{"id":1728,"date":"2024-09-28T04:53:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-28T00:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/?p=1728"},"modified":"2024-09-28T04:53:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T00:53:51","slug":"stuffocation-affluenza-and-being-worldly-vice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/28\/stuffocation-affluenza-and-being-worldly-vice\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuffocation, Affluenza and being Worldly Vice!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Let\u2019s begin with what the\u00a0Business Dictionary<\/em><\/span>\u00a0has to say about\u00a0Affluenza<\/em><\/span>(not to be mixed up with\u00a0Influenza<\/em><\/span>\u00a0though the\u00a0contagious capabilities\u00a0<\/em><\/span>are common to both):<\/b><\/p>\n

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1.\u00a0A social condition<\/i><\/span>\u00a0that affects a society because of the elevated number of individuals striving to be wealthy. People within the society feel that the only measure of success is determined by how much money and prestige a person has.<\/p>\n

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2. A social theory<\/i><\/span>\u00a0claiming that individuals with very privileged and wealthy backgrounds sometimes struggle to determine the difference between right and wrong due to the nature of their upbringing. Also known as sudden-wealth syndrome<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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Having done that,\u00a0Stuffocation<\/em><\/span>\u00a0is defined by\u00a0Macmillan\u2019s Crowdsourced Open Dictionary<\/em><\/span>\u00a0as:<\/p>\n

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\u2013 a feeling of being oppressed by the amount of stuff you own. The problem in question is an\u00a0anxiety<\/em><\/span>\u00a0christened\u00a0stuffocation<\/em><\/span>\u00a0\u2013 a feeling of being oppressed by one\u2019s ungovernable heap of belongings, acquisitions.<\/p>\n

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Affluenza<\/em><\/span>(<\/strong> or\u00a0Selfish Capitalism <\/em><\/span><\/a>as author Oliver James <\/em><\/span>would have called it in his book by the same name)<\/strong>\u00a0has not just changed the world, it has also changed the way we see the world. The happy embrace of \u2018\u00a0convenience\u00a0<\/em><\/span>\u2018 and our reconciling to not being able to plan ahead is an entirely new way of thinking and over the past few decades we have built an economic system to accommodate it. A vast majority of humans(yes, us included, thankfully) would find the idea of using our scarce resources to produce things that are designed to be thrown away absolutely mad.<\/p>\n

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Consumerism<\/em><\/span>(<\/strong>the love of buying things) can, by definition only provide a\u00a0transient sense of satisfaction<\/em><\/span>, the \u2018\u00a0thrill of the chase<\/em><\/span>\u00a0\u2018 or the \u2018\u00a0after glow<\/em><\/span>\u00a0\u2018 like walking down high street with your branded take away. The benefits of consumerism, as one can imagine is short lived as they are linked to the process of the purchase and not to the use of the product.\u00a0Materialism<\/em><\/span>(is the love of things themselves) is about owning and therefore there is a clear distinction from consumerism. Taken literally, they are polar opposites, though they are often used interchangeably.<\/p>\n

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We love things not for their material function but for the symbolic act of acquiring and possessing them.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Stuffocation<\/em><\/span><\/a>(a term brilliantly coined by trend forecaster and author\u00a0James Wallman<\/strong> who wrote a book on the subject) is to have more stuff than we could ever need \u2013 clothes we don\u2019t wear, kit we don\u2019t use and toys we don\u2019t play with. How it\u2019s cluttering up our homes, making us feel\u00a0stuffocated<\/em><\/span>\u00a0and stressed and potentially killing us. Not to mention, how damaging it is for the planet. Our obsession with stuff can be traced back to the origin of the\u00a0Mad Men<\/em><\/span> who compellingly created desire through advertising<\/strong>\u00a0(Remember\u00a0Vance Packard\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0famous book on advertising,\u00a0The Hidden Persuaders)<\/em><\/span>.<\/a><\/div>\n
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There is a clutter crisis and\u00a0rampant materialism<\/em><\/span>\u00a0is being strongly linked to\u00a0declining well being<\/em><\/span>. The manifesto for change that the\u00a0Stuffocation<\/em><\/span>\u00a0book articulates is to replace materialism with\u00a0experientialism<\/em><\/span>\u2013 instead of a new watch or a new car, maybe a holiday with friends and time with family. It advocates being healthier, happier and to do more with less.<\/div>\n
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To put it simply, if we want to reduce the\u00a0impact on the natural environment\u00a0<\/em><\/span>of all the stuff we buy( and mind you we are almost 7.5 billion of all humanity, so that\u2019s a whole lot of stuff and so much of it unneeded), we damn well hold onto them for far more longer. Maintain it, repair it, get more satisfaction from the things we already own, more satisfaction from leisure time and definitely less satisfaction from buying things. Affluenza is curable and has to be cured. So is materialism.\u00a0The culture has to change. Let\u2019s move on from worldly vice to worldly wise.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
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Less is indeed a lot more!<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Let\u2019s begin with what the\u00a0Business Dictionary\u00a0has to say about\u00a0Affluenza(not to be mixed up with\u00a0Influenza\u00a0though the\u00a0contagious capabilities\u00a0are common to both):   1.\u00a0A social condition\u00a0that affects a society because of the elevated number of individuals striving to be wealthy. People within the society feel that the only measure of success is determined by how much money … Continue reading “Stuffocation, Affluenza and being Worldly Vice!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1731,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions\/1731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}