Mental Infrastructures: How Growth Entered the World and Our Souls

About the author

The author thanks Susanne Quehenberger and Vanessa Stahl for research and thoughts. 

Contents

1. Growth as mental infrastructure
2. From external constraint to self-constraint
3. Infinite growth
4. Energy and mobility
5. Work and growth
6. Finite resources and death
7. The global and flexible personality
8. Consumerism – what products say about us
9. The locked-in effect
10. What is the meaning of “transforming the carbon-based society”?
11. How would we like to have lived?

Bibliography

Preface and introduction

Barbara Unmüßig, Member of the Executive Board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation
Tilman Santarius, Head of International Climate and Energy Policy 

In light of the recent financial and economic crisis, criticizing the all-powerful paradigm of economic growth has once again become socially acceptable. Climate change, and the Japanese nuclear disaster in particular, have also prompted intense reflection. Can our economy really continue to grow forever? Is our consumer society sustainable? Can economic growth in industrialized countries even be considered a legitimate goal if the world economy has already reached its ecological limits and well over a billion people are still going hungry? Will we be able to continue in this manner? These are the questions social psychologist and journalist Harald Welzer explores in this essay.

Most criticism of growth focuses on the political and economic spheres of the growth imperative. The apologists here assert that the existence of interest rates and the international competition for business relocations give rise to the capitalist growth imperative. A further argument is that steady economic growth is essential to sustain the substantial level of public debt and to maintain social security systems that ensure social redistribution.

The economy and politics are certainly drivers of growth. But they are also key players when it comes to changing course. In his essay, Welzer aims to illuminate how people – both as individuals and in social contexts – are tightly interwoven with the growth-oriented society and way of life.

Growth as will and representation not only pervades corporate headquarters, stock exchanges and ministries, but also our heads, the author argues. Material goods no longer serve just our basic needs for food, housing, health, education and vitality. They also provide indicators of social status, relationships and cultural preferences.

Indeed, they shape our sense of belonging and identity. We are all familiar with the desire for something new, for increasing income, for possessions, and for ever more exotic vacations. According to Welzer, the idea of endless growth has been embedded in our emotional and cognitive lives since the Industrial Revolution. It finds its expression in our career preferences and plans for professional advancement, as well as our quests to discover the “real me” or a “higher level of understanding”. People today actively pursue happiness – they want to make something of their lives, not just once but again and again, constantly striving to enhance their sense of satisfaction. “Novelty is seductive in its own right here. It offers variety and excitement; it allows us to dream and hope. It helps us explore our dreams and aspirations for the ideal life and escape the sometimes harsh reality of our lives,” writes Tim Jackson in his book Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. As Harald Welzer shows in his essay, this desire for novelty, for consumption and growth is enshrined in our inner worlds as “mental infrastructure” – in the desires, hopes and values of each individual. As a result, the system not only colonizes our “life-world” (Habermas), through it we also continuously construct the system that we “deserve”.

While Harald Welzer’s observations initially appear theoretical and abstract, they do have very direct practical and political consequences: The “great transformation” that is supposed to beam our society into a sustainable future and prevent the collapse of the biosphere calls for more than just technical and political solutions. It also has a socio-psychological and cultural dimension. Economic innovation and an evolving business framework, solar panels and eco-taxes alone are not enough. Sustainability also requires social innovation and social transformation.

Welzer builds on four decades of discussion related to sustainable lifestyles, sufficiency and ethical consumer behavior, and takes the lifestyle debate to a new level. The issue is not just a matter of making recommendations for good behavior – well-intentioned advice to leave your car at home now and then, or to eat less meat. Wondering how much, in terms of material possessions, would be enough for personal satisfaction also falls short of the mark. This is also evident in postmodern LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) consumers: While they are often highly sensitive to environmental issues, their ecological footprints are still much too large as, in the name of self-fulfillment and individual satisfaction, they will buy iPads, video projectors and vacation in the Seychelles. If the great transformation is to succeed, then a deeper level of self-reflection will be required. We must see through the mechanisms and principles on which our ideals and desires, our ideas and feelings of satisfaction are founded, as these are dictated to a large extent by our mental infrastructures.

Welzer shows how we, in shaping our own personality models and biographies, continuously drive ourselves to (consumer) growth and to acquiring ever more. Recognizing this is the first step in the right direction. And that, in turn, is the foundation from which to address the growth imperative, not only as a system, but also personally – to resolve it in our mental infrastructure. Perhaps we will then come closer to the conviction that “less is more”, or be able to find a different answer to the question “How much is enough for a good life?”

It will take two things to change these mental infrastructures: new guiding principles, and active, hands-on testing of new designs for living. At any rate, the triad of “progress, prosperity and growth” that has shaped our mental infrastructures since the Industrial Revolution can hardly serve as the foundation for a society striving for responsibility, sustainability and fairness. But how can we turn our “restless desire” around into a fulfilled life that does not continually demand something new? We need, Welzer says, a narrative that we can tell about ourselves – from the perspective of a possible future: Who do I want to have been in the past? How do I want our world to be structured in twenty years, and how do I want to leave it to my children?

To answer the question of how one will have wanted to have lived in 2030 or 2050, and to develop visions to that end that move people and establish new identities, we must move beyond the abstract. Our efforts must involve trying out concrete life plans. The business-as-usual of the material and institutional infrastructure surrounding us at all times (supermarkets, highways, universal availability and performance pressure) has tremendous power over us because we navigate it on a daily basis and therefore necessarily affirm or support it. Our mental infrastructure will not change unless we ourselves all start to live and experience actually different lives.

For that reason it is nevertheless important to leave the car behind and take the train more often, to explore local regions rather than exotic destinations, and, from time to time, to put our families and friends before our careers. Such actions will not immediately improve the world – for that they are too isolated and powerless – but because such behavior can give each of us an enhanced awareness and a certainty of what living a good, sustainable life is like. It is also a matter of putting anxieties and inhibitions aside and of trying new things, in social interaction and in better harmony with the natural foundations of life. As Welzer concludes, it is only when the protests against airports turn against air travel itself that they will represent a tangible intervention against the material, institutional and mental infrastructures of the growth era.

Countering the growth imperative that characterizes our system may also be more successful with economic and societal models based on limited growth. Starting at one’s own end then does not entail the idea of being able to improve the present situation immediately. If we go beyond the market and practice small-scale “commoning” based on reciprocity and exchange rather than increasing profits, we will be in a position to develop the outlines of a post-growth economy and bring a society that honors earth’s ecological limits within closer reach.