Daniel Petre: the decline of generosity
If you have ever faced the diagnosis of a terminal illness or been present as a loved one dies you know deep in your heart that those who face the prospect (or reality) of a shortened existence think very differently about the world and their place in it.
Have I lived a fulfilling life? Have I been a good friend/spouse/parent? Why didn’t I leave that soul-destroying job and pursue my dreams? Why did I let myself become angst ridden over “having” to own the latest car or new sofa/TV/home appliance?
It seems that at the one time in our life when everything is laid bare and the truly important issues come to mind we reflect not on wealth, material goods, social status but rather happiness, legacy, a fulfilled life and strong relationships. Therefore either all terminal diseases attack the brain and distort brain function to “make” us believe that being good is better than being rich OR the shock of a diagnosis of a terminal illness brings clarity to an otherwise confused life.
Much has been written about the nation of Bhutan. It is a very poor nation that has only recently started to become part of the 21st-century world. The Bhutanese people are Buddhists and this in turn creates the model that suggests that beneficial development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. They have this wonderful desire to measure not GDP but rather GNH (Gross National Happiness).
The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.
Visitors to this very poor country marvel at how content the people are. Truly content, and yet how can this be so? Why aren’t they demonstrating in the streets demanding their right to buy a 50-inch LED HD TV and to have access to 450 gaming machines and a humongous, disgusting “club” to house these testaments to the stupidity of mankind? It is infuriating to those who are convinced that just focusing on your personal needs and the pursuit of financial wealth will of themselves lead to a happier life.
In his book Affluenza, Clive Hamilton references the dramatic increase in real net worth of Australian families from the 1950s to now. i.e. most of us are much, much richer than our peers were some 50 years ago. Yet survey after survey tells us that we are no happier than we were as a nation 50 years ago and in fact many measures (e.g. pro-rata prescriptions of ant-depressants) suggest we are a much sadder bunch than our peers in the 1950s. As we have hoarded more and more we want more and more and as we get more and more we become sadder and sadder.
Interestingly also over the past 50 years there has been a significant drop off in all forms of volunteering. Whether it is the formalised groups such as Rotary or APEX, church groups, school parent groups, or just getting parents to coach sports teams — wherever you look, the number of people spending time on voluntary work is declining. Of course, people are volunteering, however, in declining numbers. Is it that community groups need less help or that we care less because we are too focused on our own needs?
Abraham Maslow was the father of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs whose work on the motivations of humans was seminal in the development of many psychological models and a general understanding of why we do things. In his book, Maslow on Management, he discusses a search for the sub-section of the human race that seemed the most fulfilled, most productive group.
In his travels he came across the Blackfoot Indians of Canada. Here he found a tribe where the cultural and societal constructs that exist in our Western world were turned on their head. In the Blackfoot tribe there was no dominant leader. If the tribe went to war, then the most logical war-like tribe member took over leadership. If the tribe needed to hunt, then the best hunter became leader and if they needed to grow crops, then the most skilled agriculturalist became the leader.
Further in the tribe, social status was a function of giving. The more you gave the more you were respected. This applied to information as well as material goods. Here Maslow found a group of people very comfortable with themselves as individuals, all without a need to prove to anyone else that they added value as inherently every person adds value. No one had to gain and retain wealth to prove their worth nor did they have to fight to gain and retain a leadership role to prove their worth.
I would suggest that the single biggest issue in our society today is a declining lack of generosity and this lack of generosity is apparent at every level of our society.
In philanthropic/donation terms on any comparable metric we are not a very giving nation and our wealthy are particularly good at being greedy and hoarding all their riches for themselves. Australians like to think of themselves as generous and philanthropic. The numbers, sadly, tell another story.
We watch with great sadness the devastation of the Pakistan floods but can’t seem to get off the new leather sofa to donate funds to people who have done nothing to deserve the devastation that the floods wrought.
