Jerome Segal, Are We Simple Creatures?
- Essay is a criticism of the idea that
- The good life (human flourishing) is achieved by satisfying a small
number of basic needs
- Simple living is justified by idea that we are simple creatures
- The case for simple living depends on idea that our needs are simple
- How core psychological needs get translated into desires for specific
commodities
- People need to see themselves in a certain way
- They need to have self-esteem
- To say they need this is to say that things will have gone
seriously wrong in their life if they don't develop this
- Buddhism (perhaps) tries to get rid of this need
- How we see ourselves often depends to a great extent on how others
perceive us
- Our self-esteem depends on others seeing us as valuable; we
need them to see us as valuable
- Stoic ideal of self-sufficiency tries to break this connection
- Which others? Which culture or sub-culture? A specific group is
identified
- Utopian groups attempt to form a specific type of reference
group
- How others see us depends (in different degrees in different cultures)
on our involvement in the economy
- How we consume
- What we earn
- What we do for a living
- Where we live
- We are failures, inadequate, living indecent lives if we don't
live up to these expectations
- To some extent, these perceptions are culturally given
- One can internalize these cultural norms/values and see onself
through the eyes of the culture (and so people's actual perceptions
don't matter)
- When these norms include consumption choices, one's underlying
need for self-esteem is transformed into specific desire for
commodities
- To live in a good neighborhood in house with 2 bathrooms, a large kitchen and where each child has own bedroom
- Market determines need $200,000 house
- Need job that will pay enough to afford such a house
- Need college education...
- Although sometimes specific desires for commodities originate this way
from our basic need for self esteem, self-esteem not basis for many of our
specific desires
- People adopt consumption patterns from reference group not always simply
because they want their approval (or for status)
- They might just see that what others have is useful to some of their
needs (that have nothing to do with self-esteem)
- ARGUMENT THAT HUMANS ARE NOT SIMPLE CREATURES
- Marketing handbook lists 60 specific needs and suggests that to get people
to buy things they show how products can satisfy these needs
- Segal accepts that there is a diverse and substantial set of legitimate human
needs which are independent of marketer's manipulations and that some of
these needs can be met by goods and services
- Examples of these needs: to be visible to others, to accomplish difficult tasks, to give
care, to play, to establish one's sexual identity, to exercise one's
talents, to win over adversaries, to see living things thrive, to learn
new skills, to be amazed.
- Segal's additions: a need for insight into oneself, or the need for
meaningful work, nor do they include a need for beauty or adventure,
or a need for a comprehensive vision of life
- True marketers manipulate us in various ways
- Exaggerate products ability to satisfy a need
- Encourage us to satisfy a need at expense of sacrificing another
- Buying an expensive car to satisfy our transportation need so
we have to sacrifice our need for relaxation (e.g., vacations)
- Use non-rational means to get us to associate a product with a need
- HOW SHOULD ADVOCATES OF SIMPLER LIVING RESPOND TO
FACT WE ARE COMPLEX CREATURES WITH MANY DIVERSE
NEEDS?
- Three responses
- One: Our most fundamental needs-for love, meaning, friendship, and self-esteem and self-understanding - can rarely be met by purchase of
commodities
- They give us a false taste of real thing, and divert us from realizing
the genuine need is not met.
- Still it is hard to satisfy these basic needs, and the partial satisfaction
of these needs buying commodities gets us might be better than
nothing (a second best solution)
- But we should not turn these into our ultimate aspirations
- Two: Even when purchase of a commodity does satisfy a genuine need, this
can cost us a lot (sometimes too much)
- Consumption requires income which requires labor which has many
costs
- Too much labor can be unpleasant, unhealthy, boring, painful
- Labor takes lots of time and this takes time from other uses that may
satisfy other needs
- So when have choice between satisfying one needs by a high or a low
consumption lifestyle, should choose the second (as takes less time
and this allows us to use that time to satisfy other needs/desires)
- Three: Genuine wealth/fulfilment comes from satisfying a variety of
different needs (see below)
- Material wealth is relevant
- Material needs are part, but only part of these assets of a good life
- Also include
- Intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, social "asset"
- Exclusive attention to (or even focusing on) material wealth or needs that
can be satisfied materially, thwarts our effort to realize multiple possibilities
of our nature
- LIST OF WIDE RANGING HUMAN POSSIBILITIES/CAPACITIES
WHICH GENUINE HUMAN FLOURISHING REQUIRES THAT WE
EXERCISE
- Social relationships: our friendships, loves, and families
- psychological capabilities: our ability to build relationships, to find
meaning, to take aesthetic pleasure
- cognitive capabilities: our ability to read, to understand, to learn, to
reason
- creative capabilities: our ability to make something beautiful, to
contribute something different
- political rights: our ability to be a citizen of one country rather than
another, to build our own lives according to our own lights
- historical and cultural legacy: the riches of insight and experience that
have been preserved from previous human lives and that are
embodied in the great achievements of human culture
- natural and man-made physical environments: the beauty of great
cities, of the wilderness, of the view from one's back porch
- So movement for simple living (for less consumption oriented lifestyle)
relies on fact we are not simple creatures, but creatures with a widely
diverse set of needs that can't be satisfied simply by material consumption