Is Wellbeing Local or Global? A Perspective from Ecopsychology.

John Pickering, Psychology, Warwick University

ESRC Seminar Series on Wellbeing: Social and Individual Determinants

Seminar 1: Wellbeing; the interaction between person and environment'

11th September 2001, Queen Mary University of London.

Human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

T.S. Eliot (1942). Burnt Norton.

Introduction.

Wellbeing has both noun and verb senses. The noun sense will here mean the feeling of having a place, of being at home in the world. The verb sense will here mean living in balance with the trials of life. It's important to note that neither sense implies that all life's problems have been solved. It means being aware of what is going on, both good and bad, without that unease that comes from feeling something's wrong but not knowing what it is or what to do about it.

Here I suggest that wellbeing is being diminished as media technology brings us conflicting messages. On the one hand we are bombarded by explicit images of a life of plenty and of opportunity - more so perhaps than any previous generation. At the same time we get clear indications, the more powerful for being implicit, that all is not right.

What seems to be going wrong, in part at least, is that our relationship with the environment is increasingly violent and destructive. We are beginning to realise that the effects of our technologised lifestyles are leading to damage on global scale that we may not be able to repair. The unease that this creates is fundamentally detrimental to wellbeing. It needs to be studied within an appropriate theoretical framework and with appropriate styles of enquiry. I shall propose that Ecopsychology provides both.

The Long War.

Ecopsychology (e.g. Roszak et al., 1995) is roughly at the centre of a cluster of related disciplines, such as Ecological Psychology (e.g. Winter, 1996), Deep Ecology (e.g. Tobias, 1988 ; Deval & Session, 1985) and Environmental Psychology (e.g. Cassidy, 1997). Lester Brown, founder and until 2000 the director of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, commended ecopsychology like this: “Ecopsychologists believe there is an emotional bond between human beings and the environment out of which we evolve. … Ecopsychologists are drawing upon the ecological sciences to reexamine the human psyche as an integral part of the web of nature. ” (Brown, 1995, page xvi)

Now in recent times this web has had another thrown over it. The internet reminds us that the world is one place. It was a dark irony that the seminar for which this chapter was originally prepared should have been held on September 11th. 2001. Unknown to those taking part in it, events elsewhere were providing a violent backdrop to their discussions of wellbeing. Witnessed around the world in real time, the events of the day were a trauma for some and a triumph for others, signifying both the interconnectivity of the global community and the deep divisions within it.

The response to the attacks over the intervening years has increased hatred of America and its allies, as their perpetrators intended. It has made further attacks more likely. As what was the ‘War Against Terrorism’ becomes what is now called 'The Long War', we are moving closer to the permanent global warfare depicted in Orwell’s 1984. The war is not so much between states as between the rich and the poor. While this divide has always been with us, it has now reached pathological proportions. The grotesque disparities within the world community that have emerged with globalisation are no longer simply a matter of more advanced nations outperforming less advanced ones. They result from an aggressive manipulation of the conditions of international trade to increase the wealth of those already rich and the power of those already powerful. The results are patently unjust, especially for vulnerable people whose cultures and economies are distorted by market manipulation, (see e.g. Chossudovsky, 2003). The hegemony of the wealthy nations is so abusive that is has to be maintained by economic and military force. It is, accordingly, resisted by force. The resulting violence, often amplified by ancient cultural enmities, is literally brought home to us via globalised communications.

Globalisation and the growth of the internet have dominated cultural change over the past few decades. Indeed, they can be seen as different aspects of the same process. In analysing what he calls the ‘Runaway World’, Anthony Giddens puts it like this: “I see globalisation as a fundamental shift in our institutions ... an underlying shift in the way we live. The main driver of globalisation isn’t economic globalisation as such, it is information and communication.” (Giddens, 1999). Communication networks have shrunk the world. Digitally mobilised information circulates and blends within them. The value this creates is the currency of the weightless economy, the recombinant culture of postmodernity (Harvey, 1990).

Giddens puts a positive spin on all this, seeing globalisation as the means to wealth creation and even to fairer distribution. For him, it means that those in the poor world now have a greater chance to benefit by participating in postmodern capitalism. By contrast the anti-capitalist movement sees globalisation as leading to more disparity, not less. In their eyes it reflects the unsustainable exploitation of people and environments by transnational corporations (Klein, 2000). Others see global communications as promoting the evolution of capitalism towards a more ecologically responsive condition (Porritt, 2005).

Whether it is for good or ill, and of course it will be for both, globalisation is unstoppable and will intensify. As it does so, images of Western lifestyles spread via the internet become the hypermobile shock troops of postmodern capitalism. Dreams of unsustainable wealth sear into vulnerable minds creating desires that cannot be fulfilled. Wellbeing diminishes as cultural diversity disappears and economic autonomy shrinks.

The significance of the internet is not only economic but semiotic and double coded at that. It signifies the interconnectivity of our economic and political lives but also demonstrates how that interconnectivity is fragmented as globalisation exaggerates disparities of wealth and power. The internet actively creates what it signifies through its power to transform. The turbulent, space-less interconnectivity of the internet is a reminder of the braided lives of all those who live on our world. Unlike films and television, which brings images to where you are, the images got by exploring the internet have an aura of being 'elsewhere'. Although the notions of taking a 'virtual holiday' or of traveling a 'highway' by using the internet are transparent nonsense, discovering strange internet sites can feel like the exploration of exotic places. The medium is indeed the message and the message, appropriately, is that we have been living in McLuhan's global village for decades.