We like the fact that we have community groups but most of us can’t be bothered to attend any of them or help out in any meaningful way.
In political discourse we increasingly see the other side as being full of corrupt, ideological whack jobs whose only goal is the destruction of Australia. Why is it that we can’t look at every issue with an open mind and with a generous spirit assuming that people who have given their life to work in politics are more often than not good people?
Why is it that complaints to and about schools are increasing? Is it that our schools are doing a worse job now than they were 20 years ago? Or perhaps we, as parents, assume the worst of our teachers and schools and any issue with our child must be the result of incompetence.
We are too focused on our own needs and on hoarding more with the sad result that we lack the ability to care for others or approach life with a generous demeanor and spirit.
So what to do? In every debate you need someone to set the other boundary condition — in effect be the crazy guy that is so extreme that they force a more reasonable outcome. Here goes …
- Allow our wealthy to donate 20% of any wealth over $20 million or institute an estate tax to take it off them on their death.
- Work out how to limit the REAL work week to less than 45 hours. Anyone working more than this will have trouble being a good father, spouse, friend or community member.
- Provide for tax breaks for people that undertake community work. I realise that we should not have to pay people to undertake community work but we need to restart the engine.
- Have corporate boards sack CEOs who display rude, violent, environmentally corrupt or anti-social behaviour and shareholders should sack board that do not move on poorly behaved CEOs. (This should be interesting).
- Penalise banks and financial institutions that convince people to take on more debt than they should.
- Cancel all gaming licences for casinos and poker machines in pubs. These devices do nothing but harm the fabric of our society.
- Cancel the radio licence of any talk-back station that broadcasts factually incorrect rants by its talk-back jocks or nutters masking as journalists.
- Moreover have our leaders start a dialogue, bipartisan, about what really matters in our lives and how we can become a more generous nation made up of more fulfilled, happy, generous people.
This essay is part of Crikey’s Big Ideas series. We’ve had enough of sound bites set on repeat, glib slogans and half-baked committees — we’re looking for the vision thing. One Crikey subscriber will also get the chance to share their Big Idea with our readers: send us a three-line pitch, on an issue of national importance that gets you fired up, to boss@crikey.com.au with “Big Ideas” in the subject line.
What utter bullsh-t. NGO’s started paying ‘volunteers’ (spot the oxymoron) and that’s when the generosity stopped. When people discovered their ‘donations’ were going to the collectors of the funds rather than the starving NGO p-rn on the brochure used to secure their sponsorship they stopped because there dollars weren’t getting to the third world.
Thanks Daniel but you failed to set the boundary conditions. These things are all quite reasonable
I would think that net $ in donations would have increased. I would like to see the stats.
Sounds good to me. We can’t get volunteers any more in the couple of things I do voluntarily.
These two are good as well (they’re all quite good):
•Penalise banks and financial institutions that convince people to take on more debt than they should.
•Cancel the radio licence of any talk-back station that broadcasts factually incorrect rants by its talk-back jocks or nutters masking as journalists.
Daniel
Perhaps most Australians, like me, were disgusted by the actions of Pakistan’s President Zardari who chose to remain on holiday at his French chateau rather than respond to the devastating floods affecting his country. Why would Australians donate to a cause where the country’s leader can’t be bothered cutting short his own holiday.
There’s one big reason why people would have reduced their voluntary generosity. Historically people had to be generous, or else the less fortunate wouldn’t be cared for and their community wouldn’t develop, and few people wanted to see that.
But now the tasks of developing the community and caring for the less fortunate have been taken over by government, and funded through involuntary taxes. We’re basically told that doing those things is no longer our responsibility, so it is any wonder that we’ve stopped doing them?
