Techno-Fix by Joyce Huesemann Michael Huesemann

Author:Joyce Huesemann Michael Huesemann [Michael Huesemann, Joyce Huesemann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, TEC052000
ISBN: 9781550924947
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2011-09-12T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Happiness

AS DISCUSSED IN CHAPTER 5, continuous development in science and technology during the past 200 years has played a key role in contributing to rapid economic (GDP) growth and rising living standards (i.e., per capita GDP) in the industrialized nations. Advances in science and technology have increased material affluence by (a) substituting capital and fossil energy for labor, thereby greatly increasing labor productivities and thus per capita production and consumption, (b) improving efficiencies, thereby reducing the cost of goods and services and thus stimulating their consumption, and (c) creating new products and services that never existed before, thus opening up new avenues of consumption and generating large demands, often spurred by advertising. Improvements in labor productivities and technological efficiencies were discussed in Chapter 5. Here, the focus will be on technological innovation, specifically on the ways in which the invention and advertising of entirely new products and services stimulate desires that, if repeatedly fulfilled, promote rampant consumerism and materialism.

It is first necessary to understand the nature of human needs and their satisfaction. Probably the best known work on human needs is that of Abraham Maslow,724 who postulated a hierarchy consisting of the following three basic human needs: first, material needs such as physiological needs (e.g., food, water, shelter) as well as safety and security needs. Second, social needs such as the need for belonging (affection and acceptance) as well as for self-esteem and esteem by others. Third, spiritual growth and self-actualization needs, which are often expressed in the aspiration to carry out meaningful work and to use one’s talents in the service of something larger than oneself. According to Maslow, higher-order needs can be fulfilled only after lower-order ones have been sufficiently met. More recently, Max-Neef725 asserted that human needs, unlike wants and desires, are not only few but are virtually the same in all cultures throughout history. According to Max-Neef, there are just nine fundamental needs: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation, creativity, identity and freedom. It is interesting to note, specifically within the view of creating a more sustainable and happy society (see Part III), that each culture adopts different ways of satisfying these needs, with some approaches being more successful than others.726

Compared to these few universal human needs, individual wants and desires appear to be unlimited in number and constantly changing. As Joseph Des Jardins notes,

Wants seem to be a matter of individual psychology. They are those factors that provide a motive for acting. Wants come to be developed, chosen, learned, created by advertising, and so on.... They are superficial and temporary in the sense that they depend on a person’s personal background, history, and culture.727

Apparently, desires can be aroused in humans for almost anything. Wants may be stimulated by commercial advertising, which publicizes a new product and claims that happiness will be gained by buying and owning it. A wide range of seemingly frivolous desires may also result from psychological abnormalities such as neurosis or deprivation — material or emotional or both— in early childhood (see below).

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