Mind Over Matter
Posted on December 13, 2010 | posted by:
Photo courtesy of ©James Porto 2010, jamesporto.com
If there’s one thing that has come to define American culture it’s consumerism—it seeps its way into our lunch breaks, our late night clicking sprees, our culture, and our everyday lives. We are enticed by the newness and novelty of things; thwarted by the desire to ‘keep up’ with social norms or to differentiate ourselves. Perpetuated by mass media culture we can hardly discern culture from consumerism anymore. The more we seem to reject it, the more it works into our subconscious, often disguised as a philanthropic campaign, an eco-tourism holiday, as something we need for the greater good. Now that we’ve reached a point in history where consumption-induced environmental damage is deteriorating our planet exponentially, reversing the cycle of degradation has come to be one of most pressing issues on a global scale.
Unfortunately capitalist economies do not recognize these limits to growth. The indicators of economic growth, such as Gross Domestic Product, are subjective in that they deal with the resource productivity of a country—the value of output. Businesses respond to the ‘end of the supply chain’ by substituting new goods and materials, reinforcing the cycle of products to consume. Paul Hawken’s Natural Capitalism points out traditional capitalism’s failures. It assigns no monetary value to the largest stock it employs—natural capital (all of earth’s natural resources). Hawken argues that “economics will never function properly until natural capital is placed on the balance sheets of companies, countries, and the world” and demands “a capitalism as if living things mattered.” Valuing the earth’s resources is a ‘wicked problem’ in and of itself.
While it’s difficult to imagine that GDP indicators will change anytime soon, economists have recently become interested in an indicator called ‘Gross National Happiness’ which originated in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. GNH considers important measurements that occupy the core of our lives such as social well-being, community vitality, psychological well-being, good governance, and living standards.
Throughout history, design has always been a means to understand its environment as much as it has served in shaping it. Design that embraces the “cradle-to-cradle” philosophy can begin to shift cultural attitudes, corporate behavior, and even public agencies in a positive direction. Paul Hawken, John Thackara and others have underscored the value in ‘systems thinking’ and each have offered successful case studies in how integrative, whole systems design can be achievable by putting environment and humanity back into the equation.