While I certainly think there is a plausible case to be made that the rise of individualism as a social/political force has contributed to a less generous society, I’m not sure this is it. For starters, it’s not clear to me whether Daniel thinks the decline of generosity is specific to Australia (as the “we’re not a very giving nation” appears to indicate) or part of an overall phenomenon among rich or perhaps Western societies (since many of these trends, such as the lack of improvements in happiness scores, are replicated throughout the Western world). And actually, as a country we aren’t that bad - this list http://charitieshouse.blogspot.com/2010/01/comparison-of-countries-charitable.html places us at 4th in the world for charitable giving as a % of GDP. True, our super-rich haven’t emulated the great American tradition of philanthropy - this is something they need to be shamed about; but it shouldn’t be used to indict the rest of us.
Furthermore, this piece seems to conflate a number of separate trends - many of which are, I’d agree, important and even urgent social problems, but I’m not sure the unifying explanation of them as facets of an overall less “generous” society is convincing. For instance, regarding complaints to schools it seems to me completely plausible that neither schools perform worse nor that parents “assume the worst” about schools, but rather than any increase in complaints - not that it has been quantified - is due to an increase in intervention by parents in all facets of their children’s lives (i.e., the “helicopter parent” phenomenon). Now, I am not saying that this is entirely commendable - but it does seem at odds with the idea that we are suddenly too wrapped up in ourselves to care what anyone else is doing.
Similarly, it always seemed to me that an increase in the use of antidepressants from 50 years ago does not need to be attributed to declining levels of happiness, when it can be adequately be explained by a dramatic increase in social awareness of mental illness, and a commensurate reduction in the stigma attached to diseases such as depression.
Finally, let’s not confuse moral concerns with aesthetic ones. You might find registered clubs “disgusting” and flat-screen TVs ridiculous, but that says nothing about either whether they will make other people happy or whether society has become more or less generous. Flat screen TVs and pokies aren’t bad per se; they become bad when they are elevated as the sole manifestation of the good life. People buy this stuff for a reason, and by dismissing material aspirations outright because they don’t conform to our tastes, it seems to me that we are missing an important opportunity to engage with people on what really matters, namely, as you put it, material and spiritual development as mutually complementary goods.
For the love of god: could people stop using Bhutan as an example of happiness?
I agree with..
“I would suggest that the single biggest issue in our society today is a declining lack of generosity and this lack of generosity is apparent at every level of our society.”
& I would like to add an addendum. A lack of trust inhibits people from giving their best to take care of themselves let alone take care of rest of world. A lack of trust comes from people feeling cheated such as when adultery becomes endemic in organizations & transparency & fairness goes out the window. Politically correctness replaces morality. Good organizations get tagged as Klu Klux Klans.
The best organization I ever belonged to was Freemasonry.. I was a fool for calling off. I still look fondly at all attempts to be reliable & self sufficient & independent. This is one fine NGO that is misinterpreted.
Charity begins at home. Overseas aid has given all NGO’s a bad smell. A massive % of foreign aid becomes swirling back through tax havens along with drug monies, arms dealers & corrupt govt officials taking care of themselves. I remember once I saw a website which attempted to add up all the exports & imports of all world govts & they don’t add up. Besides classification systems misaligned & poor reporting the corruption factor certainly was a reason. Overseas aid was certainly a factor.
I remember talking to a Japanese friend who advised how rich chinese from PNG were recycling our overseas aid to QLD property investments. We have propped up PNG for so long but the benefits come back to us one way or another. I have no faith in NGO’s or over seas aid. It all stands for the red carpet treatment our pollies get when arriving at overseas airport. That’s why we give foreign aid.
Whenever I see Australia having a balance of payments deficit & giving away our wealth in foreign aid makes me sick in the stomach. Charity begins at home.
wbddrss
@John Hamer - on the other hand, why should the flood victims of Pakistan be punished for the complete lack of judgment of their president?
Well said, Daniel Petrie.
It’s about equity. Can we afford debt? Yes. We have a very small proportion of govermental debt, adn large income. So, should we help countries which don’t have these two conditions? There’s a sense in which we should help our own poor better, but ingrained racism and superiority complexes (‘it’s the abos (sic)/unemployed/homeless fault’) stops this.
