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Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed 发布时间：2013-01-28 文章出自： 原文链接：点击查看
Well I’m in the working world again. I’ve found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it’s returning to normal after my nine months of traveling. Because I had been living quite a different lifestyle while I was away, this sudden transition to 9-to-5 existence has exposed something about it that I overlooked before. Since the moment I was offered the job, I’ve been markedly more careless with my money. Not stupid, just a little quick to pull out my wallet. As a small example, I’m buying expensive coffees again, even though they aren’t nearly as good as New Zealand’s exceptional flat whites, and I don’t get to savor the experience of drinking them on a sunny café patio. When I was away these purchases were less off-handed, and I enjoyed them more. I’m not talking about big, extravagant purchases. I’m talking about small-scale, casual, promiscuous spending on stuff that doesn’t really add a whole lot to my life. And I won’t actually get paid for another two weeks. In hindsight I think I’ve always done this when I’ve been well-employed — spending happily during the “flush times.” Having spent nine months living a no-income backpacking lifestyle, I can’t help but be a little more aware of this phenomenon as it happens. I suppose I do it because I feel I’ve regained a certain stature, now that I am again an amply-paid professional, which seems to entitle me to a certain level of wastefulness. There is a curious feeling of power you get when you drop a couple of twenties without a trace of critical thinking. It feels good to exercise that power of the dollar when you know it will “grow back” pretty quickly anyway. What I’m doing isn’t unusual at all. Everyone else seems to do this. In fact, I think I’ve only returned to the normal consumer mentality after having spent some time away from it. One of the most surprising discoveries I made during my trip was that I spent much less per month traveling foreign counties (including countries more expensive than Canada) than I did as a regular working joe back home. I had much more free time, I was visiting some of the most beautiful places in the world, I was meeting new people left and right, I was calm and peaceful and otherwise having an unforgettable time, and somehow it cost me much less than my humble 9-5 lifestyle here in one of Canada’s least expensive cities. It seems I got much more for my dollar when I was traveling. Why? A Culture of Unnecessaries Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business. Companies in all kinds of industries have a huge stake in the public’s penchant to be careless with their money. They will seek to encourage the public’s habit of casual or non-essential spending whenever they can. In the documentary The Corporation, a marketing psychologist discussed one of the methods she used to increase sales. Her staff carried out a study on what effect the nagging of children had on their parents’ likelihood of buying a toy for them. They found out that 20% to 40% of the purchases of their toys would not have occurred if the child didn’t nag its parents. One in four visits to theme parks would not have taken place. They used these studies to market their products directly to children, encouraging them to nag their parents to buy. This marketing campaign alone represents many millions of dollars that were spent because of demand that was completely manufactured. “You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying, your products. It’s a game.” ~ Lucy Hughes, co-creator of “The Nag Factor” This is only one small example of something that has been going on for a very long time. Big companies didn’t make their millions by earnestly promoting the virtues of their products, they made it by creating a culture of hundreds of millions of people that buy way more than they need and try to chase away dissatisfaction with money. We buy stuff to cheer ourselves up, to keep up with the Joneses, to fulfill our childhood vision of what our adulthood would be like, to broadcast our status to the world, and for a lot of other psychological reasons that have very little to do with how useful the product really is. How much stuff is in your basement or garage that you haven’t used in the past year? The real reason for the forty-hour workweek The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce. I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing. The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time. Suddenly I have a lot more money and a lot less time, which means I have a lot more in common with the typical working North American than I did a few months ago. While I was abroad I wouldn’t have thought twice about spending the day wandering through a national park or reading my book on the beach for a few hours. Now that kind of stuff feels like it’s out of the question. Doing either one would take most of one of my precious