Customer Reviews

Affluenza

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As someone who basically agrees with almost everything in this book, I am biased in its favour. On the other hand, one wonders whether it will only be "preaching to the converted" or maybe reduced to a conversation piece in middle-class circles. Psychologist Oliver James occasionally comes across as suffering from "affluenza" himself, a few too many references to his own success perhaps? But to be fair his style is also honest, self-effacing and funny in places. Someone in his well-connected position (a bit of a media figure, consultant to senior UK politicians and so on) writing a book like this has to be a good thing. It is surely better than no-one saying anything while people slowly drown in a sea of unchallenged, materialistic, individualism.

The essential message deserves to be taken very very seriously. The author's focus is on why so many people in English-speaking countries (such as America, England, Australia but not so much New Zealand) are experiencing higher rates of personal unhappiness than they were 30 years ago. According to James, this is the result of placing a high value on money, possessions, physical and social appearances, and fame. By contrast, countries such as Denmark and Holland have a less selfish version of capitalism and so are generally happier. Along the way there are entertaining interviews, some interesting psychological insights, suggestions on parenthood, and analyses of different cultures. I found the section on China's economic development particularly interesting.

There are three parts: The Virus, The Vaccines (basically some sensible self-help suggestions) and Wakey Wakey! In the last section James suggests a whole range of legislative measures such as having a system which selects leaders who are emotionally mature, and making housing property no longer a means of defining status. He calls for a genuine democracy that doesn't mean the rule of all by a rich minority. At one point James even goes so far as to question the necessity of economic growth and of course he is laughed at. Of course!

My guess is that some will think this book doesn't go far enough and others will think it goes too far. All credit to Oliver James for writing it.

This work looks at the growing wealth of the west and the growing rates of depression and anxiety that accompany it. James brings his arguments togther thoughtfully and the book is well constructed.

I am not sure about his basic political arguments, but I am convinced about his personal statements. We need to look seriously at the way we are living, turn down the noise of advertising and begin to chart our own course.

The messages, we are recieving about consumption are leading to us to drained and anxious society. We need, as individuals, to rethink our lifes and work out where we want to head.

A very interesting work from a thoughtful man.

My opinion of this book is just that - total opinion. But that's fair, considering that the book itself is opinion. James offers very little documentation. The author asserts:

*There is an increase in unhappiness in Western Countries.

*Denmark is less unequal, has better socialization, and people are happier.

*The cause is rampant capitalism. We are even taught in schools (in so many word) to become good little consumers and producers.

*blah blah blah blah

But James has a point - many of the frustrations of living today we didn't have 50 years ago (or ever). That doesn't mean you can create an epidemiologic study that will reliably establish causes and effects. That would be no easier than forecasting the weather beyond a few days - there are too many variables.

Happiness is a very individual, elusive, and hard-to-pin-down combination of emotions. There is much evidence that genetics governs the biochemistry that controls a person's general outlook - perhaps realistically thought of as one's "happiness thermostat." Some studies confirm that after good or bad life-changing events, people tend to eventually (sooner rather than later) return to their inherent steady state level of happiness. Nurture, on the other hand, is judged much more influential about learned behaviors such as personal habits - and good ones are bound to benefit one's happiness.

Our general level of happiness on a day to day basis is more likely to suffer from nitpicky, seemingly insignificant irritants rather than how generally well off we are otherwise. Old saying such as "Don't sweat the small stuff," seems to hold up well here, as does, "Have the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change those I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." It makes sense to try to realistically identify and change recurrent irritants - also to re-evaluate the things that one REALLY likes, and make the appropriate adjustments in lifestyle.

With that in mind, James scores a point. The minor irritants may be more numerous today - more junk mail, computer viruses, too-complicated electronic devices, recurrent new charges on monthly bills, inability to find a human to talk to on the telephone, too many soccer games, etc. Depending on how you handle the potential sensory overload, your general happiness can suffer, but it's up to you, as always.

Overall, I'd say the book is worth reading if you don't mind sermons. If you follow his advice - don't compare yourself to others, don't get in debt, be less materialistic, make an effort to be emotionally mature - it certainly can't hurt. But rather than blaming capitalism (not that rampant capitalism doesn't have its faults), the finger could point instead to huge masses of people having to share (relatively) less space during the age of the internet and high technology. And you don't have to participate in all of it to be happy. All in all, I don't think there's ever been a better time to be alive.

Many people will roll their eyes at Oliver James's first two case studies: he compares the case of Sam, a billionaire New Yorker who lives in a five floor (one bedroom) appartment in Manhattan, sleeps with perfect Russian models that are specially procured for him and is miserable, with that of Chet - an amiable, Nigerian taxi driver living in the same city, earning a thousand times Sam's income, frequently assaulted by his passengers and with long term health problems. Chet, for all this, is happier than Sam.

As a well known actress once remarked, I've been poor and miserable and rich and miserable, rich is better. Is it? James chronicles the lives of a number of people living in what he terms 'selfish capitalist' countries - the USA, the UK and Australia who despite their vast reserves of wealth compared to most of the world's population, suffer from mental anquish of some sort.

