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Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability
Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability
Exponential economic growth is rapidly destabilizing the biosphere. Among the many factors that stimulate such growth is the human tendency to consume goods and services far beyond what is required to meet basic needs. We have to grasp what drives this tendency in order to manage it. The brain’s core circuits were long believed to stimulate us to seek pleasure—greedily and selfishly—while higher cortical circuits try to rein us in. Neuroscience now shows that the core circuits serve not pleasure per se, but efficient learning. When we obtain a reward that our frontal cortex values highly, the core circuit delivers a chemical pulse that we experience as satisfaction—so we repeat the behavior. Satisfaction is brief and diminishes as a particular reward becomes predictable. This circuit design works well for pre-industrial societies in which rewards are varied and unpredictable. But capitalism shrinks the diversity of possible rewards, leaving the remainder less satisfying, and making stronger doses, i.e., more consumption, necessary. The path toward sustainability must, therefore, include re-expanding the diversity of satisfactions.
A Brain Circuit for Learning | Human Nature | Implications for the Great Transition | Endnotes
The evidence deepens daily that human activity is now imperiling the stability of the biosphere. The main cause is exponential economic growth, driven on the production side by capitalist competition, pursuit of profit, and financial manipulation. Yet persistent growth ultimately requires demand—that is, individual consumption. If people consumed less, stuff would accumulate and growth would slow. Economic growth far exceeds population growth, so if economic growth could be slowed, there would still be enough for all seven billion of us, at least if wealth were distributed more equally.
So why do people consume ceaselessly, far beyond the point of meeting basic needs? There are social factors, such as competition for status, and personal factors, such as shaping a self-image.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A Tragic Scenario: Narrowly Cast
A Tragic Scenario: Narrowly Cast
Book Review: The Collapse of Western Civilization
The Climate Conundrum
The anthropogenic roots of climate change have long been clear, and the dangers of inaction can be seen in melting glaciers and increasingly frequent extreme weather events. We already know how to solve the problem—rapidly scaling up to 100% renewables, increasing energy efficiency, and moderating consumption levels among the affluent—and we have the technology to do so. So why are we not taking action?
This question has long intrigued two well-known historians of science, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. Their widely acclaimed book Merchants of Doubt (2011) chronicled one important part of the answer: a decades-long misinformation campaign against public interest regulations. Conservative scientists, whose Cold War anti-communism made them see the specter of “socialism” in any environmental or public health regulation, and corporate funders, seeking to protect their profits, collaborated through a network of “think tanks” to undermine scientific consensus and thwart action on issues from second-hand smoke to acid rain to climate change.
The Collapse of Western Civilization, Oreskes and Conway’s latest work, revisits this narrative through a different lens: a “view from the future” recounted by a twenty-fourth century Chinese historian. Although the authors describe Collapse as a hybrid of science fiction and history, it is more useful to view it as a scenario. Scenarios explore the scope of the possible, tracing paths out from the present to see how actors and drivers may interact, thereby providing insights into the uncertainty that lies ahead. Scenarios can generally be grouped into three broad categories: continuity, progressive change, and decline. Collapse is a scenario of decline. The question is whether it is a useful one.
– See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/a-tragic-scenario-narrowly-cast#sthash.u1lZsG3E.dpuf