When we die, we can’t take it with us. I agree with the idea that Bhutan is not an oasis of happiness - Buddhism is ultimately a selfish religion. When was the last time you saw a Buddhist actually helping the poor/deprived. Christian, Muslim and Hindu faiths (plus a good many humanist organisations) do this. I’m sure there are Buddhist charities - but do they help others? Or just themselves? (I’m happy to be educated on this.)
While I agree with the general thrust of Daniel’s argument I disagree with many of the specific examples he uses to support it.
As Down and Out of Sai Gon notes, Bhutan’s high level of “spiritual harmony” is enforced by military and police action against anyone who doesn’t fit a North Bhutanese cultural ideal.
Gift economies, Blackfoot included, are fascinating, but they aren’t utopias. It is a logical necessity to get before you give; thus many gift economies feature “gift entrepreneurs” who work themselves, or more commonly their wives, children, and debtors, extremely hard in order to accumulate the goods which they then give away. In extremis this behaviour becomes potlatching.
As Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan demonstrate, the effectiveness of our school systems really has declined over the last 20 years (pdf). This can probably be attributed to the abandonment of phonics based literacy teaching, rather than any broader social factors.
A proliferation of flat-screens and decline in participation is in large part explained by the Baumol effect (explanation at John Quiggin’s blog). That is, material goods have become cheaper and human services (and wages) have become more expensive, leading to people being able to buy more but being time poor (and being more rewarded for staying at work) than they once were. This has been compounded by a shift away from government policies which promoted full employment and policy capture by the free-market right.
All that said, I agree we need a shorter working week, more time for volunteering and each other, less industies creating illth, etc - but blaming the lack (or proliferation) of these things on a general moral decline when compared to hypothetical primitive utopias, rather than seeing them as effects of real shifts in politics and macroeconomics, makes this article an exercise in moral finger-pointing rather than a real search for solutions.
Like Lucy, I think it’s all too easy to conflate different phenomena.
Development was never a guarantee of happiness. It has brought us the ability to reliably feed billions more people than we once could, to live longer, to have families without playing Russian roulette with a woman’s life every time she gets pregnant, to overcome past limits of social class by birth, and to have a society where most people are healthy most of their lives instead of slowly dying of typhoid or tubercolosis.
What we do with these things is up to us. Use it to grow or squander it on self indulgent consumption.
As Eric Hobsbawm argues in “The Age of Extremes,” World War 1 kicked off a 75 year epoch of one calamity after another. Violence, hatred, fear, slaughter, and general mayhem has dominated the century. There were short hiatus periods in the early 20s and in the 50s to early 60s, but for the most part the epoch was largely one calamity after another. Phillip Bobbit argues in “The Shield of Achilles” that this was a single continuous global war, the the end of WW1 was just a temporary cessation of hostilities leading in to other campaigns and other battlefields, but all over essentially the same global constitutional agenda. Much of humanity spent at least some of the second half of that epoch seriously contemplating the prospect its own self destruction.
Is it any surprise, then, that people have difficulty making the best use of our hard won prosperity?
Everyone is complaining about the little examples he choose. But that does not subtract from the fact that he is absolutely correct.
You are all caring about the money not the people, and this is the problem! SEEK to volunteer and to donate, don’t do it because someone is asking you. You will FEEL a lot better about it.
Why not donate your TIME and/or money to an organisation you care about and know. Don’t donate to the collectors, go straight to the organisation. They use these collectors because it is the only way they can get money.
So if you are talking to a collector and your about to donate or buy something, stop and say to yourself “Is this person getting a cut? If I go to their website or door will I get the same thing and will all the money go to the cause?” If so say no thanks, walk away and donate knowing that your hard earn money is being used to the max. BUT think, will I have donated if it was not for the collector?
This is interesting. Like others, I’m not too sure what the cause and effect relationship is as descibed here but I feel like I’ve seen the same vague trends in us.
