British trend forecaster James Wallman has coined a new word:
“Stuffocation.” (Think “stuff” and “suffocation.”) Wallman claims it’s
one of the most crushing afflictions of modern society. Not only does
the materialism it’s caused by have a
The
first step toward recovery is recognizing that more stuff doesn’t equal
more happiness — something Wallman says is already happening. The
second is finding something more meaningful to replace material items.
That something, he argues, is experience: doing things instead of buying
things. It’s an idea that, slowly but surely, he sees moving from the
fringes of society to the mainstream.
If stuffocation is the key affliction of our time, in other words, then experientialism is going to be the key solution. In “
,”
his recently released book, Wallman chases down the people who are
shifting away from acquiring and toward doing; speaking with Salon, he
makes a convincing case for the rest of us to follow in their footsteps.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
The important thing about being a good cultural
analyst and a good trend forecaster comes from applying the methodology
sensibly and intelligently. And I say that because the way that I
forecast the future is inspired by something a futurist named William
Gibson once said: “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly
distributed.” So my role is to see the future here in the present and
to identify the innovative ways of doing things that are happening now
that I believe are going to catch on and move into the mainstream.
Some
people have said, “What’s new about the problem with materialism?
Everybody knows this. What’s new about saying that experience is better
than material things? Lots of people say they know that already.” But I
don’t think anyone else has quite said it. I don’t think anyone has
identified this as being the defining problem. And stuffocation, for me,
in some ways feels like a bag and I’ve put into it all the different
aspects that explain this problem.
What’s new is the way I’ve
bagged up these problems together. So some people say, just hold on a
second, it just sounds like “affluenza” or “status anxiety” 2.0. “
Status Anxiety,”
by Alain de Botton, is also a great book, but it says that we’re
feeling anxious because of today’s society. Affluenza says the ways we
live our lives, all this affluence, is causing us to be depressed. But
if you look at stuffocation and all of the problems involved with it,
it’s not just about the stress that comes with modern life. It’s
about all the problems that come with modern life, which could also
include the impact we’re having on the environment, for example. So what
I’ve done is, I’ve taken these other things that other people have
identified and I’ve synthesized those into a whole, which is the problem
of stuffocation.
My use of the term “experientialism” is much
more cultural than it’s been used in the past. It’s a value system that
underpins what we’re doing, but no one has identified it as the better
way for us to live, as the way to solve the problems of stuffocation. No
one’s stated that as a manifesto and no one has made that forecast that
we are moving from a value system of materialism to a value system of
experientialism. No one’s said that that’s going to be the key defining,
cultural trend of the 21st century.
And you’re saying that it will be the defining trend?
Yes,
I believe it will be. It’s important to note that this is for developed
Western, successful countries and those who have moved from the problem
of scarcity to the problem of abundance. The defining problem of the
20th century in many ways has been the defining problem of human
existence: scarcity. The magic of the Industrial Revolution met the
geniuses who created the consumer revolution, particularly the mad men
and women of the ’20s who created a consumer revolution. And it worked
first in the United States.
The “American paradox,” as Christine
Frederick called it, is that it worked so well in the States that
everyone else, the Brits, the French, etc., said, “Hold on, their
standards of living are going up in this incredible way and we want ours
to do that too.” So those of us who were lucky enough not to get
bamboozled by communism followed suit as quickly as we could after the
Second World War. And then the magic of that idea meant that all the
others followed too: the Brazilians, the Indians; they all want some of
this too. So that was the big idea of the 20th century, and I think —
for all the reasons of stuffocation — that doesn’t work anymore.
I
think people are pretty familiar with the narrative of how materialism
became this key way of living. But when did the shift away from that and
toward experientialism begin?
The thing about seismic
cultural change is it doesn’t really work so well for news pegs. There’s
very rarely a kind of moment when you say, “right, that’s it.”
Especially at this point it’s very hard to identify the turning point.
You know, if you look at the Industrial Revolution, that took 150 years
to happen. So for people living every day it was evolution, not
revolution. But looking back we can say it was revolution. I think what
we’re going through to later historians might look like revolution, but
for those of us living every day it will feel much more like evolution.
And
so in terms of picked moments, it’s really hard to put your finger on
it. To give you one example, in 1970, 80 percent of people were
materialistic, now it’s 50 percent. And that’s been a gradual shift. In
2011, the experiential luxury section was bigger than any of the other
sectors for the first time. There’s this guy named Chris Goodall — he’s
an ex-McKinsey consultant, he’s a Cambridge University grad, and he
taught economics at Harvard briefly — he thinks that we’ve reached the
point or we’re passing the point of “peak stuff.”
