In the 1930s, British economist John Maynard Keynes (those who studied macroeconomics would be friendly with him) predicted that over the next century, wealth would rise to such a level that we would have to work no more than 15 hours a week, allowing us ample time for greater life pursuits - ‘the good life’. Keynes predicted that a utopian state would evolve, where people will have amassed enough monetary wealth to fulfil their material needs, thus allowing more philosophical, meaningful and soul-enriching pursuits to dominate lifestyles.
Ha! HONK if you’re still waiting for that one! In fact what’s happened over the last century is somewhat a trillion times less inspiring. Overall, average leisure time has increased by only four or five hours per week. While, overall, we’re 4 to 5 times richer than we were 100 years ago, we’re working just as hard, just as long.
Consequently, we’re missing out on doing the stuff that makes life richer: honestly and deeply connecting with friends and family, growing our own food, hiking through a forest, volunteering for a cause, reading a nourishing book... the good stuff, the stuff that makes life meaningful, purposeful.
Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten that the ideal of wealth was never meant to be an end in itself but a means to achieving (and maintaining) a good life.
As American political philosopher Michael Sandel asserts,
Ha! HONK if you’re still waiting for that one! In fact what’s happened over the last century is somewhat a trillion times less inspiring. Overall, average leisure time has increased by only four or five hours per week. While, overall, we’re 4 to 5 times richer than we were 100 years ago, we’re working just as hard, just as long.
Consequently, we’re missing out on doing the stuff that makes life richer: honestly and deeply connecting with friends and family, growing our own food, hiking through a forest, volunteering for a cause, reading a nourishing book... the good stuff, the stuff that makes life meaningful, purposeful.
Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten that the ideal of wealth was never meant to be an end in itself but a means to achieving (and maintaining) a good life.
As American political philosopher Michael Sandel asserts,
"without quite realising it, without ever deciding to do so, we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society".
This has seen the values of a market economy (dollars, growth, and productivity) leach into every aspect of human life, where now “social relations are made over in the image of the market". Moral or ethical questions have now been replaced with “how much does it cost?” or “how much can it bring in?”.
And rarely, if at all, do we take stock and ask ourselves, how much is enough? How much do we really need to live a good life?
Instead we keep our heads down, we keep running ‘round and ‘round on the hamster wheel. Waiting. Waiting for life to get better.
I recently took a foot off the wheel. I reduced my working hours down to three days. And it’s quite a shift to fathom, I must say. A life not dominated by paid work. People are puzzled when I tell them what I’ve done. The thought of earning less money, well it baffles. I think that’s largely because we’ve been told working full-time and earning as much money as possible is The Thing To Do. Those of us that challenge that assumption get a bamboozled look. But more on that later (that’s an entirely separate post).
This is deep, heavy stuff. Important stuff. It’s the kind of stuff I ponder in the shower, or while chopping vegetables for dinner, or walking the dog, or hanging up the laundry. How did we get ourselves to this point, where we generally have more than enough material goods to afford us a comfortable life, yet we are sadder, sicker, lonelier and angrier than ever before? How did we allow market values to shape our personal lives, and what can we do to break free from them? There must be a better way to ‘do’ this thing called living, no?
These are precisely the questions British political economist Robert Skidelsky, and his philosopher son Edward, ask us to consider in their latest book, How much is enough? The love of money and the case for the good life.
This book has got me excited. Just the title gets me revved up, and I’ve ordered myself a copy to pore over. I reckon it might be a book you might like to pore over to.
The premise of the book is this – The Skidelskies argue that,
They argue that we’ve been living within a set framework dictated by a market economy that promised to fulfil and exceed our needs, but instead has pushed us into a never-ending cycle of insatiable consumption. It’s a framework that has failed us dismally, both economically and morally.
As such, they postulate an alternative framework, one that nurtures the seven factors that they believe constitute the good life: health, security, respect, personality, friendship, leisure, and harmony with nature.
The Skidelskies get a bit specific, apparently, such as proposing restrictions on advertising to “reduce the pressure to consume, because”, Skidelsky himself says, “the pressure to consume is one of the things that drives the pressure to work”. They also propose a tax on conspicuous consumption.
The book also delves into findings from happiness studies (indeed, it questions their relevance) and discusses the environmental impact of our insatiable appetite for consumption.
You can hear Skidelsky Snr chat about it all in a recent interview on RN, here.
I particularly love Skidelsky’s repute to the argument that what he and his son are proposing is a sort of nanny-state:
And rarely, if at all, do we take stock and ask ourselves, how much is enough? How much do we really need to live a good life?
Instead we keep our heads down, we keep running ‘round and ‘round on the hamster wheel. Waiting. Waiting for life to get better.
I recently took a foot off the wheel. I reduced my working hours down to three days. And it’s quite a shift to fathom, I must say. A life not dominated by paid work. People are puzzled when I tell them what I’ve done. The thought of earning less money, well it baffles. I think that’s largely because we’ve been told working full-time and earning as much money as possible is The Thing To Do. Those of us that challenge that assumption get a bamboozled look. But more on that later (that’s an entirely separate post).
This is deep, heavy stuff. Important stuff. It’s the kind of stuff I ponder in the shower, or while chopping vegetables for dinner, or walking the dog, or hanging up the laundry. How did we get ourselves to this point, where we generally have more than enough material goods to afford us a comfortable life, yet we are sadder, sicker, lonelier and angrier than ever before? How did we allow market values to shape our personal lives, and what can we do to break free from them? There must be a better way to ‘do’ this thing called living, no?
These are precisely the questions British political economist Robert Skidelsky, and his philosopher son Edward, ask us to consider in their latest book, How much is enough? The love of money and the case for the good life.
This book has got me excited. Just the title gets me revved up, and I’ve ordered myself a copy to pore over. I reckon it might be a book you might like to pore over to.
The premise of the book is this – The Skidelskies argue that,
“most developed economies are already rich enough for people to get off the growth treadmill and start thinking about what life is for, what they should do with their own lives, and how society should develop”.
They argue that we’ve been living within a set framework dictated by a market economy that promised to fulfil and exceed our needs, but instead has pushed us into a never-ending cycle of insatiable consumption. It’s a framework that has failed us dismally, both economically and morally.
As such, they postulate an alternative framework, one that nurtures the seven factors that they believe constitute the good life: health, security, respect, personality, friendship, leisure, and harmony with nature.
The Skidelskies get a bit specific, apparently, such as proposing restrictions on advertising to “reduce the pressure to consume, because”, Skidelsky himself says, “the pressure to consume is one of the things that drives the pressure to work”. They also propose a tax on conspicuous consumption.
The book also delves into findings from happiness studies (indeed, it questions their relevance) and discusses the environmental impact of our insatiable appetite for consumption.
You can hear Skidelsky Snr chat about it all in a recent interview on RN, here.
I particularly love Skidelsky’s repute to the argument that what he and his son are proposing is a sort of nanny-state:
“people erect an ideal of free choice against something called a nanny state, and in fact we don’t have free choice in many areas, we choose within a framework. If people agree there is such a thing as a good life, let’s start altering the framework in which our choices are made.”I also love that the Skidelskies are quite specific about what they mean when they say ‘leisure time’. They take the Ancient Greek view of leisure – that it’s not about sitting around playing Wii, it’s about pursuing things that make us richer in spirit and in soul... things that makes societies better, things that helps them move forward.
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