http://www.smh.com.au/news/ross-gittins/why-all-this-living-it-up-gets-us-down/2006/02/21/1140284067606.html said:
Why all this living it up gets us down
Depression is rife in rich countries - more proof that money can't buy happiness writes Ross Gittins.
THE dominant view among our politicians, economists and business people is that society's central goal should be economic growth. Keep our material standard of living rising and the rest will look after itself.
Well, it seems to have worked for John Howard. According to a Saulwick poll this week, 81 per cent of people disapprove of his handling of environmental issues, 73 per cent disapprove in health and 67 per cent disapprove in education.
Half believe Australia has become a meaner society and more than half believe Howard is a divisive figure. But among those who identify the economy as the most important issue, 83 per cent approve of his performance.
And that seems enough to have 60 per cent approving of his overall performance as prime minister. And, of course, to secure his comfortable re-election on three occasions.
But if ever-rising living standards are the key to our contentment, there are just a few telltale signs that all may not be well. Why, now we're so much wealthier than we were, do we have more trouble, rather than less, with divorce, drugs, crime, depression and suicide?
Take depression. The evidence suggests that each new generation is more susceptible to clinical depression than the one before. About three-quarters of a million Australian adults experience depression during a year. One adult in five is expected to have a major depressive episode at some stage in life.
Professor Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, is one of the top psychologists in the US, and before he turned to studying positive psychology and happiness, he devoted a lot of his research to depression.
He's visiting Australia at present and I talked to him last week before consulting two of his books, Authentic Happiness and The Optimistic Child, both published by Random House Australia.
Seligman says America and all the rich countries are facing an "epidemic of depression". The question that interests me, however, is: why? What's causing this deterioration in the quality of our lives? Is it happening because of, or in spite of, our obsession with economic growth?
The professor says it's easier to be sure about what is not causing it than what is. It's not biological, since our genes and hormones haven't changed enough in 40 years to account for the increase in depression.
It's not ecological, since the Amish - who live in 18th-century circumstances 60-odd kilometres down the road from Seligman - have only one-10th the rate of depression as people in Philly. Yet they drink the same water, breathe the same air and provide a lot of the food the Philadelphians eat.
And it's certainly not being poor. It's a disease of the rich countries and, in any case, studies show black and Hispanic Americans have less depression than whites.
So what is it? Seligman offers his "four best guesses". First, the rise of individualism - what he calls "the big I and the small we".
"The more I believe that I am all that matters, and the more I believe that my goals, my success and my pleasures are extremely important, the more hurtful the blow when I fail," he says.
And life inevitably brings occasions of failure and helplessness.
In earlier times we had more comfortable spiritual furniture to sit in - belief in causes bigger than ourselves, be it God, nation, family or Duty - and this brought us consolation in times of adversity.
Second, the depredations of the self-esteem movement. This is the notion that the job of parents and teachers is to make children feel well about themselves. It started in California in the 1960s and has been hugely influential in rich countries, particularly in schools, where it's led to grade inflation and pollyanna report cards, and the abandonment of class streaming and IQ testing.
But its psychology is wrong-headed. Rather than encouraging kids to feel good we should be teaching them the skills to do well in their commerce with the world. Warranted, self-esteem comes as a by-product of doing well in our relations with other people, our exams or our sport.
So telling kids they're doing well when they're not involves "jiggling the meter". It leaves kids in the lurch when their failures can no longer be brushed aside. It leaves them deficient in the skills that fight depression, and ends up eroding their sense of worth.
Third, the rise of victimology. Increasingly, we're encouraged to blame our problems on someone else - our parents, the government, The System - rather than accepting responsibility and finding ways to overcome them.
This is a formula for what Seligman has pinpointed as "learned helplessness" (nothing I do matters) - a concept that helped make his name. "Notions of responsibility are importantly preventative," he says.
Fourth, the growth in "short cuts to happiness". We're encouraged to do all manner of things that bring instant pleasure but require almost no effort on our part: junk food, television, drugs, shopping, loveless sex, spectator sport, chocolate and more.
The trouble is that the pleasure they bring is fleeting and they soon leave us feeling empty. Nature built us in a way that we gain more lasting satisfaction from things we have to work for. A lot of the satisfaction comes from the work itself.
A life spent pursuing short cuts to happiness allows our strengths and virtues to wither, rather than develop, and sets us up for depression.
On the surface, those four reasons may seem to have little to do with the push for never-ending economic growth. Certainly, economists can't be blamed for the self-esteem movement or victimology.
But economic rationalism venerates and promotes individualism, working to dismantle communitarian arrangements as "inefficient". And much of the growth in the production of goods and services we strive for comes from ever-increasing sales of short cuts to happiness, not to mention all the lawyers making a buck by encouraging us to sue people who could be held liable for our misfortunes.
Rationalists are most disapproving of suggestions that the community would benefit from limiting the advertising and marketing of short cuts to happiness. That would inhibit growth.
So I don't think it unfair or irrelevant to acknowledge the social problems that accompany our much-trumpeted economic success.
