Cost of Living

The Experience Designer ruminates on all sorts of lifestyle factors from the financial angle -- commuting, cost of living, debt load, financial education, inflation -- but brings the discussion around to our sense of purpose and the non-financial costs of the decisions we make. Do we properly consider our levels of consumer debt, the effect of rising interest rates on over-mortgaged homeowners, our societal lack of savings, and the reality of increasing incomes that don't buy as much because of inflation?

"The link between commuting and heart attacks is symbolic of a culture(s) that places money, something vacuously referred to as 'progress', and the pursuit of materialism ahead living a vibrant and rewarding life."

Teaching Lifestylism

Curt's "rant" is spot-on. Why don't educational institutions focus on helping students figure out what they really want to do with their lives?

"No wonder people's careers end up wonky. The very institutions they are paying to prepare them for their careers and expand their horizons are blatantly ignoring the question, 'What's going to make you happy.'

What if our schools did teach that? How incredible would that be? When I was climbing down at Smith Rock with Erden Eruc and his wife Nancy a few months ago, Erden introduced me to a high school teacher he had met on an earlier climbing trip who teaches a Careers class.

The teacher said he constantly gets in trouble with parents because he keeps telling the kids, 'Follow your heart. Don't buy into what is expected. Make your own decisions. Explore. Do what feels right. Don't let other people decide what you should do.'"

Lament

Garth was recently lamenting his work schedule and asking some tough questions about purpose:

"Ironically, if I would maintain my current workload I most likely would be sacrificing my children on the altar of "doing." The hours we spend at work each week (even if it is a job that we truly enjoy) obviously are more than the hours we actually spend with our families right? In fact, even when we are home away from our workplace, often we are still at work solving some type of problem. The problem of our age is that often never leave work - our computers now fit in our pockets and tell us what to do hour by hour."

Pause

Jory's Pause blog seems to be picking up steam. I've gotta keep a couple of these gems:

The Bright Side of Status Anxiety
"This raises the question, is someone who is 'downsizing'--giving up that big-title job and paycheck for a simpler life, not desirous of status? I argue no; they are swimming against the more ubiquitous notion of what we've deemed as status symbols, but not of status itself. If we lived in this world with no respect--from others, but mainly from ourselves--we couldn't function, or we couldn't function to our potential."

The Soloist
"But Leanne has known both worlds: she’s followed her bliss and she’s feasted on the artificial freedom a regular paycheck provides. Eventually, the body rejects this unnatural nourishment; it screams for something else. Still,in the absence of the nourishment we’re seeking as soloists, we can get mighty hungry. Hell, anyone who’s traveling a lonely road and starving would likely stop at the first place she could eat, even if it was McDonald’s."

Extended Adolescence

Joanne Jacobs points out that growing up is hard to do and links to this USA Today article about extended adolescence:

"In the 1970s, a bachelor's degree could launch a career and support a family. Not anymore. Now, graduate school is almost a necessity and that means greater expenses, often when students are still saddled with college loans. More years of schooling also mean a delay entering the workforce. In this down economy, there's also stiffer competition for jobs. Financial independence is but a dream for many."

Conflict Between Dreams and Values

In Spidey Sense, Doug digs into an issue that I've thought of every time I hear or read someone writing "follow your dreams". He points out that our dreams are often not a very good match for our identities:

"This movie highlights a common conflict for people who proactively pursue a life. It would be nice if life construction was as simple as commonly heard advice like 'follow your dreams'. Unfortunately, some things we dream to do don’t wear well. They conflict with our natural inclinations."

Esther and I have been going back and forth on this one a bit in the comments section of my post about personal evolution. She and I both seem to agree that it would be good for everyone to have their values reflected in their current lifestyles and dreams for the future. But ask anyone a half-dozen questions about their lifestyle (how they spend their time), their values (what they think is important) and their dreams (what they'd like to be doing), and you'll see the conflicts and contradictions flying every which way. I guess it wouldn't be hard to make a list for ourselves -- three simple columns of words and concepts...and then see how well they're aligned.

Adbusters

I've been thinking about posting about Adbusters for a while, but couldn't really figure out how I wanted to connect it to this concept of lifestylism. In some ways, they symbolize the sort of lifestyle activism that may be required to help us wake up to the mismatch between our values and our lifestyles. They're at their best as corporate watchdogs, asking good questions about the true costs of doing business, waking people up to their consumerist tendencies, and taking on big media.

I think these are all important initiatives. If enough people internalized these ideas and made lifestyle choices that were guided by these principles, the world would be a better place. The idealism shines through in a quote like this:

"Our planet is drawing into a dark winter, as the runaway effects of our consumer lifestyle threaten to knock the earth out of whack for one thousand years. Species are dying, climate change accelerating, and we carry on regardless like addicts in denial.

But there is always hope. We need a new way of doing business that doesn't thrive on the death of nature, a new way of thinking that will redefine progress. We introduce the economists trying to shift the paradigm, and we explain the true cost revolution that will help reprogram the doomsday machine – and save the earth for future generations."

