Hi all,
For our last blog post for Monday, read the selection from Bill Mckibben’s book Deep Economy (2007) and evaluate the following questions:
What does he have to say about “more and better”? Why do you (and McKibben) think that overall reported happiness levels have gone down as our “quality of life” has gone up with more technology and more advancements? What do you think of his quote on Pg. 44 about approaching the upcoming holidays in relation to the “Laura Ingall Wilder effect”:
“A few years ago a group of us in the Methodist churches in my part of the Northast started a campaign called Hundred Dollar Holidays to persuade people to celebrate the Nativity a little differently–with homemade gifts, gifts of service and time, and so forth. When we started it, we were thinking as pious environmentalists: we could rid the world of all those batteries! But the reason the campaign worked so well was because so many people were desperate for permission to celebrate Christmas in a new way that fit better what we actually need out of the holidays. We need time with family, we need silence for reflection, we need connection with nature–all the stuff that the Ingalls family had in abundacne. We don’t need candy; we have candy every day of our lives. We just haven’t figured that out, because the momentum of the past is still with us: we still imagine we’re in the Little House on the Big Prairie, when most of us inhabit the Oversized House on the Little Cul de Sac”(44).