He undoubtedly has a case. So many of my friends and colleagues in London are doing jobs they intrinsically hate just because of the money (i.e banking) or status (i.e publishing) attached to them. The happiest people, are those who monitor their intrinsic emotional state and shape their lives around things are important to them - work that absorbs them, hobbies, family life.

James also points out that the affluenza virus is rife. But we hardly needed him to tell us that. Posters, billboards, glossy pictures: in the newspapers, on public transport, on television and amongst our political classes who constantly assail us with exhortions to achieve, and sieze opportunity.

It is a telling state of affairs in society when the architect of New Labour delcares that they are 'seriously relaxed' about people becoming filthy rich, and the daughter of a man very close to the heart of the New Labour project attempts suicide.

Mental problems, addiction, unhappiness are all increased since the far more austere 1950s. Something has changed since the sexual revolution, the pulse of society is different, and not all for the better. Women are probably affected worse than men. Many postpone having children, often for ever, to work in a high powered corporate ladder job in a twisted realisation of the 1960s feminist ideal. Few are genuinely fulfilled by this.

Men have their problems too. James interviews a middle aged lawyer who says his sole aim in life can be summarized thus: work, educate the kids, pay for my daughter's wedding, die. And this for a man born of soul? Of creative capacity? Supposedly to the heights of prosperous living?

No, something is very wrong here. Which is why I believe James's book deserves close reading. (You will have to get over the style, which occasionally grates in a taxi driver telling you what's good for you guv type way)

It is, of course, impossible to write a book about this topic and not receive a hostile reception. As is always the case when rich and/or successful people profess egalitarian sentiments. Witness some of the reviews - media tart! hypocrite! I bet he has his book published by a capitalist publisher! (actually, James predicts these criticisms and deftly addresses them at the start of the book).

I really enjoyed reading this book; I found it informative and entertaining. It provides you with a global view of affluenza. Anyone who is interested in global sociology would enjoy this book. The style in which this book is written makes you feel as though Oliver James is perched in the armchair opposite you, and you're having a conversation, about modern day society. As you read it , you nod your head and speak out loud words such as "really" and "wow, I never knew that, that's interesting"

As a person who has spent far too much time and money shopping, reading this book has already saved me money. It helps the reader re-evaluate their spending habits back to a 1990's approach to "Do I really need this".

In 2007, we live in a society where it's assumed that we are entitled to own all these things that really make no difference to our quality of life. As a consumer who has lived on both sides of the tracks I think James has a valid point.

I mean really, I remember reading something once that said the only people who care about how expensive your car or jeans are the people who don't know you. That is so true.

More books need to be written examining this issue.

If you know anyone who is suffering from credit card debt, do them a favour buy him or her this book, it will help them to see their purchases in a different way. I'm glad this book was written. Well Done.

You could sum up most that is of any value in this book with that bon mot from Life's Little Instruction Book: "no-one said, on their deathbed, 'I wish I'd spent more time at the office'."

The first problem, of many, I have with Oliver James' Affluenza is that, for all the weight of scientific research he claims to have done, none of it is advanced in support of the existence of this thing called Affluenza in the first place. James states it as a bare fact - in fact, rather less than that: he includes a questionnaire designed to determine whether you have Affluenza, and then launches into an idiosyncratic monologue of anecdotes which he seems to regard as having the effect of revealing eternal verities.

The questionnaire doesn't give you much chance of not having the disease: answering in the affirmative to any one of the 16 statements he poses (grammarians and lawyers note: it's a disjunctive test) consigns you to infection. Given the statements include such outrages to public decency as "I would like to be admired by many people" and "my life would be better if I owned certain things I don't have now" it is difficult to see who, other than a misanthropic Trappist monk, wouldn't be "infected".

Other than Chet, a diabetic, malnourished, disenfranchised, frequently-mugged, misleadingly youthful-looking, church-going, taxi-driving New York immigrant, whom James has credulously (or, more likely, apocryphally) interviewed in the course of his travels.

Chet (who would never cheat on his wife, James confidently assures us) sounds almost too good to be true, as indeed do his "negative" New York examples, multi-millionaire broker Sam (who sounds like he stepped straight out of Wall Street) and Consuela, whom James admits reminds him of the "affluent young Manhattan women described in Jay McInerney's sharply observed novel "Story of My Life". You can't help the feeling James has been swept away by the literature a little.

Affluenza thereafter quickly settles down into a hair-shirt-adulating moan.