Heavy-duty rhetoric. They've been criticized for using the same tools as the marketers and corporate interests they're battling -- slick production, stylized design, powerful images -- to get their messages across. I don't really have a problem with that. They've also taken some heat for their Black Spot Sneaker venture, designed to subvert Nike and other shoe giants by selling a decent shoe produced in better conditions. So they've created a strong brand billed as an anti-brand.

Pat Kane pointed me to Rebel Sell, which digs into some of these issues:

"Culture jammers are not the first to try to break the system through consumer revolt. Countercultural rebels have been playing the same game for over forty years, and it obviously doesn't work."

Some very interesting ideas in the exerpt -- would probably be worth checking out the book. But where does this leave the person who wants their values reflected in what they purchase (or don't purchase) and how they spend their time? I look at the growth of organic foods, environmentally friendly cleaners, ethical mutual funds, farmers' markets, and other alternatives that are actually better for the world and I see hope. Even small choices can make a difference if enough people are making them, and the awareness this creates may lead people to take more action to align their lifestyles with their values.

Real Costs

I've labelled Robert Paterson a lifestylist. Not only has he crafted a great setup with his family on PEI, he's proven that the "lifestyle ratchet" doesn't only go up in cost and consuption. He left behind the banking world in Toronto, downshifting and unjobbing to take control of his time, and I'm sure his quality of life improved immeasurably. Today he wrote about The Real Costs of Going to Work, which cover the lifestyle costs of climbing the corporate ladder, but also the real financial costs to the individual and employer, which end up making the entire exercise look kind of ridiculous.

Selfless Self-Actualization?

Evelyn Rodriguez crafted an eloquent and critical response to my self-conscious self-analysis about the potential selfishness of self-actualization. It's inspiring and thoughtful and I encourage you to read the whole thing...but here's a quick quote:

"Self-actualization is ultimately not selfish, it's selfless. It's not about what you 'want', it's about becoming who you are and expressing that - not shrinking away from it. "Successful" people may or may not be self-actualized - they are not necessarily correlated. Self-actualization isn't about external success."

Engaging the Slackers

I had commented on one of Pat Kane's posts about slacking off in the workplace, and his response really connects with some of my recent thoughts about transitions for people who are not engaged in their work:

"Slacking is, at least, a temporary sanity-strategy in a pathological workplace. But ultimately, I agree, it's self-defeating - filling people up with cynicism rather than energy. I think slackers want to be players, unalienated and engaged - it's often that their will has been sapped, they're in a cycle of tiredness and defeatism."

Anyone who has worked in a company dealing with mergers or layoffs (often both), or just any really nasty corporate culture has seen or experienced the cycle he talks about. Exactly at the time when you most need the energy and willpower to make a change, you're exhausted and demoralized. It's terribly difficult to regain momentum to get engaged or get out. Pat's thinking that government policy could ease transitions for people seeking a better life:

"But, hell, I still have a dream of an enlightened government that could construct a 'social wellbeing system' that could help people strike out for engagement in their active lives, without them disappearing in a tangle of debts and disillusionment if the Free Agent dream goes sour. A ground of play, as I call it."

We're mostly in a mode right now where we're not expecting much help from governments (although the boomers are obviously riled up about health care funding), but that may change. Some simple policy changes could facilitate this without being too expensive. For example, why not give someone two or three months of employment insurance benefits even if they quit their job? With this lifestylism project, I'm more interested in how people help themselves through these transitions, and Pat makes a great observation:

"I've been talking to a lot of people over the last few days with the book, and I suppose I'm trying to be cognisant of just how trapped and dependent some people are on the their jobs - locked into consumption patterns that require a steady wage, maybe even a love of routine that insulates them from the world, etc."

The latter part is often based on pure fear -- fear of not getting a different job, losing the relationships they've built up at work, having to start at the bottom of a ladder somewhere else. But I'm most fascinated by one of the reasons he gives for people's dependence on their jobs -- the costs of their lifestyles demands it. So one obvious way for people to enable their transitions is certainly to dial down their expenses, which is never easy.

Living Large

I'm not sure why I keep responding in semi-inflammatory ways to innocuous quotes like this almost-inspiring thought for the day. The author was saying that we should be trying to live "big lives", as opposed to "small lives", which is fine, I guess, but it seemed to be implying that anything other than fame and fortune and taking big risks constitutes an inferior existence. I tended to agree with one of the other respondents:

"Finding fullness in each day is another way to address what I think Marcia is saying. The passionate nonsense that the ad-woman lays out can be real and true as far as it goes, but it has a ‘sound and fury’ ring to it... a me generation focus. There are six billion of us. Many of us will never live large, but each of us can make a happy life for ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities, simply by adding our loving expression to the mix."

This ties into a comment from a good friend the other day. We were talking about our various quasi-midlife crises and he said that he wants desparately to live a life of consequence. It's a powerful statement. At first I took it in the same way as the "live large" quote, but then he clarified it and I realized that he was talking more about being truly engaged in his actual life, not aspiring to some externally judged measure of greatness.

