On Development

Consumption is part and parcel of life on this planet. And economy is intertwined with consumption. People provide you with goods and services that you consume and you pay them for the same.

So far so good and I'm in agreement!

But there is nothing that dictates that this consumption must be of physical goods only!

Have you noticed that our entire paradigm of development today rests almost entirely on the consumption of physical goods? Almost our entire economy today runs on people buying cars and motorcycles, fuel for their cars and motorcycles, clothes, more clothes, expensive phones and more expensive phones, perfumes and colognes and more perfumes and colognes, shoes, more shoes, food, more food, alcohol, more alcohol, ...

Now I'm not against any of this. I own a motorcycle myself, like wearing good clothes and shoes, own a phone with internet capability that I use while traveling, like to smell good, and dine out with friends and family occasionally. But my consumption is not limited to physical goods only 😊! I direct a substantial amount of my earnings to consuming in the intellectual and aesthetic spheres of life - and that too contributes to the economy 😊. Let me explain:

Let's look at just one aspect of this in detail to start with - Individual vehicles:

Just as for all historical accounts one hears, I suppose this one too will require verification; but here’s something I have been told recently: Apparently several decades ago an automobile manufacturing company in the USA actively encouraged the idea of people living far from their places of work as a lifestyle to push the requirement of purchasing cars up in society. Now whether this indeed happened or it turns out that this is a rumor / myth: it is actually a fact that this lifestyle has set in nice and proper across the globe now. And it makes zero sense if you think about it in some depth.

Here’s elaborating on an aspect of this lifestyle pattern that impacts us at a very immediate level: the hours and hours we spend on our daily commutes add up to a significant magnitude of time that could well have been spent with our loved ones as well as on our own personal growth but are just lost, not to mention the severe dip in the quality of our life, health and time owing to the stress and fatigue all this commute generates. And all of the negative stuff at every level: fuel consumption and consequent expenditure, environmental impact, pollution related health concerns, time wasted, stress and fatigue generated – all of this stuff – could just be avoided if we lived close to our work places. Just one change and we could suddenly be living better lives and not hurting either the environment or our health as much.

Is this doable?

I truly believe it is. And it can be done without hurting the economy. Please be patient with me as I elaborate. I will take you from the required restructuring of the society we live in to questions regarding livelihood of ordinary citizens like you and me in the next five paragraphs.

It is our society and our world that we are talking about. And we are in control (or at least ought to be). We can very well structure it in a way that improves our collective life experience as well as the quality of life that we bequeath to future generations. It’ll certainly require energy and effort to bring in this shift but if I have seen one thing in today’s youth it is that they are sensitive and committed to environmental concerns and there is certainly no shortage of energy or willingness to put in effort once they set their minds on something.

The shift won’t happen overnight of course. But here is a five year plan worth conceiving and implementing in my opinion: Let’s set an aim for ourselves that five years from now we would have set a different lifestyle pattern in place on this planet; one in which people would live close to their workplaces and, say in five more years, there would be schools, colleges and health care centers so well spread out that all the commute time that has today become “unescapable” would get slashed and we would all have more time to ourselves and for our loved ones. There would be some exceptions of course: people working in noise / pollution generating factories, for example, would still be better off living a little distance away. But these exceptions would be minimal if you think about it and long commute times pretty much for everything would no longer be the norm.

I anticipate that such an effort will find resistance from, yes you guessed it right, automobile manufacturers and people in the business of selling automobile fuel. It’s alright, I’m sure they will adjust from being multi-multi-millionaires to just millionaires. They would still have business as even in the new lifestyle pattern I expect that people will own and use automobiles: only that they would now use them to go out with their families in the evenings or on weekend trips instead of killing several hours a day just to get past the bare essentials of life.

Some may ask: Well what about the trickle down impact this would have on workers in automobile manufacturing plants and those working in service centers and repair and maintenance units. My response is: Look, once we stop spending all that money on fuel, maintenance, etc. (not to mention that we may not need to own multiple automobiles in a single household), we would perhaps spend that same money in other directions: Maybe we’ll buy more fruits and spend more on health food, maybe we’ll buy more artefacts to decorate our houses, more music, more books, maybe we’ll have more time to go to gyms and sports facilities and perhaps attend Yoga classes, to attend concerts and see theatre performances, maybe we’ll travel more in the sense of seeing different parts of the country and world, maybe we’ll have the time and money to learn martial arts or maybe a dance form or two or perhaps to sing and play a musical instrument and we would need facilities and instructors to pursue these interests. So there’ll likely be a diversification and an increase in business / employment opportunities in other sectors. This would also be a more comprehensive development model that connects the economy to goods and services at the physical, intellectual as well as aesthetic levels.

And this shift is not going to happen overnight. There is going to be time to readjust, for people to seek opportunities and grow in other directions, for the demand for other activities and products to increase thereby creating a need for increased supply and the consequent growth in opportunities for economic growth.

I think it is possible to bring in this lifestyle and development paradigm shift and it would be well worth setting about doing so with a serious intent to make it happen within the next five to ten years. And if we can do it, and I truly believe we can, I assure you (a) we would have made a fundamental shift towards living more meaningful and healthy lives with lower level of personal stress and fatigue, (b) we would be living this better life in a far cleaner environment on a far healthier planet, and (c) we would do so while still being an economically sound society.

And in the interim period, unless it brings us extreme inconvenience : can we please increase our use of public transport and reduce our usage of personal vehicles as much as possible. Please please __/\__ thank you kindly :).

Now extend the same logic to other aspects of physical consumption. By all means live a good life! Wear good clothes, a dash of your favorite perfume, go out for a movie and dinner with friends and family, but don't expend yourself completely at this level 😊! Direct some of your resources to finer aspects of life as well! Music, books, art, theater, dance, martial arts, science, mathematics, fitness, yoga  - a large part of life's fulfilment is in these intellectual and aesthetic spheres. And your spending money in these directions also supports the economy 😊!

[I also invite you to read: Strike a Pause: "True Happiness" With EMIs (strike-a-pause.blogspot.com)]