Goodall’s
research began in 2003, and that’s when he’s kind of set his point. He
found that our behavior has been changing: We’re now consuming less
cars, concrete, paper, steel, fertilizer — a lot of key parts of our
economy. We now are what’s called “dematerializing.” So, I would say,
the first decade of this century is probably a reasonable time to peg
that.
You write a lot about these extreme case studies
where, for example, people are selling all their possessions. I think
also of things like micro-apartments — this sort of thing feels like a
fringe movement. If this is something that’s going to become mainstream,
how do you see it taking hold in larger society?
The
book almost followed the journey of me identifying this problem and then
going looking for the answer. So it’s a very whittled down list — I
came across a far larger number of ideas, but I just wanted the ones
that I thought were most relevant. The message of “Stuffocation” at the
end of the day is not anti-consumerism or anti-capitalism. It’s not
anti-stuff, it’s not about getting rid of all of our stuff. I don’t
believe we’re going to do that.
The people who are minimalists,
who are taking this to the extremes, are reacting. There’s no doubt
about it, there are some small number of millions in the States who are
doing it and it’s spread around the world. For me, I don’t think we’ll
be getting rid of all of our stuff, but what makes me think that this is
mainstream is the way it resonates. The response I’ve had from
journalists, and from readers, is that even when people don’t agree with
everything I talk about, the idea of stuffocation resonates with them:
“Oh yeah, I know what you mean, we’ve got too much stuff.”
If you
think about the study by UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families in
Los Angeles, the most comprehensive report on contemporary living ever
created, they reached the conclusion that we’re living in the most
materially rich society in global history. We have light-years’ more
possessions than any preceding society. We’re facing material
saturation. We are coping with extraordinary clutter and we’re in a
clutter crisis. And just to be really clear, those aren’t my terms.
Those are the terms of ethnographers and anthropologists whose job it is
to be objective. They were beating drums to tell people what they
should do. And I think that because we have so many positions, because
things have become ubiquitous and cheap and it’s so easy just to buy
things nowadays, because we’ve been trained to become that way, that
when you tell people, “Yeah, I’ve got too many of this, I’ve got too
many pairs of shoes, I’ve got too many books on my shelf that I’ve never
read. I’ve got loads of stuff that I just don’t use that just fills up
my home” — it just resonates for people.
So there are a
lot of things playing into this attitude, and you point out that concern
for the environment could be one of them. Do you think that plays a
prominent role in people moving away from materialism, or is it more of a
secondary outcome?
It’s funny, because when I talk about
stuffocation, I very rarely mention the environmental aspect. And it
has a very small mention in the book. That’s partly because I feel it’s
so obvious. But also, not only is it obvious, I think it’s one of those
drivers of stuffocation — one of those things that fits into the bag of
stuffocation — is that it’s all well and good for some people to be
concerned about the environment, but there are a lot of people who a)
aren’t bothered about the environment, and b) even if they are bothered
about the environment they aren’t bothered enough to do something about
it and stop consuming stuff.
So firstly, like I said, this isn’t a
trend for 2014 that’s going to be gone by 2015. This is not something
that means that Cyber Monday and all those sale shopping days aren’t
going to happen. People aren’t going to stop going to the store. It’s
not going to happen overnight. Because all of the reasons for
stuffocation aren’t short-term blips. They are observable, long-term
trends. I think as we see climate change continue to happen, there seems
pretty clear evidence that things are changing. As we see that start to
affect more and more people in terms of weather patterns changing,
there will be increasing concern about the environment and that will
affect us.
But at the same time, even if you have no interest in
the environment, all of the other things that are causing stuffocation —
status anxiety, affluenza, the clutter crisis, the stable society that
we live in today — all of these things will push us to shift from
materialism to experientialism. You don’t need to believe in
environmentalism to agree with the other aspects of stuffocation and the
other reasons why we’re shifting from materialism to experientialism.
What are some of those other reasons?
One
of them is the knowledge that we get more happiness from experiences
than we get from material goods. And that is very new knowledge. That
was discovered in a paper in 2003 by two psychologists called Thomas
Gilovich and Leaf Van Boven. The paper, wonderful name, was called: “To
Do or To Have, That Is the Question.” For me, that was a watershed
moment because before that time, you couldn’t say for sure whether an
experience or a material good was better. Someone could say, “Look, if
you think experience is better than material goods, you’re buying the
wrong stuff.”