This talk of big and small lives also reminded me of a smart post I had read about creating a life that is a manageable size. He quotes an actress talking about her life:

"'I'm never going to be a star,' she says, 'but it's nice to be pushing 60 with more to do than I've ever had before. And my life is a manageable size. So if someone gets sick or someone gets happy or a baby is born, I can be there.'"

Moving Ideas

The Work and Income resources from Moving Ideas are extensive and thoughtful. Their report on low wage America doesn't paint a pretty picture of the future of work on our continent. You could read for a week in those two sections alone. Oh, to have the time...

80-Hour Workweeks Are Bunk

An extension of the discussion of Balance vs Big Bucks from Evelyn Rodriguez, who also wrote wisely about a book I'm reading on a truly innovative approach to work. She quotes the CEO, who sets the tone for his entire organization:

"Semler himself says, 'I've halved my work hours to about 30 a week, I spend 80% of my time doing what I want, rather than what people want me to do. I take piano lessons, play squash, do yoga every day. And I almost never feel guilty for lack of time for my little boy, wife, and friends.'

Granted, the guy is a gazillionaire with power, so it might not be as hard for him to be a lifestylist as for us average working schlepps. But if he's managed to free his employees from the charade of the usual corporate culture, then perhaps he's providing a model for everyone else to consider.

Update: Kevin Salwen also waded into the same balance discussion with some well-written wisdom:

"You get the point: Our lives are not so much a teeter-totter as a river of work, family, friends, community, faith, whatever. And the streams that feed the river at any one time can be strong or weak depending on where the influences are coming from. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. Just don't box me into the balance metaphor; it doesn't work."

Self-Actualization and Making a Difference

Curt left a fascinating response to my little post about Maslow's Wants, and I don't want it hidden away:

"I sometimes wonder if my work - helping people identify their passions and create careers that ignite them - is frivolous self-indulgence. It's 100% about self-actualization. Then I remind myself that part of what I'm doing is throwing pebbles in the pond. And the ripples from the self-actualization of the people I touch - what they actually go out and do, and the people they impact as a result - will inevitably make a difference. And some of those ripples will make a difference in areas that are much lower on Maslow's Hierarchy.

So to the extent that self-actualization is about making a difference (I tend to believe that it is, at least in part), what might seem like self-indulgence is actually planting the seeds for positive change."

This goes to the heart of one of my own reservations about the lifestylism concept -- the implied selfishness and even narcissism of focusing so much attention on what I (or you) want. But I also keep coming back to the concept of values, and I believe that what people really value also has the potential for positive impact in the world. The cynic in me sees everyone stepping on everyone else to get ahead...the optimist sees that when people are actually living in synch with their core values, they do good things and care about the needs of others.

As an extension of these ideas, Curt's musing about work that makes a difference has some great discussion about our purpose in life and how it relates to our work.

Personal Evolution or Collective Revolution?

Brian slips an eloquent challenge to lifestylism into his discussion of creativity in transforming education, asking (I'm paraphrasing) whether lifestylists will use their choices to live effectively within society's constructs or to show the way to better types of society:

"Will the presuppositions of lifestylism originate in authentic creativity, or status quo creativity? Much of the self-help speak is status-quo creativity in that the focus of the ideas are designed to find variations on living within the exisiting presuppositions of our society. An artistic perspective on lifestylism, however, would be something quite different in that it would seek creativity by questioning and challenging the presuppositions that establish social norms themselves."

I kicked off this project with the question: What is Lifestylism?...and the answer was that it has its roots in anarchist literature. The true anarchist (one who would destroy or subvert existing power structures) views lifestylism as vacant escapism that can have no lasting positive effect on the evils and imbalances of the world. As I said then, I don't really buy the criticism -- I prefer Brian's question.

At the core, I think lifestylism is about how individuals make lifestyle decisions that match their core values. So right from the start, we have to acknowledge that our values are formed within the existing presuppositions of society. That fact limits our creative capacity somewhat -- if our values are aligned with the status quo, and we're making decisions that match our values, revolution is improbable.

But it also seems to me that we're coming into a time when many people's values aren't particularly in synch with those existing structures and paradigms, or even well-aligned with their own lifestyle choices. For example, if you ask people what's really important to them, most will say that they want to spend more time with their loved ones...but when given the option, they'll almost always choose to work more for more money, which reveals their actual priorities. Not that engaging in our work or pursuing higher incomes is inherently bad, but it doesn't reflect what they say they want.

I think that if more people actually aligned their lifestyles with their values, we'd see more creative paths showing up. What if 50 million north americans suddenly realized that the American Dream wasn't their dream at all, and that they could figure out new ways to live, work, play and create with less negative impact on the environment? What if those ways let them spend more time doing what they want, and less time keeping up with the Joneses? What if their global awareness and local focus got them more engaged in determining their political direction and structures? What if they stopped watching TV and started spending more time working with likeminded folks on fixing some of the most pressing problems of modern society?

Seems like every good question deserves...more questions.