---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Great Transition Network <[email protected]> Date: Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:09 AM Subject: Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability (GTN Discussion) To: [email protected]
From Igor Matutinović <[email protected]>
------------------------------------------------------- Following Paul Ray and Richard Wilk's comments, I would like to support a view that our behaviors, including those that relate to personal consumption, are to a great extent socially constructed. Social construction of reality and social imprinting shapes and ordinates individual values and beliefs about the world at large or its particular aspects, like the natural environment. We can call this social construction of reality a dominant worldview - a set of beliefs, symbols, values, and segments of objective knowledge that are widely shared in a given society in a given period of time. Using subsumptive hierarchy relationship we can wrap it up as: {dominant worldview {individual values and beliefs {attitudes {intentions {behavior}}}}} meaning that individual behavior is to a great extent constrained by a dominant worldview. In that sense many of us have the propensity to “compulsively” consume because our culture shapes us in that particular way. But this does not exclude the impact of our neural wiring and primary rewards mechanisms on our behaviors, as Peter argued in his text. We are chemical and biological entities, and therefore, constraints to our behavior arise at lower levels as well: {material world {biological world {social world}}} → {chemical dynamics {organism dynamics {social dynamics}}}. In that sense, I see the connection between the constraints that arise from our biochemistry and our worldviews, which is well expressed in Peter's text: “... as capitalist social organization shrinks the diversity of primary rewards to the realm of material consumption, they become predictable and less satisfying. Limited to a few sources of primary reward, we consume them more intensely as the circuit adapts, and eventually they become addictions.” And his final inference—“Therefore, social policies should follow the precept “Expand satisfactions!” We should re-examine and enumerate the myriad sources that were alienated under capitalism”—in my view is a call to reexamine and change our dominant worldview. Igor Matutinović ----- Original Message ----- Transition Network [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 5:08 AM Igor (GfK) We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability (GTN Discussion)
From Paul Ray
----- Richard Wilk's comment resonates with my experience doing values and lifestyles research for 25 years. In several hundred studies, we found that cultural differences in values and worldviews were vastly better predictors to consumer behavior, than learning of the kind mentioned in neural research, or than the kinds of variables used in conventional behaviorist or personality psychology. Values state what is most important in life, and worldviews state beliefs about how life works. The key discovery that gave rise to the Cultural Creatives research findings was that this is grows out of cultural change processes, and psychological variables are not correlated with that. In fact, in numerous studies in Japan, Western Europe and the United States, competition among three competing subcultures organize cultural changes in consumption and in sustainability-related behaviors. These are Traditionals, Moderns, and Cultural Creatives (who are the leaders in creating change toward sustainable culture). Each of the three subcultures is very similar in pattern to its cognate type in the other developed nations. In a comparison of Cultural Creatives in the Netherlands and the U.S., we found that they are more similar to each other than they are to their countrymen in the other two subcultures. This was especially true for sustainability-related products, and any kind of 'green' behaviors, or attitudes in 'green' public issues. And there was better leverage for change by working off of values and lifestyle preferences, and interpreting consumption changes in terms of worldviews. Values and worldviews simply lie at a deeper level in consumer behavior than attitudes and opinions, and are more accessible to influence through interpersonal contact. Paul H. Ray ************************************* Wednesday, January 13, 2016
From Richard Wilk
----- As I have said in past writing on the origins of consumer culture, there is nothing "hard wired" in our brains that makes us consume. I have been working on this issue for more than 30 years, and I can tell you that the majority of human societies on this planet, for the last 1.5 million years, have not been consumer cultures. Any basic reading in anthropology will show this. Looking at brain structure for an explanation is therefore pointless. I have personally lived in a non-consumer culture of subsistence farmers, and have documented how they started to become consumers. People often like neurological explanations to problems because they can be less “messy” than culture and society, but it is culture and social organization that we must focus on if we are to change consumerist behavior. Richard Wilk ******************* Saturday, January 2, 2016
From Paul Raskin
----- GTN Colleagues: The point of departure for our JANUARY DISCUSSION is the new GTI Viewpoint “Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability” by Peter Sterling. Please find it and read it at www.greattransition.org/publication/why-we-consume. A recurrent theme of recent discussions has been the growth imperative of the capitalist system and ways to transcend it. But growth in output would have been a recipe for overproduction and stagnation (“realization crises”) had the demand side of the economic equation not expanded apace. Indeed, Keynes, Schumpeter, and Marx—for different reasons—all believed productivity increases would outpace demand growth, thereby subverting the long-term viability of capitalism. Keynes welcomed that destiny as an opportunity for fashioning a post-scarcity society, Schumpeter rued it as an inevitable segue to some kind of state socialism, and Marx saw deep structural crises as fuel for proletarian revolution. Of course, history has not been kind to these prognoses. Despite episodic stagnation crises, consumer demand kept ballooning, postponing the day of reckoning. What drives this seeming insatiability of wants beyond basic material needs? As a neuroscientist, Peter Sterling draws on contemporary research to diagnose the roots of consumerism in the way the brain works, and to limn lessons for the project of transcending it. Now, a number of you have been looking at the problem of consumerism—and prospects for “sustainable consumption”—through complementary windows of perception, stressing, inter alia, sociological pressures, psychological needs, cultural influences, and economic manipulations. What resonances or dissonances do you see between your own perspective and Sterling’s emphasis on neural design? IN PRAISE OF BREVITY: GTI exchanges benefit enormously from expansive comments, but concise, pointed comments or questions are equally appreciated! Please do not hesitate to weigh in. Comments are welcome through FEBRUARY 2. Friends, 2015 witnessed some hopeful developments for a GT, but also all too many reminders that “we have no time for the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Perhaps our dialogue will ripple out further and faster in the coming year, and enrich the multifarious efforts of this remarkable assemblage. All of us here wish all of you a healthy and meaningful New Year. Looking forward, Paul Raskin GTI Director NOTE ON GTI’S PUBLICATION CYCLE: GTN discussions occur in ODD-NUMBERED months, and GTI publishes in EVEN-NUMBERED months. Each discussion takes up a new essay or viewpoint prior to its publication. After the discussion closes, GTI publishes and distributes the piece, along with comments drawn from the discussion and a response from the author. You can review all GTN discussions at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum. ----- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/172-why-we-consume-neural-design-and-sustainability/1468 Need help? Email [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at http://www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/172-why-we-consume-neur... Need help? Email [email protected] -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/