It sounds like more of a philosophical debate.
Yeah,
exactly. There was no answer. But these guys proved, in a social
science way, that experiences are better than material goods. It didn’t
really get a lot of publicity until about 2009, but the thing is, once
we have that knowledge — and there are other works and books coming out
about this — once you know that, if you continue to put your focus on
material goods rather than experiential you’re making the choice not to
be happier.
Let’s go back to the idea of knowing that jogging is
good for us, for example, which I think was discovered in the 1950s or
1960s, or that cigarettes were bad for us, or that eating blueberries is
good for us, or eating broccoli is good for us — the thing is, it’s
quite rare that once we discover that we start changing. It wasn’t when
it was discovered that there was a correlation between smoking and
disease that you suddenly saw people jogging more. It took a number of
decades for it to really change. But it has changed our behavior. It has
changed our culture over a number of decades. And by the same token,
the knowledge that experience is better than material goods at making us
happy, giving us identity, giving us status, giving us meaning in our
lives, is going to change the way people make decisions.
I’d
love to talk about the different facets of experientialism. As you say,
it’s something that can require spending a lot of money. What are some
of the ways you see this as an improvement over materialism?
I’m
really glad you brought that up, because a lot of people sometimes have
a bit of an issue with the way that I talk about experientialism as
going skiing in Tahoe or Park City or going to Morocco on vacation or
wherever. And the fact that the shift from materialism to
experientialism is not anti-capitalist, not anti-consumer. It’s not
about spending less money. Because a really important part of our system
is that we need people to keep spending money to give people jobs, to
create the great standards of living that we have. If we want to have
more, we have to spend more — it’s a very simple correlation in terms of
our economy. I’m not trying to bring down the economy at all.
But
at the same time, the magic of the experientialist viewpoint is you
don’t need to go to Peru on a holiday. You don’t need to go to Marrakech
for a vacation. You don’t need to spend a whole bunch of money to have a
great time and experience. If you look at the statistics, living near a
park makes you happier. Going for a walk with friends. Being in nature.
Just doing things is good for you in terms of making you happy.
So it depends on what you define as significant experiences.
Well,
it depends on you. It depends on your choice. Some people like to go
skiing. Some people like to go for a walk. Some people like to rock
climb. Some people like to ramble in the hills. There’s a very
interesting piece of research that I came across recently that says
really gung-ho, seat of your pants, exciting experiences really work
well for young people whereas for older people, what they should look to
do is the simple experiences. Going for a walk with a friend, having
dinner with a friend, whatever it might be. I think you’re trying to
make a statement about who you are. And what’s interesting, I think
today, is that instead of making a statement about who we are in terms
of our material goods, we’re much more focused on making a statement on
who we are through experiences instead. So if you think of the rise of
Tough Mudder, there’s a great example.
And one of the interesting
things about that discovery in 2003 is since then there has been lots of
research into why experientialism is better than material goods at
making us happy.
You beat me to the question.
So there are
five key reasons why experiences are better than material goods at
making us happy. The first thing is something that social scientists
call “hedonic adaptation.” And that’s simply a way of saying that with
material goods you get bored of things quickly, whereas with experiences
you don’t. The great example is the mobile phone. When you first get it
you press the buttons, you play with it, you tell your friends about
it, you’re excited. A week later, not so excited. A month later, ehh.
Three months later it’s part of the furniture. You just get used to the
thing being around.
The second thing is “positive
reinterpretation.” That’s basically, if you buy a bad material good,
let’s say a pair of shoes that actually don’t fit that well or a pair
that squeak or that coat that swishes or makes a weird noise when you’re
walking, there’s nothing you can do about that. It’s just a bad
decision. That’s it. But with an experience, if it goes wrong, it
doesn’t really go wrong at all.
Think about being on a long bus
ride, and you’ve sat next to a person who’s sick – literally sick – all
over you. And there are chickens on the bus, the windows won’t open or
shut, you bang your head, the seat is really uncomfortable, and you
break your coccyx and you’re just in agonizing pain, it’s supposed to be
a one-hour journey and it takes three days. At the time, that’s a
really horrible thing to be going through. But the more you tell it, the
better it is, right? There’s that magic. The magic of a bad experience
is that it’s almost like there’s no such thing as a bad experience.
