Is Too Much Stuff Keeping Us From Being Happy?

A recent blog post on Grist shows a disturbing video of a couple who'd been trapped in their house because they had so much stuff. While most of us (hopefully) have nowhere near this amount of crap it does provide an opportunity to stop and think about all the stuff we do have and how much consumption affects our lives and our planet.

This point was expounded on in a recent interview that Yale Environment 360 did with David W. Orr, environmental studies professor and eco-guru at Oberlin College. Orr talks about the lack of correlation between consumption and happiness. "In lots of ways, the growth economy created more junk than you needed, more expectations than it could meet, more waste than the environment could absorb, and more trouble generally than we needed to create," he said.

Happiness in fact, is more of a function of simplicity and also the strength of our social networks, which reminds me of something Bill McKibben wrote in his recent book Eaarth: "On average an American eats half as many meals with family and friends as she did 50 years ago. On average, we have half as many close friends."

That seems about right. Orr points to the antidotes such as the slow food, slow money and transition town movements as examples of ways to do more with less — increase happiness and sustainability while limiting your impact on the planet. Rethinking the way we live has lead to 'new urbanism' says Orr, revaluing contained neighborhoods where you can walk and bike around and have access to your job, shops, schools and parks.

"There's a long literature on growth that shows unimpeachably that beyond some point, growth becomes ill wealth," Orr points out. Of course speaking against growth in American culture is usually sacrilegious, but that's precisely what the current moment may call for. If we want to truly protect the planet, we can't simply trade all our consumer goods with some 'greener' version of the same thing — all the talk of environmental policy solutions will not be possible without a shift in consciousness to accompany a shift in laws.

Photo credit: E. Bartholomew