I went to a roundtable talk today on this topic and it gave me some thinking to do... Very interesting talk indeed - part of a day long conference on the same topic, actually. I couldn't go for the entire thing because it was already booked out for students, but luckily I at least went for this talk that turned out a very fast passing 2 hours. Anyway, about the talk…
The main question was what is enough and how much is enough. A lot of it was climate change and environment oriented and some was also development oriented. And of course, there were examples given: like Simon Cowell or so (the guy from Britain’s Got Talent) who is not only filthy rich but also some kind of a snob because he eats out every day and he’s weekly meal expenditure sums up to more than 1,000 pounds (and that’s a lot of money! It got me through almost 2 months of living in London) and he uses this fancy black toiled paper (which, btw, they cutely call ‘loo’ here all the time) which also costs 10 pounds per roll… Another one was this lady who lived with 1 pound a day for a year and wrote a book about it – quite the opposite pole.
I think just bringing these two opposite examples up would make anyone willing to think to do so… And unfortunately there are too many relative terms involved in the questions that one may ask… What is enough for us to be happy? I enough just the minimum – edge amount/ condition for a decent living or is it having a good life? And then what is a decent living and what is having a good life? I mean, I would probably say that it’s decent to have a home with running water and heat and electricity and be able to afford food and clothes that are not torn or too worn off, medical care, and basic things like tv, phone and internet and a high school education.
But this is actually quite a lot and I’m now thinking that I’m quite demanding if I think what decent living would be from the perspective of a person who lives with less than $1 a day… And there are, unfortunately, too many of such people. But for them, really, a decent living would probably be just having enough food and water and a home and minimum clothing.
On the other hand, I remember when I was filling up the financial aid application for college there were specific spaces for amounts of money spent of clothing, entertainment, holidays, vehicles etc. in addition to food, utilities, education and healthcare. So I suppose that for an average ‘westerner’ decent living has a much higher meaning… perhaps going out at least once a week and being able to afford a vacation at least once a year or so… And no, I am not trying to imply that this is a bad thing, I’m just comparing points of view…
In Romania, I come from a middle class family (in the States or in London I’m probably underclass or sth J) but anyway… while I was in high school back home I put together a charity ball for this young single mom with 3 children… And I actually visited her and her children in her home and talked to her… it was a good life experience… She was living in this tiny house on a street you couldn’t go by car (and this is an industrialized city I live in) and there was a small room with 2 beds and another even smaller room before it that was the kitchen. Her husband or whatever he was had left to do stuff and ended up in prison and her relatives were either dead or alcoholics… and she had 3 small children so she couldn’t really work… They had no electricity or running water and barely any food or clothes… So we did this ball and it turned out a pretty big success… We managed to raise about $2-300, quite a considerable amount in Romanian money and we also collected a lot of clothes and cans, which we put in plastic bags. So when we went again to her to give them, we kind of filled her little garden; and I handed her the envelope with the money and she was shaking when I told her the amount because she had probably never held that amount all at once before… So now I’m thinking back… what was enough for that woman? She probably never expected to get so much from us, some high school students and she probably did think that what she got was more than enough and that maybe for a while her family would have, not only a decent, but a good life…
A good life… still with no electricity or running water… with no vacations or tv… If I were to define a good life for me as I see it I would probably include in the description things like – being able to get at least a new item every 2 months, being able to travel for about every break, being able to go out at least for special occasions, and I would probably not even include things like unlimited internet or education – because those would be self-understood and already included in the ‘decent life’…
Is this more than enough? Yes… and I do realize it if I think about it… I do realize I could live very well without traveling and going out so much… but on the other hand, if I can’t afford to grant myself these luxuries I feel quite frustrated and sad… why? Probably because I got used to having them or because I see other people having them and naturally I think why can’t I? One of the speakers was actually saying that one of the reason for which we want more and more is to gain social status and feel that we have more and perhaps are better than others because we have more… And this surely is something true, but not always… I think it’s also the aspect of seeing other people having certain things, which either make them happy or ease their lives and then we naturally want them too… It’s like… you see people traveling the world – you want to travel the world too… it’s exciting, it’s thrilling, you get to see so many things… of course you want to do it too… and not because you want to prove them that you can do it too… Or iphones… one wants to have them cause they are great… they feel nice, they can do so many things yet they are small etc etc… And yes, there are plenty of cases when one would want the iphone just because it’s the ‘in’ thing and perhaps in a group you’re not cool if you don’t have an iphone, but somehow I don’t quite think this is the general case…
So yeah… a lot of talk to be made about this idea of ‘enough’… As with all the relative terms… Because such terms, more than others (like house) mean different things to different people… and it is hard to give a leveling definition or even convince everyone to use the same definition… But, at the end of the day, I think some things are clear to everyone… I believe that everyone understands that living on $1 per day or less is too little and therefore not enough… or than spending 1000 pounds per week only on food is a lot and therefore more than enough… perhaps too much most would agree… In this case, I’m thinking, wouldn’t it just be so much easier to stop talking linguistics and avoid these vague terms?!
There was a time when I was doing MUNs and so I was reading resolution papers… and there were FULL of such vague terms… everything could have been subject to interpretation… as are politicians ‘speeches… ‘immediate action is needed’: what does this really say? As I said, I think although some concepts are ambiguous and relative (like sufficiency), we all have a basic understanding that some of us have too little and some of us have to much and it would really help if we shifted some amounts… something like a population vector towards the equilibrium position in neural networks (neuroscience concepts)…
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