I don't quite get it. How can consumerism leed to depression? Surely there's an underlying problem that manifests itself with the need for people to buy new things all the time. The only thing this guy has really pointed out is that buying things makes us happy for a short while. Whether people are happy in the long term doesn't really seem to have anything to do with consumersim. I don't get it...
I saw this book on amazon and my inclination is that the book is for people who're just as materialistic as the rest of us, but would like to feel otherwise and want the feeling of superiority that comes from considering oneself to not be materialistic. Afterall, Budhists have been giving up material goods for as long as their religion has existed. The process is simple, give them up, don't get more. This just strikes me as profiteering on the back of a desire to be superior found in the common person.
Apple and Steve Jobs reality distortion field is the perfect example. People can't wait 6 months for the iPhone even. It's pathetic.
Another propagator of the "Money doesn't buy happiness" story. Watch the noble, genuine, salt-of-the-earth common people in their council estates. They are poor but they are happy. They still have family values... I agree with, well, all of you really. Apart from the fact that my learned colleague is saying nothing new (just dressed it up in a contamporary, trendy package), I feel the book will just end up catering to the sentimentalism of the elitist affluent middle classes. Now they can sip their organic wine and eat their free-range chicken while arguing that a struggling third-world farmer should not have a tractor not only because it threatens his cultural values and traditional way of life, but they can do so with the warm conscientious feeling that he is much happier with this simple life than us stressed modern, Western people anyway, the lucky, lucky man. Next time a stock broker, after a hard day earning millions, manoeuvers his Armani-clad ass into the backseat of a New York taxi to take him to the nearest wine bar (good Bollinger, there) before going to his 24-hour security controlled, private parking luxury pad downtown, he can reflect on how this noble Nigerian savage piloting said vehicle for 16 hours a day for a meager income to support his family living in the crime- and drug-ridden projects, really is much happier than he is. So don't even bother insulting this man's good, honest non-materialistic values by giving him a tip. It's a hard life us consumers have... But Oliver James can always put his money where his mouth is (haha) and donate the proceeds of his book to charity. He'll feel better for it. More.. spiritual.
