If it Makes You Happy, then Why Are You So Sad?

Money, money, money. What does money mean to you? Is it the medium of exchange, is the sign of success, is it the symbol of worth? Too the majority of the world, it is all of the above. Our world has gotten so wrapped up in materialism that we are compromising our future. When calculating our economic growth, any monetary transaction is perceived as a positive growth, even if it’s medical bills because of pollution. How is pollution in our environment that is harming many people a positive economic growth? It’s not, it’s just money. What really matters is value, or worth. How much does your future mean to you? What is it worth?

Can you put a price on our impeccable ecosystem and natural resources? No, but it is definitely worth something, it has value. Nature is something we can’t live without. It provides us with the oxygen we breathe, the food that we eat, and the water that we drink, three of our basic needs that we need to survive. To me, it’s worth a million bucks.

Our culture today has completely changed our lives. We have so many wants and desires that we easily get wrapped up trying to satisfy ourselves and forget our needs. Beyond the needs of survival, we also have emotional needs. In Ann Thorpe’s Designer Atlas of Sustainability, she discusses how as human beings we are very hard to please because of all of our demanding wants and needs. “Although we are all different, human beings have a common set of needs that we must meet to achieve well-being” (Thorpe, 2007). Among all of our many desires, a list of our needs includes subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Looking in all the wrong places to fulfill our needs, we seek satisfaction externally through money, material goods, and the approval of others to get the feeling that we are “worth” something, or have good value. There are four main themes to meeting our needs—communication, artifacts, time and nature. Through communication, we are able to build relationships and understanding by interacting with people and having a sense of meaning in someone’s life.  Secondly, artifacts have really started to play a bigger role in our time period because we tend to satisfy our desires rather than our needs. We fill our lives with materialistic possessions because we think they are worth something, rather than filling our lives with artifacts that are a necessity or have personal meaning. The third theme is time because our culture has become so impatient and fast-paced that we want everything now, and we expect results now. We want everything to happen immediately because we are so stuck in the mindset of short-term. We are no longer thinking about the long-term. Lastly, we have lost our connection with nature. “By the end of the twentieth century, more people lived in urban areas than rural ones for the first time in history” (Thorpe, 2007). According to our lifestyles, nature has lost its value and we have to rebuild the connection because it is a central part of our well-being.

Watching and owning has become a big part of our lifestyle. Visuality can play a positive role in meeting our needs because it helps us understand and see things from our past and history. But, it also has a negative impact as well because it fills our minds with artificial images that then create superficial desires. The media plays a big part in this for many reasons. All girls do not look like Barbie dolls and all boys do not drive Lamborghinis. Media has embedded this artificial image into our society of what an ideal lifestyle looks like, but the reality is that “the majority of real people—racially diverse, relatively poor, more than 50% female, and in industrialized countries, older than thirty-five” (Thorpe, 2007). We live in such a materialistic world that we define ourselves by what we own and how much money we have. Our materialism is what is driving the issue of unsustainability because we are living so fast-paced and using things at the speed of lightning because we can’t wait to get the newest and the coolest. Why does our possessions and the amount of money we have matter? Why do we think that if we fill our lives with money and expensive things we will be happy? We will never be truly satisfied. In the famous words of Sheryl Crow…

If it makes you happy, then why are you so sad?

The truth is that nobody on the planet has enough money to make them happy, yes it might help, but it is internally that we find our happiness. “The world’s richest 1% of people receive as much income as the poorest 57%” (Thorpe, 2007). The concentration of the world’s wealth is only dispersed between 25 million people of a world filled with 6 billion people. And you know what they say, the rich get richer… In Edward N. Wolff’s article “How the Pie is Sliced; America’s Growing Concentration of Wealth,” he states that in the 80s decade the top 20% of wealth holders received 99% of the marketable growth that decade and the poorer only received the bottom 1%. America is much more unequal than all of the other countries but concentration of wealth is an issue everywhere, even in the business world. Some corporations are top heavy as well. Because corporations are so powerful and control so much of the wealth, their focus is very narrowed and limits design’s ability to pursue sustainability.

But because they have so much power and because we live in such a materialistic world, why don’t we put these huge corporations to work?

Some are already trying to pursue sustainability and designer’s can start engaging as well. Several companies either have foundations to help out charities, some provide money and some choose to donate money through tithing, which is a form of providing support proportional to their own financial success. “For the past fifteen years Patagonia itself has tithed 1% of annual sales or 10% of profits, whichever is larger, to grassroots environmental groups” (Thorpe, 2007). Many companies don’t necessarily know the damage they are making through things such as waste disposal or energy costs because the costs are included just as part of the budget. As more and more become more informed, they are making changes. Like McDonalds and Starbucks have designed environmentally friendly packaging and Nike is supporting the use of organic cotton. The demand for “green” goods is increasing and the fact that these companies are taking steps is giving them a competitive advantage. So how can designers get involved with these?

Well there is this idea called “shareholder activism” and this states that people who own shares in a company have a role in influencing what the company does. There is a second idea known as “responsible investing” and this idea reflects that the investors like to know that what they are putting their money into is socially and environmentally responsible. This is where we, as designers, come in to play. If we can create sustainable products for these companies to buy, not only will their investment rate increase, the investors will be happy and the company will still be making its profit.

As designers we face many obstacles. We face the challenge of satisfying people’s wants and needs. We face the challenge of producing the better product using the natural resources. We face the challenge of informing people of the superior item and persuading them that this item is “worth” the cost. We face the challenge of making things to stand the test of time in this forever evolving world.

But nature is a classic, and it is infinite. It can stand the test of time. Its value is far more than the latest Gucci handbag, but if we keep living like we are today our future, our children’s future, our grandkid’s future and the future of many more will be compromised. We have to start thinking long-term! Don’t get caught up in the materialism of it all, it will never make you happy. The only way to truly be satisfied is to fulfill the needs of your well-being. Reconnect with nature, admire its beauty and let’s live sustainably… It’ll make you happy!