47 pages • 1 hour read
John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas NaylorAffluenza
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Causes”
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary: “Early Infections”
According to the opening pages of this chapter, Part 2 of Affluenza shifts focus to an epidemiology of the disease—that is to say, an inquiry into its causes. “What was the genesis of affluenza?”, the authors ask, “Is it a bug that has always been there, just part of human nature? Is it culturally conditioned? Could it result from both nature and nurture?” (109). By isolating the causes of affluenza, the authors hope to better understand the manner in which it can be overcome.
Although the focus of the book centers on the so-called Age of Affluenza, the period of robust economic growth in the United States following the end of World War Two that facilitated the creation of modern consumer culture, Chapter 11 provides a brief overview of concerns about the concentration of wealth and the effects of materialism in the ancient world. According to the authors, it could be argued that the figures of Adam and Eve in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition were the original “patients zero” of affluenza. “[T]he first lesson of the Bible”, the authors write, “is an admonishment against coveting more than we need. Greed was, in fact, the original sin” (110).
Nevertheless, some anthropologists have argued that hoarding scarce resources was a necessity for early hunter-gatherer human societies. The authors provide a counterexample in the work of Allen Johnson (110-11). Johnson and his family spent two years living with the Machiguenga tribe in the Amazon rain forest of Peru. Although life could be precarious in the jungle without modern medicine, Johnson found that the Machiguenga lived simple, fulfilled lives with few possessions and a manageable daily workload. Rather than work themselves into stress and exhaustion in the pursuit of frivolous needs, the tribe enjoyed meaningful leisure activities like storytelling. A similar emphasis on moderation and the dangers of avarice and overconsumption is also found in a variety of older traditions like Buddhism, Judaism, ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, Native American culture, and even Christianity itself.
In a certain sense, then, affluenza is hardly a new problem for the human species. But, for the authors, that does not mean that selfishness and greed are endemic to human nature. Indeed, the contrary seems to be the case.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary: “An Ounce of Prevention”
Chapter 12 examines further historical precedents for opposition to affluenza. In the context of the United States, the authors argue that this tradition goes back to some of its first European colonists, such as the Puritans in Massachusetts and the Quakers in Pennsylvania. These communities left Europe on the basis of a desire to renew Christianity in light of the “godless materialism rapidly taking root in Europe” (116). Indeed, one of the central motivations for the American Revolution was the feeling that heavy taxes on the colonists were imposed by Great Britain simply in order to sustain the luxurious lifestyle of its aristocrats.
The chapter closes with a look at two 19th-century thinkers who were critical of the rising excesses of work and consumption that accompanied the early industrial revolution. The first is Karl Marx. Though a controversial figure to some, the authors focus on Marx’s statements regarding the “imaginary appetites” formed by capitalism and his insistence that true freedom depends upon liberation from labor and consequent self-realization in the sphere of leisure. The second thinker is the American author Henry David Thoreau. In his book, Walden, Thoreau preached “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” in his personal account of withdrawing from society to live in quiet contemplation amidst nature (121). Marx aside, the authors argue that the rejection of affluenza has a long tradition in the United States, one from which we can still draw inspiration today.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “The Road Not Taken”
The title of this chapter comes from the famous poem of the same name by Robert Frost. In this case, the authors argue that the proverbial road not taken represents the working conditions for which numerous workers and labor groups agitated in the US between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of American intervention into World War Two.
One of the main examples in the chapter is the 1911 novel The Nine-Tenths by James Oppenheim (125-26), which the authors claim anticipates the slogan of the “99%” adopted by the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011. Oppenheim dramatizes a pair of events that the authors take as illustrative of the abandoned possibilities of past anti-affluenza activists. The first is the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, an inferno at a New York City factory that claimed the lives of 146 women in March of 1911. The second event is the Uprising of the Thirty Thousand, a massive demonstration of workers from 1909-10 that exacted significant concessions from factory employers.
For the authors, these real events and their portrayal by Oppenheim highlight the immense energy of working people that was at one time dedicated to reducing work hours in exchange for more free time. Similarly, in the wake of the Great Depression, this demand of organized labor translated into a Congressional bill that sought to establish a 30-hour work week, a measure narrowly defeated in the House of Representatives (130). Despite this setback, the cereal tycoon A.K. Kellogg instituted first a 35- and then a 30-hour work week at his Michigan factory without cutting the pay of his workers. Unlike many industrialists of his age, Kellogg argued that “leisure time, not economic growth without end” was the crowning achievement of capitalism (130). While this practice ended in 1985, it provides a striking example of “the road not taken,” in which employees work less and are still productive and well-paid, all the while having more freedom to live a meaningful life beyond the monotony of work.
Part 2, Chapters 11-13 Analysis
Chapters 11 through 13 begin tracing the broad historical narrative that the authors believe to explain the origins of affluenza. Beginning with the story of the Garden of Eden, the authors show that warnings about greed and the desire for possessions is hardly a new phenomenon in human culture and history. But one of the main claims of Part 2 of Affluenza is that characteristics like selfishness and avarice are not an essential component of human nature. Contrary to some anthropological studies of extant pre-modern cultures, the authors argue that the kind of self-interest and competition stoked by affluenza is not endemic to all human societies. Affluenza is a stubborn, old problem, but not a completely intractable one.
Moving from older examples of critics of affluenza, from early American settlers to 19th-century philosophers like Henry David Thoreau and Karl Marx, the authors argue that the harmful effects of the disease were readily perceived by labor movements during the early 20th century. This is the period in which the wonders of the Industrial Revolution and the power of capitalism intensified their influence over American life. According to the authors, those at the bottom of the social hierarchy engendered by early industrial capitalism—namely, factory workers—understood the ill consequences of long hours spent in brutal toil for the sole purpose of making profits for the select few in control of abundant wealth. The struggle of workers for higher pay, fewer working hours, and a freer, less coercive lifestyle no longer dominated by work are detailed in order to show that a different, less destructive social structure was once—and still is—possible in the places like the United States. If resistance to affluenza is thus a kind of American tradition, then the authors claim that this destructive collective ailment can and should be decisively eradicated.
