Professor explains our seemingly intractable desire to cosume

Professor Tim Kasser.

The seemingly intractable desire of most to consume is the root cause of climate change, worsened by the added complexity of resource depletion.

The latter is in fact a manifestation of that unbridled consumption, which is perverse desire to find happiness in surrounding ourselves with “stuff” simply intensifying our carbon-rich economies which worsen climate change.

Just recently it was the Professor of Psychology from Knox College at Galesburg, Illinois in the U.S., Tim Kasser, who set out to explain the root causes of consumerism during a free lecture at the University of Melbourne.

His address, “Consumerism, society and our ecological future: A psychological and empirical approach” was sponsored by the university’s Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute.

Prof Kasser set out to demystify consumerism, illustrating how we are all drawn into this almost magnetic need to shop, a point he illustrated with a quote from the New York Times just months after the destruction of the city’s World Trade Centre’s twin towers.

The newspaper, he was able to show, declared the terrorists should not be allowed to imagine achieved success in that they had frighten the nation to the extent that it was not going about it normal business and not shopping, or consuming.

He was able to show that people imagined that happiness was to be found in consuming, but in reality it has quite the reverse affect.

Prof Kasser explained that consumerism came with measurable ecological, social and personal costs; costs it seems that most people were happy to pay.

He discussed many things, among them the prime reasons why we become materialistic and that arose from having parents, friends or peers who were materialistic, watching more television or encountering more advertising, and living in a neo-liberalist capitalist nation.

A circular graphic of stochastic modelling prepared by Prof Kasser helped people understand how extrinsic values of consumerism helped promote undesirable traits popularity, image and financial success compared to the intrinsic values of community, affiliation and acceptance.

Those intrinsic values of community (‘I will help the world become a better place”), affiliation (“I will express my love for special people”) and self-acceptance (“I will follow my interests and curiosities wherever they take me”) contrast directly with the extrinsic values.

Prof Kasser said the ecological benefits of intrinsic values were more environmentally friendly behaviours; lower ecological footprint; and less consumption in the forest dilemma game.

He indicated it was important to eschew extrinsic values that promote consumerism and contribute little of value, while intrinsic values brought psychological benefits, among them more happiness, more life satisfaction, higher vitality, less depression, less anxiety and fewer physical problems.

The professor suggested some avenues for change, among them voluntary simplicity, improved environmental communications, a cut in our exposure to advertising, and a change from gross national product (GNP) to a National Indicator of Progress (NIP).

Prof Kasser concluded by noting that materialistic values undermine social ecological sustainability as well as personal and social wellbeing.