A Shallow Route to Environmentally Friendly Happiness: Why Evidence That We Are Shallow Materialists Need Not Be Bad News for the Environment(alist)

Abstract

It is natural to assume that we would not be willing to compromise the environment if the conveniences and luxuries thereby gained did not have a substantial positive impact on our happiness. But there is room for skepticism and, in particular, for the thesis that we are compromising the environment to no avail in that our conveniences and luxuries are not having a significant impact on our happiness, making the costs incurred for them a waste. One way of defending the no-avail thesis fits neatly with what I will call the exalted view, according to which the key to human happiness lies in the mental (or spiritual) realm rather than in the material realm. After considering this familiar approach to defending the no-avail thesis, I sketch out a very different approach—one that will, I hope, appeal to those who have doubts about the familiar line of defense. The alternative and novel approach builds on a strand of empirical research on (self-reports concerning) happiness that suggests that we are, in a way, quite shallow, and that our happiness depends on whether we are keeping up with the Joneses. I call this view concerning happiness the worldly view. My reasoning suggests that even if the current rift between exalted pictures of human nature and happiness, on the one hand, and worldly pictures of human nature and happiness, on the other, cannot be repaired, it need not hinder agreement on the plausibility of the no-avail thesis; rather, with the rift come two different routes to the same thesis. I conclude that we should take the no-avail thesis very seriously, and that evidence that we are shallow materialists need not be bad news for the environment(alist).

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Idil Boran, Donald Bruckner, Ben Eggleston, Elijah Millgram, and Mike White for valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. The idea for this paper arose after a discussion on environmentally friendly lifestyles with an audience member who attended my presentation at the 2007 Ethics and Climate Change conference at the University of Washington. I am grateful for the stimulating conversation. Thanks also to Andrew Light and the participants of his 2008 summer seminar at the University of Montana's Environmental Ethics Institute for helpful comments and discussion. Much of the work on this paper was completed during a research leave at the University of Utah. I appreciate the support.

Notes

1. Note that this line of reasoning need not assume that happiness is the only thing worth pursuing. It does, however, assume that happiness is worth pursuing and that, if conveniences and luxuries are worth pursuing, it is because, or insofar as, they contribute to happiness. One might, by contrast, hold that conveniences and luxuries are valuable regardless of whether they contribute to our happiness. Or, one might hold that happiness is not valuable for its only sake, but only because the pursuit of happiness prompts us to act in ways that are valuable. I will not attempt to address these revisionist suggestions here.

2. This line of skepticism accepts as common ground that it only makes sense to pay dearly for conveniences and luxuries if they have a significant impact on our happiness. As suggested in note 1, an alternative line of skepticism might question this common ground assumption.

3. More precisely, it suggests that our happiness depends on whether we are faring better, materially, than others, which is a paradigmatically shallow concern according to the traditional conception of shallowness. The italicized qualifier can be taken as implicit hereafter. Note that one might claim that one is concerned with keeping up with the Joneses because others are shallow, and so one's positive relationships with others depend on one's faring above average materially. Although this claim suggests that some may not be as shallow as they seem, it fits with, rather than challenging, the idea that, in general, human beings are quite shallow. This latter idea is also consistent with the claim that there are deep evolutionary reasons behind our shallowness (just as the claim that we are capable of genuine altruism is consistent with the idea that there are deep evolutionary reasons behind our altruism).

4. The quoted description is from Thoreau (1948, p. 33).

5. For a helpful guide to the area of research on which I will focus, see Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2002, pp. 119–169. See also Tiberius and Plakias, in press.

6. Note that to say that one's happiness is affected by one's preferences and values is not to say that being happy is simply a matter of having one's preferences satisfied. This latter (very strong) claim is implausible and conflicts with a variety of common ground views, including the view that preferences can sometimes mislead as, for example, when they are based on faulty beliefs or perceptions.

7. Keep in mind that this is with respect to material goods. As will become apparent shortly, it may not apply to all goods. Note also, that even with respect to material goods, the extent to which one's happiness is affected by social comparison can vary from person to person. Note finally that for the ‘hip’ consumer who scorns conformity, outdoing others takes the form not of having more mainstream goods but of having more ‘cool’ non-mainstream goods. As Joseph Heath argues, the hip consumer is no less vulnerable to the problem of consumerism prompted by social comparison than the not-so-hip consumer (Heath, 2001, pp. 1–17).

8. As Diener, Lucas & Scollon stress, it does not follow that we must always return to some baseline happiness level. For there are some life events, including for example getting divorced, becoming a widow, or being laid off from work, that prompt ‘long-lasting changes in life satisfaction’ (Diener, Lucas & Scollon, 2006, p. 309).

9. For some relevant research, see Easterlin, 1974, 1995; Layard, 2005, chap. 4; Myers, 2000.

10. This connection suggests that the tragedy of the commons, wherein valuable common resources are overused to the disadvantage of all, is fostered, in our case, not by pure self-interest (where being purely self-interested implies being completely uninterested in the situation of others) but, at least in part, by competitiveness (which involves taking an interest in the situation of others, though not in a way that is helpful relative to saving the commons).

11. Notice that to the extent that the shallow desire to fare better, materially, than others fosters individually rational but collectively self-defeating behavior (with an increasingly costly rat race on a positional treadmill), ‘mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon’ may be necessary. (The quoted phrase is borrowed from Hardin, 1968.)