The double coding, though, brings another message: the village is a violent place. This is made clear to us in a new and intimate way as images rather than words demonstrate the direct connection between rich lifestyles and violent resistance to them. More immediately and vividly than even a decade ago, wealthy people are being reminded that their secure and abundant lifestyles do not come for free. The cost is violence done to people, to cultures and to the environment. Some of this violence, as the events on 9/11/2001 and of 7/7/2005 show, is coming home.

The nature of this violence was described by Walter Benjamin, writing amid the dark geopolitics of the 1930’s. He realised that when society cannot contain the power of technology, the result is not only violence but also the celebration of violence. The media frenzy that greeted the attacks in New York and London, along with the highly controlled presentation of the warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate how and enduring penetrating his analysis was. For many people in the West, the warfare of recent years has become somewhat like a film. It reaches them through reports from journalists embedded in the military who work for highly partisan media companies like Fox TV. All stages of the process are brought and paid for by political and economic organisations who have an enormous stake in creating the meaning of what is happening. This control of information is as strong as that of in any totalitarian state, the more so for being hidden. The view that the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan as fundamentally an aggressive war for oil struggles to be heard. The view that it is the heroic struggle of the forces of freedom and democracy against a world wide conspiracy of mad terrorists is hard to avoid. This fable, which might have been crafted by Disney corporation, not only conceals much of what led to the warfare but also satisfies the desire for spectacular on-screen violence.

Now, we cannot disown this violence, since we know much more than Benjamin did about what produces it. The pursuit of unsustainable levels of living by the rich requires the to be cheap energy. The effort to control sources of energy leads directly to violent damage being inflicted on the people of other cultures and on the environment. As people resist there is more violence, some of which appears in the wealthy cultures, aggravated by poverty elsewhere and by the 'clash of cultures' depicted by contemporary commentators (e.g. Fukuyama, 2006 ; Huntington, 1996). Events in Manhattan, Washington and London along with protests in Seattle and Genoa show that violence does not occur ‘elsewhere’ in a world shrunk by globalisation. There is more trouble ahead and it is likely to be ever more close to home. Violence from which we benefit or which is connected with the way we live belongs to us. Since it is done in our names, we are involved. We feel responsible.

But this violence is out of control. Even those in power are powerless, given the decline of the nation state as a global political player (Hutton, 1996). Transnational corporations exert enormous geopolitical influence and yet are beyond political restraint. People have disengaged with the political processes, disenchanted by spin and misrepresentation. Fewer people vote than ever before and the democratic deficit is growing. We may be witnessing a transition from party politics to issue politics, which may be beneficial. However, in the transition, traditional political structures will be weakened. They will consequently exert even less restraint on those with control of the media who will have more power than ever before to distort the presentation of events. Distortion, intentional and not, makes it impossible to trust the ever-present media barrage. Real geopolitical events are obscured and misrepresented in what Baudrillard has termed ‘hyper reality’ (Baudrillard, 1983, page 166). We feel powerless.

To feel responsible and yet powerless surely diminishes wellbeing. The effects may not be close to the surface of our conscious lives, but they are important nonetheless. Of course, they are overlaid by a host of distractions. Distant tragedies may evoke sympathy, but unless they directly affect our lives, they are soon forgotten. What's happening elsewhere may be distressing, but it is elsewhere, even though elsewhere is closer than it used to be. Things closer to home will still be more significant if they are sources of stress and anxiety. Even in the rich world, someone living in poor conditions has got enough to worry about. Without work or security we are not likely to feel much concern about events in Afghanistan or even in New York. Only when our basic needs are met is there the space to feel concern for others; when they are not, our concerns are for ourselves.

Maslow, a founding figure in humanistic psychology, represented human needs as a pyramid. At the bottom are basic needs to do with the preservation of life, that we share with all other living beings that must have air, water, food, shelter and safety to survive. Next up are social and emotional needs some of which we share with other social animals. These are our needs to belong to relate. At the top come the uniquely human need for self-actualisation: to understand ourselves and our place in the world and to strive for the maximum of consciousness. Meeting higher needs is conditional on lower ones having been met. If you can’t breathe, you won't notice being hungry; if you’re hungry you forget you’re lonely, and so on. Once needs at lower levels are met, needs at higher levels may receive attention, if our social environment encourages us to do so.

Now, over the past few centuries those in industrialised societies have found it increasingly easy to meet their basic needs, and since the mid twentieth century people in the rich world have enjoyed what Franklin Roosevelt called the “more abundant life”. Of course, our needs have not always been met. The sufferings of poverty amidst wealth depicted in ‘Hard Times’ and ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’ were real enough. And they remain real, since the monstrous disparities of Victorian England are now globalised, as many commentators show (Shiva, 2000; Chossodovsky, 2003)

If wellbeing primarily depends on needs being met and if people in wealthy societies are becoming more able to meet them, then wellbeing should be increasing. Surveys show that economic indicators like GDP and unemployment levels do indeed predict reported wellbeing, at least in the developed countries (di Tella et al., 2001). At the same time other surveys reveal a steadily increasing incidence of mental and psycho-somatic illnesses coupled with consumption of anti-depressants (e.g. Skaer et al., 2000; Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004). There are bound to be complex demographic and economic factors at work here, such as the increasing pressure on people with jobs, different patterns of family life and so on. However, an underlying driver for all of these, surely is the creation of an increasingly unsustainable image of what life should offer. Our basic needs may be met, but all is not well.