I usually describe it, tossily, as Creeping Battler Syndrome. Which is an increasing feeling of brittleness on the part of upper-working-to-middleclass households. Many of which are doing pretty well but feel they’ll never have quite enough to get off the knife edge. They’d likely tell you they’re perfectly generous people, but they can’t afford it. Maybe when they’re over the hump (which of course will never happen. And they can’t be blamed for spoiling themselves occasionally. They and their family deserve it).
It’s why, at least partly, interest rates are the biggest election issue of all (coupled with our debt culture of course) and why unjustified impressions of the impending boat people flood has such extraordinary power. No matter how rich we are, no matter how much we have, we feel as though we’re a hair’s breadth from disaster.
It’s just my personal observation, of course. Seems to be observing the same sots of things though. I’ll read others’ links with interest.
Without a doubt we are less generous. This is why:
I broadly agree with a previous about lack of trust. We are exhorted from the time we wake-up to bedtime to buy this that the other. This is not the offering of a product or service;-this is ‘marketing’ which says the roof will fall in if you don’t buy t.t.to.
We are repeatedly told that we are valued; we are being listened to; ‘our call is important’. Blatantly untrue.
We are sent accounts (that in many cases we now pay for; (the account, NOT just what we are billed for). These accounts are indecipherable in the way they are calculated. That in my view is deliberate.
We go to large places called supermarkets;-where we have to spend time wandering around to find/serve ourselves with what we need; minimized staff are nearly invisible; we purchase inflated cost, provisions; full of additives and colours; and then we queue up to pay for same. The magazines and lollies at check-outs are there for further purchase if we get bored, and of course lollies are placed strategically for the little ones to grab!
If we choose to go to a shopping centre, these are frequently designed to force the shopper to go in a circular motion so that we must pass other shops, and perhaps buy something else.
We watch the incessant bickering of Government and Opposition;-and their total acquiescence when it comes to their own generous salary perks.
These reps ‘of the people for the people’ tell us of the warm brown fuzzy of volunteering. (“Traditional” volunteers: Lavenders/MoW/etc., are now joined by “New Age” volunteers. These are yesterday’s workforce, who more often than not, are doing jobs for which they used to be paid. I was a volunteer interviewer to place volunteers. The basis of volunteering is that it must be with a ‘non-profit’ organization. I placed volunteers in Government Departments….I saw nothing but exploitation of New Age volunteers-and pulled out in disgust). ALL are lovely genuine people. But I now fully understand how it feels to be so wanted……as a non-paid worker.
Controversial eh? Well it should be said!!
Our fat ca…sorry Politicians raise taxes but with Privatization have far less responsibility then they used to do.
They put up TV ad’s telling us to eat five of this, and three of that….. but say uck fall about HOW a struggling family affords this…………….
YES. We are less generous. We are less generous because we feel powerless and exploited.(BTW: if I had accepted my banks generous offer for a credit card/s- I could have donated my $50 that I put aside for the Pakistan Appeal (where my mother comes from). By card- UNISEF would be happy to receive the money (which is still put aside). Why only that way? Because NOT ONE bank would start a Pakistan Appeal fund for over counter donations.
And above every else: the kind of daily ripoffs I’ve described that so erode the soul are justified by many in society who will suggest it isn’t a big deal/stop whinging/toughen up etc.,
The justification by the ‘enablers’ of any society inevitably leads to mediocrity, and this leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness;-THIS leads to selfishness.
We are indeed less generous. It saddens me, but comes as no surprise.
I signed up to leave a short sharp comment: “Daniel, get a life…. of course you don’t realsie that the extra HDD TV’s, access to gaming mchaines et al…. comes from increased debt, either mortgage debt or credit card debt. Of course everyday punters don’t have anything left over to allocate to philanthropy.” But on reading through to your ideas for sustained well being, you’re right of course. Some of them may even be actionable. By the way, does our new band of Independents ever log onto Crikey? Your points (not your dissertation) may well give them some very good ideas.
