Shifts in societal attitudes towards well-being mean that a degrowth strategy does not necessarily have to be political suicide

At the end of World War 2, the Western nations were beset with paranoia about what the USSR might be planning. The West had essentially relied on the Soviet armed forces to defeat the Nazis through their efforts on the Eastern front, after Hitler had launched – Operation Barbarossa – which effectively ended the – Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact – signed in 1939 between Germany and the USSR. Following the War, the ‘spectre of Communism’ drove the Western political leaders to embrace social democracy and introduce policies that created the mass-consuming middle class in most countries, which was seen as a bulwark against the developemnt of a revolutionary working class movement and any further spread of Communism. While the interests of capital hated the welfare state and the rise of trade unions, they saw these developments as a means to protect their hegemony in the new world and the uncertainty that the – Cold War – engendered. Mass consumption was akin to Marx’s claims about religion being the ‘opium of the people’ and it has been a dominant part of life in advanced nations in the Post War period. It is one of the reasons that people think a degrowth strategy can never be embraced by the political class because it would confront a population besotted with material accumulation and consumption. However, research from Japan suggests that a strategy designed to reduce material consumption will not “reduce individual happiness and collective wellbeing” (Source) and a decoupling between growth and human happiness is indeed possible, which means the political class, if they are courageous enough, can introduce policies that promote degrowth.

I am also researching the link between growth and human happiness.

The article I cited in the Introduction – Is happiness possible in a degrowth society? – was published in the Futures journal in December 2022 (Volume 144) and was written by three researchers – Hikaru Komatsu (National Taiwan University), Jeremy Rappleye (Kyoto University), and Yukiko Uchida (Kyoto University).

The Japanese Cabinet Office has conducted an annual survey – 社会意識に関する世論調査 (Public opinion survey on social consciousness) – since 1948, which provides a very rich data source for researchers.

I have been working with this data for some time now, untangling the complexity of the information that spans such a long period of time within which the Japanese nation has evolved from a defeated, occupied country with widespread poverty into one of the rich, advanced nations of the world.

The survey interviews produce around 6,000 ‘valid sample’ each year from 10,000 interviewees, which is means it is a great source of data for researchers like myself.

Survey officers conduct these face-to-face interviews of Japanese nationals over 18 years of age in locations throughout Japan.

There are other surveys that supplement this data:

1. 日本人の意識」調査 (Survey of Japanese Attitudes) – which is conducted by NHK’s Broadcasting Cultural Research Institute.

2. 日本人の国民性調査とは (Japanese National Character Survey) – which is conducted b the – 統計数理研究所 (Institute of Statistical Mathematics) – Japan’s national research institute for statistical sciences located in Tokyo.

The results of these surveys allow questions pertaining to the link between material growth (GDP growth) and happiness to be interrogated, which helps determine whether their is any political chance that a degrowth strategy could succeed.

Most progressively-minded commentators, who accept that climate change is now threatening human existence, advocate a ‘green growth’ strategy, which entails reducing the fossil-fuel component of growth to help moderate the damage that extensive use of carbon-based resources are doing.

It is a sort of have it both ways strategy and is motivated by the belief that politically it is simply not possible to significantly reduce the material prosperity of populations in the advanced nations through political interventions.

The ‘green growthers’ consider the mass consumption ethos to be so ingrained that it would be political suicide for a political party to advocate retrenching that aspect of our behaviour.

They believe that happiness comes from material growth and so the only political option is to redirect from from ‘brown’ to ‘green’, while essentially maintaining material consumption levels.

I recall in my student days, people telling me that capitalism was a natural fit for humanity because we are all self-interested and greedy when push-comes-to-shove.

I wrote about that idea in this blog post – Humans are intrinsically anti neo-liberal (May 22, 2017).

The ‘green growth’ assumption that growth makes us happy is a replay of that claim.

I have also noted before that humanity is currently plundering nature 1.7 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate

Please read my blog post – We are 1.7 times over regenerative capacity and the world’s population control must be reduced (August 21, 2024) – for more discussion on this point.

On average, nations reached – Earth Overshoot day – last year on August 1, 2024, which means that we should of stopped producing and consuming then.

The situation varies greatly across different countries.

What this means is that the strategy to bring that resource demand back into the realms where regeneration is possible cannot include on-going growth, ‘green’ or otherwise.

That observation is the basis for moving our focus to a degrowth strategy, whatever that entails.

The question is whether it runs against our desire for happiness, which ‘green growthers’ assume is correlated (at least) with material aspirations.

Commentators point to surveys taken during recessions that show people are more likely to be depressed when they face job loss.

They use that cyclical response as a justification for their assertion that material growth is necessary for underlying happiness.

Of course, it is a poor example, because in a recession, the lower income cohorts suffer disproportionately, while the upper income group tend to prosper – adding wealth (for example, via forced sale of real estate by workers rendered unemployed).

