Much has been written of late about the affluent society in which we live, and much fun poked at some of the irrational "status symbols" set out like golden snares to trap the unwary consumer at every turn. Until recently, little has been said about the most irrational and weirdest of the lot, lying in ambush for all of us at the end of the road- -the modern American funeral.]
This line of thinking from academia and elsewhere has seeped into the culture, and pops up in policy decisions such as recycling of garbage (largely useless for a variety of reasons), suppression of "ozone emissions" by refrigerators and air conditioning, plastic bag bans, (and now even paper bag, see
Reusable Bag Glut Creates New Environmental Issue; Solve One Problem, Create Another), and other measures that make life more difficult without much if any offsetting gain. Put simply, this line of "thinking" is unmoored from reality.
The same is true of Europe's manic move away from nuclear and fossil fuels. It had to be reversed. I wish so much oxygen were not being wasted on the effort to go "green." These objections to wind power are unsurprising. Green energy is besides the point. Go to wind, the whales won't like it. Who knows what the bogeyman with solar is to be?
The "climate change" types call freedom "freedumb." What they don't like is Western affluence. The West's affluence has been in their sights as a target for the longest of time. Many of politically liberal views are ashamed of affluence. Jimmy Carter, in his "Crisis of Confidence" speech of July 15, 1979, often called the "Malaise" speech, stated in part
(link):
Jimmy Carter said:
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
Earlier examples are the "sumptuary laws" from Elizabethan England. I came across this from
Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by
Gordon S. Wood. The word "sumptuary" means "relating to personal expenditures and especially to prevent extravagance and luxury" and sumptuary laws means laws "designed to regulate extravagant expenditures or habits especially on moral or religious grounds." (
link to source).
There is a strain that goes back before the start of European civilization in America that sees a positive value in self-abnegation. I did not realize that this went back beyond the days of John Adams and further, to Puritan times. I had thought that this philosophy of life seeped into the U.S. via books such as the 1950's classic by
John Kenneth Galbraith,
The Affluent Society. This foreshadowed by other authors and thinkers, such as
Travels with Charley: In Search of America by
John Steinbeck. In
Travels Steinbeck rails against conspicuous consumption and other signs of affluence. Going back to ancient Greek time, there was a philosopher named Epicuris, who believed (
link to source) that was decidedly the opposite from Puritanism, for convenience called epicurean-ism. I did not think of any modern connections in thought, Indeed, I had thought that this line of thinking was recent, a response to post-War prosperity.
In summary, I rather believe that Sumptuary Laws in 18th Century England morphed into Puritanism and modern wearing of the hair-shirt. I believe that the rebellion against that kind of thinking results in surprise phenomena such as Reagan's election over Carter in 1980 and Trump's 2016 election; people who want a better living standard sometimes rebel against pedantic lectures.