See what I mean?
_______________________
Can’t hang about to talk, got to get down to the pokies with the rest of mankind, (after the 42/44/52/54…” HDTV is delivered of course.
What a hassle that is going to be, because they are delivering these things to the great unwashed all over town. The traffic jams are terrible,-I can’t get my BMW out of the driveway, and the reception on my Blackberry is ruined…just ruined!!
Strangely enough, the boundless goodness & generosity of those who give their time, love, compassion & energy to others is all around. I developed MS (yes slowly losing physical function & energy, ability to walk, withstand heat, stress etc) some years ago, and now live in a world populated by people and qualities more like the Bhutanese than the Australians that Daniel Petre has in mind. Hang out with those of us with “incurable” conditions and illnesses and you might be surprised. My experience is that the generosity & open-heartedness that you seek in the Australian community is abundantly there.
Once people went to church regularly and were told about notions such as “.. it is as hard for a rich man to get to heaven as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle…”. “suffer little children to come unto me..”, the story of the good samaritan, raising the sick from the dead etc. There were other messages too but there was an emphasis on loving the neighbour and doing something about it. Advertising was limited to a few mediums.
Now people are rarely challenged to reflect on the nature of life and community. The nearest is in the adverts which are ubiquitous and almost all about personal status, glamour, convenience. It is all about creating a sense of inadequacy which can only be helped by spending money. If a person has given money away then it cannot be used to help cover the inadequacy.
Added to this is a news style which is all about attacking trust in people and institutions. We see it above where people don’t actually trust that the money they donate will go to the intended recipients.
There are also other inhibiting factors such as personal liability for board decisions if a person is part of a volunteer board along with increasing paperwork burdens created by government to meet compliance requirements. It all gets too hard and people think why not be a free loader like most of the rest of the population. This is probably one of the key reasons for the drop in union membership where workers like the unions but just don’t think that they should be the mug who pays in time, money and possibly future promotions.
My big idea 1. - limit the advertising industry by introducing time limitations on TV, radio, newspapers and size and number of billboards. The internet may be a little harder. In addition any statement has to be independently verifiable.
BI 2 Streamline and revamp the requirements for volunteer boards to make it more worthwhile for people to become members.
BI3 If people receive benefits from something like union membership then a fee can be charged for the services.
BI4 Have community forums which focus on moral issues about how we treat each other on a regular basis. Could be via social network sites or old style debates. If our society is indeed based on Christian values then which are the key elements which make it so and how are they different/similar to other religions? How do atheists form a moral compass about how to treat others?
So yes I agree that we are less generous
This article has a number of what I would consider to be glaring inaccuracies and/or gross oversimplification, and if Daniel Petre has any stats to back up his claims I would be very interested in seeing them, and they should definitely be included in an article like this.
First of all, the percentage of people volunteering rose from 24 per cent in 1995 to 35 per cent in 2006. In 2006, 5.4 million Australians volunteered their time - that’s a lot of Australian volunteers.
It does seem that the number of hours people devote to their volunteering has decreased, but you cannot say volunteering is declining when the number of volunteers has increased by more than 10 percent.
Source: http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/C52862862C082577CA25731000198615/$File/44410_2006.pdf
The 2005 Giving Australia report shows the giving of money increased by 58 per cent (adjusted for inflation) between 1997 and 2005. In addition, in the year 2004-2005 “$7.7 billion was donated from individuals. Of this, $5.7 billion was donated by 13.4 million people, 87% of adult Australians, in the year to January 2005. The average donation was $424 pa while the median donation was $100.” That’s a lot.
The same report found our giving as a percentage of GDP was behind the US but in front of Canada. This is different to Lucy’s link before from CharitiesHouse, but whether we’re 3rd or 4th on the list, it’s obviously just nonsense to claim we are amongst the worst countries for giving.