That’s probably my favorite reason.
The third reason why
experiences are better than material goods – and this actually
references the status anxiety – is that experiences are much harder to
compare than material goods. And that means that we don’t get the same
kind of tension that comes with comparing things. You know, if you’ve
ever bought a handbag, and your colleague turns up the next day with the
better one – let’s say you got the one from Top Shop, and it’s a great
bag, but your colleague got the Gucci one, and there’s no doubt about
it, it’s a better bag. Or I have a Nissan, it’s a very plain, average
car, and one of my neighbors has a Porsche, another one has an Audi. And
there’s no doubt about it that they have nicer cars than me.
But
let’s say, for the sake of argument, that for a holiday your neighbor
goes to the Four Seasons in Hawaii, or the Maldives, or one of those
amazing islands off Brazil and stays in a five-star resort, and drinks
champagne from the refrigerators, which are on the beach. And you go to
Wales for a rainy camping holiday. Or you drink warm beer on the beach,
or whatever it might be. Now there’s no doubt about it that they had a
swankier holiday than you. But did they have a better holiday? Is
chilled champagne on the beach better than warm beer? People often smile
at me when I say this, and say of course they did.
But actually,
you might be really wealthy and having what looks like an amazing time,
but you might not be happy and having fun. It’s much more about the
people you’re with and what you’re doing. But anyway, from that basis,
it’s much harder to compare experiences than it is material goods.
You
could argue, though, that people going on social media and posting
photos of their vacations is breeding a lot of envy, couldn’t you?
Definitely.
The FOMO [fear of missing out] idea is, I think, the 21st-century
version of “keeping up with the Joneses.” It’s been fascinating talking
to people – particularly in the salons I’ve been hosting recently –they
have a real problem with status and with the idea that people are
posting pictures of where they are, and that’s destroying the
experience. There’s no doubt about it: If you spend more time worrying
about what you’re going to be posting or tweeting or putting on Facebook
that you’re not going to have as good a time. There was great research
lately that showed that if you Instagram shots of your food, you enjoy
your food less. I think we can all relate to the idea that if you’re
focusing on what other people think about your time, you’re not going to
have as good of a time.
So there are some issues with replacing
material things with experiences as a kind of better way. But I think
people get too obsessed with the idea that taking a picture of something
is about status. I’ve taken pictures of me and my brother and father on
a ski slope in Chambery, or a wonderful picture of a cloud that was
over Mont Blanc, for example, and I didn’t take that picture to show off
to people I was there. I mean, possibly slightly, but I took it as a
memory that I was there, and to share it with, for example, my niece
who’s on Instagram and wants to see a picture of her family skiing
together. It’s not just about status. It’s just about sharing what we
do.
So back to those last two reasons …
Yes.
So No. 4 is about identity. If you think about the things that you have
versus the things that you’ve done, the things you have contribute far
less to your identity. Wedding gifts are a great example, as compared to
actually having had a wedding. Or if you just had to choose between
giving back $1,000 worth of clothes and things that you have, versus
giving back $1,000 worth of a weekend away with friends, most people
would give back the stuff. Have you seen the movie “Eternal Sunshine of
the Spotless Mind”? Experiences really matter — things that happen to
us, that we have done, really contribute to our identity.
If
you’ve climbed the hill, if you’ve done the Tough Mudder course, if
you’ve learned to surf, if you’ve learned how to make bread or cupcakes,
or you’ve run the New York Marathon, or you’ve gone ice skating in
Central Park — that contributes to who you are. Whereas having a
material good doesn’t contribute in the same way nearly as much.
The
final point — and this one is really key — is that experiences tend to
bring us closer to people. Because we’re social animals, being closer to
people tends to make us happier. So if you’re buying something, it
tends to separate you from other people (it doesn’t always, obviously
there’s a mix here), whereas doing something tends to bring you closer.
There
are two pieces of research I love. One shows that talking about
experiential goods makes you happier than talking about material goods.
The other shows that we prefer to listen to people who talk about
experiences rather than materials. So if you know that piece of
information, and if you have a choice of having $100 or $1,000 to spend
on a material good or an experiential good, you’ll know that with the
experience, you’ll enjoy doing it more, you’ll enjoy talking about it
more, and people will be more inclined to listen to you. So in every
single way, it will bring you closer to other people and it will make
you happier.
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