The Search for Meaning If you were to chart the objective indicators of social welfare since World War Two, you would see an across-the-board increase in such objective measures as per-capita income, “real” income, longevity, cars per driver, phone calls per capita, trips taken, highest degree earned, and even IQ scores. The graphs of subjective indicators like personal freedom, women’s freedom, and reduction of bias against minority groups would also show steady trends upward.
Obviously with more of everything, we should all be happier. Right? Unfortunately, as Gregg Easterbrook points out in his book The Progress Paradox, “The trend for happiness has been flat for 50 years. The trend line is negative for the number of people who consider themselves ‘very happy,’ with that percentage gradually declining since the 1940s. . . . Adjusting for population growth, 10 times as many people in the Western nations today suffer from unipolar depression, or unremitting bad feelings without a specific cause, than did a century ago. Americans and Europeans have ever more of everything ? except happiness.”
To make the situation clearer, Easterbrook points to the work of Edward Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, whose work has led him to five startling conclusions:
Lacking money causes unhappiness, but having money does not cause happiness.
As a group, the old are happier than the young; for most people, happiness increases with age.
Millionaires as a group are no happier than people of average income.
The disabled and chronically ill report a slightly higher sense of well-being than the population at large, perhaps because they have a heightened appreciation of the value of their own lives.
The psychological norm for the United States is positive, but only by a tiny bit. On a test of life satisfaction that Diener designed, the average score was “slightly satisfied.”
Diener’s research also shows that as incomes rise, so does the sense of well-being ? but only so far. Once the middle-class level is reached, money and happiness no longer appear to have anything to do with each other. It seems that the goals and milestones for satisfaction keep moving.
In the previous generation, owning a home, having a car, eating in a restaurant occasionally, and being able to take one vacation a year were regarded as signs of being successful. Now, many Americans want a large home, multiple cars, regular dinners out, and frequent vacations to exotic locations. Add to that the other by-products of affluence, like fine watches, luxury SUVs, and the ubiquity of “designer” everything, and soon people’s needs and wants grow and become intertwined.
Needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and education can be acquired with money, and once they are acquired they no longer become needs. Wants, on the other hand, can never be satisfied, no matter how many times those wants are temporarily fulfilled. Further, the more we have,
the more we want. And wanting more increases our unhappiness level, because this “wanting feeling” produces stress and anxiety.
Not surprisingly, then, the incidence of depression is nothing short of an epidemic. The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million people in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and the E.U. are clinically depressed. The cost of such depression in the U.S. alone is a staggering $50 billion in treatment expense and lost wages.
Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks there is a four-fold reason for the rise in depression:
The first reason is individualism. In the past, our emphasis was on family, faith, and community. And while those affiliations may sometimes have been stifling, at least personal shortcomings could be viewed as minor occurrences given the larger context in which everyone lived. Not so anymore. We live through our “egos.” And setbacks to our “egos” are uncushioned by a larger community.
Secondly, Seligman blames the popularization of self-esteem. Ironically, this emphasis on self-esteem has the effect of making millions question why they don’t feel good. This thinking has usurped the reassuring notion that “I may not feel good now, but I will feel better later.” And so many of us have replaced a minor mental setback with a larger, more pervasive one.
Thirdly, Seligman indicts the “postwar teaching of victimology and helplessness.” The we-are-all victims mentality prevents people from acknowledging control over their lives and destinies.
The fourth reason for the high incidence of depression, according to Seligman, is rampant consumerism and the urge to buy shortcuts to happiness. When these shortcuts fail, we are more frustrated than before we tried the short cut.
To understand why rampant consumerism doesn’t make us all happy, consider Abraham Maslow’s theory of a “hierarchy of needs.” Visualize a pyramid with five levels representing five categories of needs. All five levels of needs must be satisfied for people to be completely happy. And, according to Maslow, each level of need must be at least partially satisfied before you can expect to satisfy the next higher level.
The first or lowest level represents physiological needs, which are the basics of life, such as food, air, water, sleep, and so forth.