A careful degrowth strategy would not impose these sorts of disproportionate costs on the poorest cohort.

There is a growing body of research that indicates that there is no necessary link between those aspirations and outcomes and our sense of well-being.

The article I cited above is one of several in that category and takes an interesting long-term view by tracing shifts in social attitudes in Japan over the last several decades which the mainstream commentariate initially referred to as the ‘lost decade’ (when the slowdown after the 1991 property market collapse was 10 years in).

The researchers found that:

When economic standards started declining, the level of subjective wellbeing did, in fact, decline during the first five years. However, the level of subjective wellbeing subsequently stopped declining and even started improving, despite no apparent recovery in economic standards.

To establish this finding, they used survey data I mentioned above.

A question in the survey that gave the researchers vital information: How satisfied are you with your current life? – “Respondents were required to choose one among the following five options: (1) satisfied, (2) somewhat satisfied, (3) can’t say either way, (4) somewhat dissatisfied, and (5) dissatisfied.”

From the answers, a “mean level of subjective wellbeing” was constructed.

The results were supplemented by similar answers in the NHK and the ISM surveys.

The interesting outcome of the research and of the survey evidence (the latter which is motivated my own work at present) was the shift over time in the way Japanese people evaluated their sense of well-being.

The early surveys were found to irrelevant in the modern era because of these shifts, which influenced the survey design as time passed.

The cited research noted that:

Japan previously emphasized individual achievement and status, the dominant form of wellbeing underpinning modernity. Yet, there has been a shift in understanding of happiness and wellbeing: away from individual achievements towards harmonious relationships. This shift in the concept of wellbeing might have occurred in accordance with the decline in economic standards. Individual achievements would require an abundance of resources, opportunities, and thus greater materialistic consumption, a difficult set of conditions to maintain in a society with declining economic standards.

That shift is demonstrated in a number of research papers and is very interesting because it suggests that societies adapt to changing circumstances and shift away from dominant ideologies more than we might think.

The following graph shows the responses to satisfied and dissatisfied questions from 1995 to 2019 with the lower panel breaking down the responses into age cohorts.

Clearly, in the aftermath of the bubble crash in the early 1990s and the sales tax hike in 1997, people expressed rising dissastification and declining satisfaction.

But after 2000, that pattern reversed.

And as the authors note: “The gradual recovery of wellbeing over the past two decades was greatest among younger age cohorts”.

Further, the responses that supported:

… individual achievement (“do what they want” and “think about themselves”) … decreased, while those who chose the options emphasizing harmonious relationships (i.e., “do something for others” and “help others”) increased over the same two decade span … these tendencies were more pronounced for younger age cohorts …

The conjecture is that the younger cohorts never experienced the rapid growth era in the 1960s and 1970s and so formed different views of well-being.

Other responses in all three surveys reinforced the notion that “harmonious relationships (‘spend time harmoniously with others around me’) were more important to people than “individual achievement”.

The evidence in this study, supported by other psychological studies suggests that:

… reducing an excessive focus on the individual self is one effective way to achieve happiness within material constraints …

Other studies have demonstrated that survey responses that suggest climate denial are highly correlated with respondents who are motivated by a sense of individualism.

Conversely, those who express a deep concern for the climate issue tend to be focused on community and family rather than the individual.

In Japan, there is a growing awareness of the attitudes held by the so-called – Satori generation (さとり世代) – “young Japanese who have seemingly achieved the Buddhist enlightened state free from material desires but who have in reality given up ambition and hope due to macro-economic trends.”

All the ambitions that capital has engendered to render us compliant, mass consumers are absent in the satori generation.

The members eschew: “earning money, career advancement, and conspicuous consumption, or even travel, hobbies and romantic relationships; their alcohol consumption is far lower than Japanese of earlier generations”.

In South Korea the same attitudes are held by the – N-po generation.

When I gave a presentation recently at the Rising Tide Coal Port Blockade in Newcastle I observed many young people who were dedicated to fighting against climate change and ending coal exports and who were seemingly of the ‘sartori generation’.

It gave me great hope.

The researchers say that being sartori is not because of ‘low income’ status but rather, “signifies a shift in mindset”.

What is the relevance of this type of research for articulating a degrowth strategy?

Quite clearly if there is a growing shift away from mass consumption and material aspiration (especially among the young) then the assumptions of the ‘green growthers’ fail.

If a growing number of people are being motivated to live “happy lives with less” material acquisitions and individual achievements then a viable political degrowth strategy is possible.

Conclusion

The next question that needs further work is whether this type of shift in attitude towards well-being is a Japanese (or Asian) phenomenon that is not evident in the advanced western nations.

Some research is emerging to suggest that the shift is generalising.

The clue is for the education system to change attitudes early.

I will write more on that issue later.

Correction – Episode 10 of the Smith Family Manga

Episode 10 will be published on Friday, January 17, 2025 rather than tomorrow.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2025 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.