Source:
http://www.cafaustralia.org.au/uploads/files/Giving_Australia_Summary_Oct05.pdf
I am always very very wary of articles like this, and I was not surprised to find this one filled with unreferenced ‘statements of fact’ about how terrible Western society is at giving and how we should all feel bad about ourselves. Improving philanthropy and quality of life is really important, and this article makes many good points, but making sweeping generalisations that are not backed up by references or statistics is amateurish and damages the credibility of the article, the author and unfortunately, this publication itself.
Thank you for the above participative comments on “TRUST” in society. I would like to expand on the above comments where they relate to trust.
Now that I am retired I cannot afford to belong to membership where members are expected to fork out monies.
For example my union membership is not a tax deduction while ever I am not working. I feel donations to NGO’s by time should count as edification, so that as a better person I can then get a tax deduction when I go volunteering. At present any volunteering conjoined with monies spent on membership of non profit organizations is not a tax deduction. I feel that this is a disincentive for me to participate in an organisation such as clubs or charities or unions; so I drop out because I do not have monies for membership. I am not poor but as an officially out of work person I would like some recognition by society for my efforts to improve myself & society in interaction with other members of the human race.
I suppose I sound selfish & mixing oranges & apples but once I am retired & out of work I find that living on a super pension does not incline me to chase belonging to organizations where volunteering is involved. Somebody should straighten this tax mess out. It is okay for some churches to pay no tax & run themselves as a business but us poor individuals are never encouraged to even improve themselves by making membership of NGO’s tax deductible. I am an ex Tax employee by the way. And I feel the tax system provides disincentives for unemployed people to volunteer & improve themselves when they are on a limited income.
wbddrss
Thank you, Opentin, for shattering some all-too-common myths. From the ABS report you linked:
From the Giving Australia report you linked:
So the question becomes, why have Australians, and especially young Australians who are married with kids, become so much more generous?
I would venture the theory (those on the left aren’t going to like this) that it’s related to the overall economic wealthiness of society. A wealthy society is a society no longer struggling just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, so people turn their resources to things that enrich their lives, such as relationships, art, culture, hobbies, and helping others.
Then the whole Big Idea challenge, “The Vision Thing(™)” becomes one of making more people more prosperous, and also of freeing up more of their time. So you don’t have to reinvent society or come up with whole new models of government or economy. Most of the best reforms will sound disappointingly mundane: fix up the tax system, fix up the housing supply problem, fix up the urban transit systems in the cities, and so on.
If you’re looking for human virtue in the economic and political legislation, you’re looking in the wrong place. Human virtue exists in human society. The purpose of the economic and political rules is mainly to remove as many impediments as it is safely possible to remove.
“A wealthy society is a society no longer struggling just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, so people turn their resources to things that enrich their lives, such as relationships, art, culture, hobbies, and helping others.”
Absolutely agree.
……as I do with Daniel Petrie that generosity HAS declined.
How can that be?
Very simple,-it is what constitutes a ‘wealthy society’ ! By comparison to a Third World country;-of course we are wealthy!
But by comparison within that society? I agree that once our own ‘survival’ is assured, we can look further afield, but for very many in our ‘wealthy society’ it is a continuing struggle.
The Right assert that if one lives in a wealthy society, one is therefore wealthy! The Right makes no allowance for the attendant difficulties experienced by those who live within this great consumer orientated society.
If those same people don’t have a huge Plasma TV, then they must be envious of those who do,-and should earn enough money to get one. However if these same people DO have a huge Plasma TV then they have their priorities wrong; are wasting their money on luxury items;-and deserve to be vilified.
……………………sigh, those on the Right just don’t get this.
_______________________
It isn’t complex. It has become a cliché nowadays to quote ‘the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer’ thing.
Cliché or not; it is true. It is also true that if you have money, you can get money!!
Those who struggle in our liberated society are not, NOT; all ‘losers’. Those people deal everyday with the things I referred to in my first post.