Second, there are safety needs, largely psychological in nature, and having to do with establishing stability and consistency in the face of an uncertain world.
Third, we have affiliation or affinity needs which represent the desire to belong to a group and the desire to feel loved and accepted by family, friends, and colleagues.
Fourth, we have esteem needs, which include the need for self-esteem ? that is, to feel competent and worthwhile ? and the need for respect, which can be defined as attention and recognition from others.
Fifth, there’s a need for self-actualization, or “the desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”
In an affluent society, the physical and safety needs can be readily satisfied with personal wealth. But it’s not hard to see that money doesn’t help much with the other three groups of needs. For example, affiliation needs don’t lend themselves to economic solutions. Consider that while a lack of “money worries” may reduce stress in a marriage, being rich doesn’t ensure maritalcontentment.
More dramatically, money won’t address your fundamental esteem needs. These can be temporarily satisfied by “conspicuous consumption,” but no matter how you adorn yourself with material extravagance, there will always be someone who is even better equipped to outfit himself with more. And, by definition, self-actualization is not about material riches at all. It can only be addressed through a deeper spiritual understanding. Those who turn to consumption to meet these higher level needs are simply fooling themselves and putting themselves on a hopeless treadmill.
One reason society is so ill-equipped for meeting people’s esteem and self-actualization needs through normal market mechanisms is that it’s only become a mass-market issue recently. As Peter Drucker has said, only in the past century and only in Western civilization and Japan have the majority of people been able to achieve any semblance of self-actualization. Prior to the 20th Century, only an elite few had the time and other resources to rise above the constant obligations of meeting their physical and safety needs.
Suddenly, in the space of two to three generations, we’ve gone from worrying about having enough to eat to having the time and other resources to ponder the set of assumptions and beliefs surrounding life’s most fundamental questions, such as “Who are we?” “Where did we come from?” and “Why are we here?”
With our physical and safety needs already met, people are amazed to find out that their affiliation, esteem, and self-actualization needs aren’t being met by having more “things,” or even by having more “experiences.” To meet these needs, people are turning en masse to the “search for meaning.”
This trend, striving to satisfy our yearning for meaning and purpose, is driving a revitalized interest in the sort of commitment that religions ask of us. In the United States, Christianity is being reenergized with the fastest growth among evangelical denominations that integrate Biblical principles into their daily lives. Why? Because religion is uniquely equipped to address our affiliation, esteem, and self-actualization needs.
When it comes to affiliation, churches provide safe opportunities to meet like-minded people and be part of a receptive and goal-oriented community.
When it comes to esteem, churches, and especially mega-churches, offer opportunities for everyone to get involved, contribute their talents, and be recognized for that contribution.
Most importantly, religion provides a consistent set of self-affirming answers to all of life’s fundamental questions. It provides meaning in a world that might otherwise seem meaningless. It provides everyone and anyone with a reason to live and a purpose in life.
As recently highlighted by Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington writing in the Wall Street Journal, “Today, overwhelming majorities of Americans affirm religious beliefs. When asked in 2003 simply whether they believed in God or not, 92 percent said yes. In a series of 2002 and 2003 polls, 57 percent to 65 percent of Americans said religion was very important in their lives, 23 percent to 27 percent said [it was] fairly important, and 12 percent to 18 percent said [it was] not very important. Large proportions of Americans also appear to be active in the practice of their religion. In 2002 and 2003, an average of 65 percent claimed membership in a church or synagogue. About 40 percent said they had attended church or synagogue in the previous seven days, and roughly 33 percent said they went to church at least once a week. In the same period, about 60 percent of Americans said they prayed one or more times a day, 20 percent said they prayed [less than daily but] once or more a week, about 10 percent [said they prayed] less than once a week, and 10 percent [said they] never [prayed].”