In part 3, after some 400 pages of injudiciously edited anecdotes, James takes the gloves off and, he warns the reader, gets "personal". It is quite tempting for a reviewer to do the same - this is, after all, a solution to the modern world's woes from the pen of an obviously angry, Eton-educated psychology graduate whose own aspirations for attention, fame and success seem transparent. In any case this is a book of politics and not pop psychology as it purports to be. James' target is "Selfish Capitalism" and prescriptions such as "reject much of the status quo" have more than a hint of the socialist workers' party leafleteer about them. What riles James, I suspect, is that, given a choice between "spiritually happy" impecunious violent disenfranchisement (the Chet model) and "spiritually barren" materialistic, godless life of sterile consumerism (Sam and Consuela), most people would squarely opt for the latter. And who could blame them: a small sprinkling of philosophical self-reflection leavens naked materialism in a way it tends not to compensate for the effects of violence and lack of access to health, education and justice. In fairness, James doesn't think so: he says, rather presumptuously drawing his readers' conclusions for them, "if you met them both I would be very surprised if you preferred to be Sam rather than Chet")

On the other hand, by the same assertion, James acknowledges that most people (being his readership) already do have this sense of self-reflection. If it is true that they would not like or relate to the cardboard figure of Sam precisely as James has cut him out (and as mentioned, I can't help thinking Sam's outline has been exaggerated) then Sam isn't a symptom of modern life, but an anomaly in it. As it happens, I've worked in the investment banking industry for a decade, and the only character I've come across who even vaguely resembles Sam is Gordon Gekko, and he was a figment of Oliver Stone's imagination.

When it comes down to it, what we have here is a fabulous hook: the name "Affluenza" is an inspired bit of marketing, and the initial premise - that over the last two or three decades our asset-rich/time-poor lives have got themselves out of perspective does resonate (I've hacked this review out on a blackberry on the tube on my way to work - you have to be very disciplined!). I dare say many of us would happily re-trade that equation if we could figure out how, but all the same, our lives are still richly fulfilled in other (non materialistic) perspectives. When you get down to the execution: James' love of anecdote, his badly disguised fifth-form socialist agenda and his laboured prose, the tendency to flip pages becomes hard to resist.

Olly Buxton

I had high hopes for this book and had my taxi driver wait outside the book shop on a detour to the airport, I was so keen to start reading it on the plane.

I read a lot of cultural theory - and this rates poorly. Supporting evidence is weak and sometime non-existent (there are no footnotes or references), and the arguments are very tenuous. Despite being sympathetic to the what James is trying to say, I wouldn't employee any of his points in making the same argument, for fear of being shot down.

The general idea is that money and material wealth don't make people happier. But James seems to extend that claim to state money actually makes them unhappy (they get a disease). He uses extreme and simple examples of people he's met who support this theory - there is no serious analysis here, just a variety of exmaples that support his central idea.

Equally I could write a book about all the rich happy people I met/found, and all the unhappy poor people I met/found, and make the opposite point.

There's no evidence to suggest people become happier as they become poorer, and sadder when they get wealthier, although this is virtually what James posits from the outset of his diatribe.

Some may find it very interesting. Not for me.

I think everyone should read this book, it captures the state of todays world perfectly - the need to keep up with the jones's and the debilitating stress we place upon ourselves as we try to live up to the ideals broadcast by the media and mass marketing campaigns. He uses his interviews with those stricken with the affluenza virus (as he calls it) to show how this disease has swept across the western world, poisoning our happiness in life - a brilliant book and a must read!!!

Members of Western Civilization have never had it so good. We are living in an age of affordable technology that has produced great comforts and entertainments. Advanced medicine has made our lives longer, safer and healthier. We travel the globe quickly and cheaply.

If the success story of a society is measured by the speed of microchips it can produce, we have many accomplishments to be proud of, but if a successful society is also measured by the happiness and contentment of its people, Western Society is failing miserably.

Studies show that in affluent societies rates of depression, anxiety, and emotional stress are rising all the while the missionaries of corporate consumerism infect the remaining unplugged masses of the third world.

Oliver James refers to this epidemic as the Affluenza Virus. James reports on his results tracking the contamination levels of emotional distress through conducting psychological based interviews across the globe.

His interviews are used to demonstrate and expand on results which studies have already shown, that the more a society values money and external success, the higher the rates of unhappiness.

However, the potentially greater value in this work is that through the exploration of people's beliefs, goals, and values, the reader may be inspired to reflect on the level that he or she may be infected with Affluenza.

This reflection may lead the reader to think about questions such as:

Are the values and environments that are necessary for the success of corporations beneficial for improving the well-being of people?

How do we define success in our own lives?

How much is our definition of success based on goals surrounding our job performance, income or position?

How much are our own personal identities and searches for well being linked with purchasing consumer products?

In what ways our own goals similar to corporate ideology and mass marketed messages?

Is it possible to have a society of relatively contented individuals who measure success not through competition to obtain more/better/different achievements, recognition and consumer products, but instead measure success through personal happiness and vitality, stimulated with wide ranges of outside-of-work interests and complimented with fulfilling, authentic, and intimate relationships?

And finally, if you answer yes to this last question, are you currently living this way? And if not, instead of waiting for corporations to lead the way for you, or governments to make new laws, or other people to change, in what ways may it be possible for you to find a way to begin living this way from now on?