Creating the kind of consensus necessary to effect a radical change in our institutions requires a fundamental shift in our collective consciousness. Hard economic times could, of course, have such an effect, if the 1930s depression be any guide. During that difficult decade, tens of millions of Americans became openly supportive of socialist policies. However, the argument has also been waged for millennia that one's individual (as opposed to collective) action can be the key to a collective transformation. This is the mystic’s path. “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” Mohandas Gandhi said. And Sartre in Existentialism and Human Emotions suggests that each person behave as they desire all people behave.
Instead of expecting our political and business leaders to blithely accept a redistribution of wealth, we can perform the end around. If Americans can accept, no aim for a lower standard of living, by letting go of the dream of ever-rising material wealth, of being the child with his face pressed to the candy store window, the addict begging for more even though more is killing him, we could regain our power. If we’re not jonesing for the goods, the peddlers lose their power over us. And by the way, in these same decades in which Americans have been working harder and consuming more, Americans have reported becoming increasingly unhappy, according to Richard Layard in his book Happiness.
The idea is simple enough: work less, produce less, consume less. Spend more time with family, in leisure, growing vegetables in your garden, puttering around the house, attending civic and social events, volunteering, exercising, meditating, praying, doing all the non-consumer things that bring happiness and ease and physical and mental health to a person’s life. With less ambition and less drive to consume, one’s daily existence becomes less stressful and life actually more secure. The house isn’t as big or perfect, the car isn’t as shiny, but more time allows for wiser consumer decisions (so that the drop in one’s material standard of living isn’t to the drop in income). And, besides, we know, in our quieter moments, that inner happiness makes these priorities fade away like the illusion that they are.
The reverberations across the social landscape could be immense. Industry will sell their goods elsewhere, of course, continuing the post-modern form of imperialism, where companies become increasingly transnational, owing allegiance to no nation, to no one, having only to obey the laws their wealth cannot elude. This may, as it turns out, be good for equality across the globe, but it won’t be good for the environment and our continuing Ecological Suicide. It'll promote equal opportunity suicide.
And some suggest that at home a downside of recession--whether voluntary or historically imposed-- is that industry will invest less on Green research and development and that government and business will redirect their focus onto the economy at the expense of the environment. Perhaps. However, as every environmental indicator worsens, anyway, technology-driven solutions have thus far proven themselves insufficient. Economic growth and increased (Green) consumption hardly seem to be the way to improve the environment. Again, these objections sound more like the addict's rationale for staying the course when their drug is threatened.
As for the recession, ours can become individual, voluntary and liberating.