The behavioral aspects of this trend vary from generation to generation. To make reporting easier, we’ve lumped everyone 61 or older into a single generational group called “Veterans.” According to research into the values and habits of Americans conducted in 2000 and 2001 by the Barna Group, 35 percent of Xers, 42 percent of Boomers, and 49 percent of Veterans attend church on a given Sunday. In a given week, 76 percent of Xers, 84 percent of Boomers, and 86 percent of Veterans report praying. Forty-nine percent of Boomers are “born again,” that is they say they have “explicitly accepted Christ as their savior.” This compares to 40 percent of Veterans and 33 percent of Xers.
Many analysts are saying that historians will look back at the current period as another Great Awakening, a repeat of the Christian religious revivals in North America during the 1740s and the 1830s.
But the search for meaning is not just a boon to Christianity. Pantheistic, New Age philosophies based on Buddhist and Hindu teachings are attracting a growing number of adherents and achieving huge percentage gains from a smaller base. This is evidenced by the rapid growth in the number of people involved in yoga, bio-feedback and other eastern spiritual disciplines.
The rebirth of religious fervor among affluent Westerners seeking meaning and purpose in their lives has been a catalyst for charitable work mingled with proselytizing aimed at the developing world. Christianity, Hinduism and Islam funded by American non-profits, Indian ex-patriots, and the Saudi government respectively are making inroads globally. Islam is experiencing rapid growth due to high birth rates augmented by conversions. Christianity is keeping pace because of a higher conversion rate coupled with strong birth rates among Latin American and African Christians.
A growing number of Americans are claiming to be Muslims, due primarily to immigration. However, only about 12 percent of U. S. Muslims regularly worship at a mosque. This calls into question whether Islam is going to be able to make serious inroads into affluent Western nations aside from immigration and limited conversion limited to the underclass.
Where is this search for spiritual meaning headed? And what are its commercial implications? We offer four forecasts for your consideration:
First, the marketplace for religious merchandise will continue to expand. Americans will buy $1 billion of Christian-themed merchandise this year ? and that’s just from Wal-Mart. In fact, given Wal-Mart’s energetic presence in this area, the company’s sales alone could expand the $4.2 billion market for Christian items by 30 percent, according to C. Britt Beemer, founder of American’s Research Group, a marketing consultancy.
Second, religious media of all types will grow in popularity. The Christian Booksellers Association has more than 2,400 member stores in the U.S. The association estimates that Christian products sold by its member suppliers rose by about $200 million, to nearly $4.2billion from 2000 to 2002. Since 1980, sales have more than quadrupled. Similarly, after pulling in nearly $400 million in its theatrical release, with more to come from the DVD, The Passion of the Christ has paved the way for more big-budget Christian films coming soon.
Third, spiritual alternatives to secular products aimed at younger consumers will carve out a niche market. For example, some software developers are offering “Christian computer games” to offset the onslaught of virtual violence and sex prevalent in popular computer games aimed at adolescents. Today the Christian game market with sales of $100 million represents only a small fraction of the total game market, but we expect its share to grow.
Fourth, religion will play an increasingly important role in American politics. In prior issues, we’ve discussed the impact of the “God gap”: the perceived difference between the two political parties in terms of the role they see for religion in America. Recent statements by the Vatican and several American Cardinals regarding “communion and abortion” are acting to draw a line-in-the-sand, which Catholic politicians will cross at their peril. Similarly, challenges to the words “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the legalization of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts have combined to galvanize many of those who define themselves as Christians, as well as their opponents. Furthermore, the war on terrorism has made Americans increasingly aware of the geopolitical relevance of religious values and traditions, including helping us reexamine what our values really are. The intersection of these factors is leading up to a “watershed election” in which religion will play a larger role than at anytime in the past century. And, we expect this election to set the stage for a new era of diminished antipathy between church and state commencing in 2005.
References List :
1. The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Gregg Easterbrook is published by Random House, Inc. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by Gregg Easterbrook. All rights reserved.2. To access the report "Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs," visit George Norwood’s website at:www.deepermind.com/20maslow.htm3. Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2004, "Under God," by Samuel P. Huntington. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by Dow Jones and Company. All rights reserved.