…………and it is those same people who have to answer for their ‘lack of genorosity’. How ironic.
Perhaps an article about the decline of Corporate generositygenerosity might be nearer the mark, eh Daniel?
I’ll be damned if I know how the ABS has got stats on volunteering. Every voluntary hour I have given over the past 15 years will NOT have been reported to the ABS, or supplied by any organisation or person. As is often the case with stats, it can be better to ignore them and concentrate on the ideas.
And what a surprise, parents of school aged children are the biggest volunteers. Well blow me down. It seems to be the price of bearing children these days that someone somewhere will rope you into doing something for little Johnny’s club.
There’s a big difference between something given with comparatively altruistic motives and being roped into organising the Club Ball for the soccer club because you were the last parent to take a step back.
Quite a bit of the volunteering I have done hasn’t always left me feeling particularly good about myself.
Elan is right too. When you are being screwed over by every major corporate group in Australia, it doesn’t fill one with the spirit of giving.
The corporate world has the motto of take take take, and very few give back to the community that sustains them in any way other than some piecemeal ‘marketing’ exercise. Just buy $25000 worth of goods from Coles and your school could get a football.
Great!
Dogs Breakfast, who says giving and volunteering has to be purely altruistic? Gail Sheehy’s famous book “Pathfinders” (essential reading on this topic) found that involvement in something bigger than oneself is one of the four most important conditions for a satisfying life.
Up until the 60s social revolution, people were under intense social pressure to do their bit and give something back. This pressure was most intense in wealthy society. The tycoons who built America were held to very stringent Puritan standards, and this strongly influenced who remained in the rich set and who was excluded. One of the most amazing outcomes of this was the survivor statistics of the Titanic: 74 per cent of women and only 20 per cent of the men survived. Among the wealthiest passengers, a veritable Who’s Who of almost the entire Forbes 100 list, none of the men survived and almost all of the women were saved.
The moral of the story being that if you are on the Forbes 100 DON’T take a boat trip!
If you must, then give all your money away….and you stand a 20% chance of survival.
I don’t know what insights are packaged in the statistics. But I have a feeling that Daniel is right in some way.
My observations from 30+ years as a volunteer are arranged in two groupings. In one group is my surprise that so many current volunteers that I meet are not particularly interested in the organisation. They committed to provide their labour on a regular pattern but show little knowledge of the goals and processes of the organisation.
In the other grouping are the volunteers that want to organise us old-timers into a more business-like basis and accompanying corporatisation. I have noticed this in the organisations to which I volunteer my work and capabilities. I also see the recent problems with St Vinnies in NSW, attributed, it is said, to “corporatisation. In the St Vinnies’is case, the volunteers seem to have won.
Modern corporate men and women seem the believe that every collection of people with a common cause should be organised along corporate lines.
Suggestion seven is nothing short of brilliant.
I give to wildlife organisations, but nothing on earth will induce me to give to nations with exploding populations; which just about excludes all of the countries in Africa, nor will I give to countries ruled by corrupt generals/presidents/whatever. All donations are trousered by the rulers and only the dregs get through to the people needing it.
what? firstly, Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index was created by its King, and therefore hardly an objective or scientific measurement, secondly a touristic jaunt through the country and glimpse of some smiling faces is hardly a testament of happiness, thirdly, I’d say the infant mortality rate would be a better indication of happiness (49 per 1000 live births in Bhutan, compared to 5.6 in Australia)
And perhaps people are buying more anti-depressants now, not because they are less happy but because pharmaceutical companies have tried very hard to sell their products. AND FINALLY perhaps there are fewer volunteers today because there are far fewer idle housewives and far more unpaid interns.
So, this age old rant is hardly a ‘big idea’ nor are its supporting arguments and examples valid
Daniel, how much have you personally contributed? I recall twisting your arm to make a donation a few years ago at a Buddhist event………
You have to walk the talk first, son, before you get on the high horse and ride.