a certain association with it all. Man, I'm inarticulate this morning.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 02:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 02:39 pm (UTC)There's nothing wrong with being rich, but don't you notice that a good deal of artists, comedians, musicians, etc. begin to royally suck after they've become comfortable, successful, and settled down? It's not always the case, but you know. Maybe there's a better sociobiological explanation (bleh).
It's probably different for visual art - an ugly orange cup and patterns of lines don't involve much thought - I'm sorry, but they don't. So maybe that's why there are so many successful trustfund artists and writers, many who've neither had to struggle, nor create art that's beyond flashy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 02:54 pm (UTC)I don't agree that that's what we are saying. Look at the Richard Florida argument that James Woudhuysen is trying to refute. Florida says that the creative class add value to neighbourhoods and cities. Artists, in this sense, are the storm troopers of the bourgeoisie. They know this. It's often used as an insult, and many artists aren't happy with it, but it's a basic condition of creative work. We artists add value for someone, if not ourselves. When it's for ourselves, though, we tend to have a rather detached attitude; we're easy come, easy go about it.
The creative class is, as Florida points out, an affluent class, but its affluence makes it keenly aware that there are things, many things, more important in life than money. That's why the "post-" gets tacked on so often. It's not that money is never associated with creativity, it's that we're basically "so over money".
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 03:08 pm (UTC)I don't think post-materialism refers to Florida's creative class themselves, unless that creative class is interested in the traditional artistic tendency for transcendance. The people I know in the NYC area who live post-material by your definition are usually in finance, law, trustfund publishing, bio-tech, etc.
The economic creative class .. are post-material for much, much different reasons. Making $60k as a director of photography still puts you in the difficult lower middle-class lifestyle in a "creative economy".
"so over money"
Date: 2006-07-31 03:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 03:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 04:05 pm (UTC)Re: Taking the physical perspective
Date: 2006-07-31 05:13 pm (UTC)How can I use this to get into the future?
Maybe the secret to the future is not the straight-line path, but the less probable trajectory. My future ten minutes holds x, y, and z, I'm pretty sure. But can I hop another trajectory, then look back at the straight-line from the future?
All this physics talk makes me silly!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 05:37 pm (UTC)I'd like to be bolstered by all of this talk of the "creative class." I really would. But from what I've seen, this "creative class" in the US is just going to fall back into old Red-Blue cliches, vote Democrat, and slowly congeal into a puddle of mushy prudes as the years drive on.
In fact, I would argue that the emphasis by the creative class on adulthood - on being rational, on "growing up," on working in an office that's, like, totally funky 'cos we have a pet cat - are counterrevolutionary to their core. I also find the claim that most of the "creative class" are genuinely post-materialist highly dubious: I think for many the consumption of earth-friendly wares is just consumption, a way to keep up with the Joneses, except now the Joneses are scrambling to get a Prius, not a Lincoln Continental. Now given, it's still better than the SUV alternative: but to pin the hope of a culture on them is, I think, a bit unwise.
Of course, maybe you should take this with a grain of salt. It kinda presupposes my belief that the "revolution" will come from small socialist day schools that raise dreamy, silly dialectical scholars who are as well-versed in Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, the Beatles, and juggling as they are in Marx, Debord, and Newton...which is unlikely, at best! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 05:39 pm (UTC)I say that not only isn't Momus anti-materialist, he EMBODIES materialsm by the way he lives. Do you think that the average salaryman can jet set around the world, putting out a virtually unheard album every so often whenever the gravy train dries up? And how many worker bees does it take to support one art leech?
Could it be that Momus is just as materialist as the middle manager with his McMansion and 50" television -- only, instead of material things, Momus lusts after a life of indolence (and Asian ass).
If we all worked half as much, could Momus afford not to work?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-31 05:43 pm (UTC)What more to live for than indolence suffused with art and physical enjoyment? I'd say Momus has it figured out.
How do you spend your time, M. Anonymous?