Consuming Less

Consumption and Happiness

    The disappearance of world scale wars after 1950s, and developments in technology which resulted in the production of increasingly more materials and commodities have created a capitalist society in which money came to represent power. Such a system has provided many advantages in terms of facilitating growth in the world, developments in technology and integration of the world by enabling the production and consumption of the same material all around the world. Peter Saunders in his Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul, gives a detailed analysis of these benefits of capital society. Tim Jackson, on the other hand, makes a comparison between modes of consumption, taking into account all viable arguments. It seems that although capitalism has provided some benefits to the world, its emphasis on consumption has negatively affected the society and consuming less can make the society happier because it will generate more leisure time of self discovery and protect the environment.  
      Consuming less will generate more leisure for people which can be used as time for self discovery and emotional needs. In a world where competition intensifies in every field, people increasingly spend more time at work in order to purchase material needs. This causes a lack of focus on other life activities which causes an imbalance between work and life. People spend more time at work in order for acquisition of their material needs. However, pursuing such goals never make people really happy. This leads to less time of leisure. However, a study by the “University of Chicago discovered that the only category to be positively related to happiness was leisure.” (Rosenbloom, 2) People can only become happy during their leisure but not from attainment of materialistic gains. Yet, the consumption culture has almost destroyed the time people spend at leisure, with their family and friends. Parents may spend all their time at work trying to provide the...