weekend days! The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is exercise. It’s also the last thing I want to do after dinner or before bed or as soon as I wake, and that’s really all the time I have on a weekday. This seems like a problem with a simple answer: work less so I’d have more free time. I’ve already proven to myself that I can live a fulfilling lifestyle with less than I make right now. Unfortunately, this is close to impossible in my industry, and most others. You work 40-plus hours or you work zero. My clients and contractors are all firmly entrenched in the standard-workday culture, so it isn’t practical to ask them not to ask anything of me after 1 p.m., even if I could convince my employer not to. The eight-hour workday developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14- or 16-hour workdays. As technologies and methods advanced, workers in all industries became able to produce much more value in a shorter amount of time. You’d think this would lead to shorter workdays. But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work. We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing. Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. We spend to cheer ourselves up, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to fix problems, to elevate our status, and to alleviate boredom. Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives? The economy would collapse and never recover. All of America’s well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy. For the economy to be “healthy, ” America has to remain unhealthy. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials. The culture of the eight-hour workday is big business’ most powerful tool for keeping people in this same dissatisfied state where the answer to every problem is to buy something. You may have heard of Parkinson’s Law. It is often used in reference to time usage: the more time you’ve been given to do something, the more time it will take you to do it. It’s amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes if twenty minutes is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way longer. Most of us treat our money this way. The more we make, the more we spend. It’s not that we suddenly need to buy more just because we make more, only that we can, so we do. In fact, it’s quite difficult for us to avoid increasing our standard of living (or at least our rate of spending) every time we get a raise. I don’t think it’s necessary to shun the whole ugly system and go live in the woods, pretending to be a deaf-mute, as Holden Caulfield often fantasized. But we could certainly do well to understand what big commerce really wants us to be. They’ve been working for decades to create millions of ideal consumers, and they have succeeded. Unless you’re a real anomaly, your lifestyle has already been designed. The perfect customer is dissatisfied but hopeful, uninterested in serious personal development, highly habituated to the television, working full-time, earning a fair amount, indulging during their free time, and somehow just getting by. Is this you? Two weeks ago I would have said hell no, that’s not me, but if all my weeks were like this one has been, that might be wishful thinking. 你的生活方式早已被设计好 发布时间：2013-01-28 文章出自：译言 原文链接：点击查看 好了，我又回到了职业世界。我给自己在工程这一行找了个高薪职位，生活终于要在九个月的旅行之后回到正轨。 我在旅行的时候，生活很不一样，因此这种忽然投入朝九晚五的转变让我们发现了一些从前被忽视的东西。 自从我得到这份工作开始，我变得更大手大脚了。并不是不经大脑，只是掏腰包掏得有点儿快。举个小小的例子吧，我又开始买贵价咖啡了，即使它们完全比不上新西兰的平白咖啡，而且我一点都不享受在一个阳光灿烂的咖啡店露台喝它们。当我在旅行的时候，我会三思而后“买”，而且我更享受。 我并不是在说大宗的、奢侈的购物。我是在说那些少量的、随意的、杂七杂八的花销，它们并没有给我的生活增色不少。而且，我还得等两个星期才能领工资。 回头看看，我觉得我一找到好工作就是这德性——在“繁荣时期”大花特花。在经历了九个月零收入背包旅行之后，我禁不住对这种现象的回归更警惕。 我认为我这样做是因为我觉得我重新获得了某种高度，我现在又是一名收入丰厚的专业人士了，因此某种程度上的浪费也是应分的。随手扔下几张20块钱而不必认真思考，让你有著一种微妙的，关于自己的权力的感觉。当你知道钱无论如何会很快地“涨回来”的时候，行使金钱权力的感觉很棒。 我的行为并非特例。大家似乎都这样。事实上，我觉得我只是在离开一段时间以后，回到了普遍的消费者心理。 我旅途上最惊奇的发现之一是，我在外国（包括生活成本比加拿大昂贵的国家）旅行每月的花费比我在本国工作时要少得多。我有更多自由的时间，我到世界上最漂亮的地方参观游玩，我到处遇见新朋友，我要麽镇静平和，要麽就是在享受难忘的好时光，但它花得就是比我在加拿大最便宜的一个城市朝九晚五兢兢业业要少。 我的钱在旅行时更值钱了。为什麽？ 多花冤枉钱的文化 在西方，在非必需品上花费的生活方式已由各行各业的龙头企业在普罗大众中精心培育起来，这些企业在公众不经心的消费中获取巨大的利益。他们就继续努力，尽其所能地鼓励大众发展随意和非必需消费的习惯。 在纪录片《解构企业》（The Corporation）中，一个市场营销心理学家谈到了她用来增加销售的一种方法。她的员工进行了一次调研，瞭解小孩子的纠缠对于父母为他们买一个玩具的可能性的影响。他们发现，如果小孩子不缠的话，20%到40%的购买根本不会发生。四分之一的主题公园之旅不会成行。他们利用这些调研直接对准小孩子展开营销，鼓励他们缠著父母，要求买东西。 这一个营销计划就事关数百万美元的消费，而需求是完全人为操控的。 “你可以操纵顾客，使他们想要一样东西，然后要买你的产品。这是个游戏。”路西休斯（Lucy Hughes），“纠缠因素”的创造者之一。 这只是一个长期事件的一个小小例子。大公司不是通过勤奋地推广产品的好处而赚到大钱的，他们是通过创造一种文化，让数百万人买远超他们所需的东西以及用钱来解决烦恼。 我们买东西来哄自己开心，来保持与邻人平等，来满足我们儿时关于“长大之后会怎样”的想像，来向全世界宣告我们的地委，还有其他很多心理原因，而与产品事实上有多有用无甚关系。你的地下室或车库里有多少东西是去年完全没有用过的？ 每周工作四十小时的真正原因 大企业保持这种文化最终极的武器是让每周工作40小时变成生活常态。在这种工作条件下，人们必须有夜生活和过周末。这种安排让我们自然而然地在娱乐和便利上花费更多，因为我们的空閒时间太少。 我重返工作不过数天，但已经发现有许多东西正在迅速地从我的生活中消失：散步、锻炼、阅读、冥想和写作。 这些活动一个明显的共同点是，它们不怎麽花钱，但花时间。 忽然之间，我有很多钱，但只有很少时间，这意味著与几个月前相比，我跟典型的北美工薪阶层有了更多的共同点。在外国的时候，我眼都不眨就会在一个国家公园游荡一整天，或者在海滩读几个小时的书。现在这些东西看起来都不可能了。其中一样就能花掉我珍贵的周末！ 下班回家之后，我最不想锻炼。吃完饭后不想，睡前也不想，睡醒也不想，这些就是我在周中可以有的全部时间了。 问题的答案似乎很简单：少工作一点就能有更多空閒时间。我已经向自己证明，即使赚得比现在少，我也可以活得很有意思。不幸的是，这在我们这一行几乎不可能，在其他大多数行业也不可能。你要麽就工作40多个小时，要麽就什麽都不做。我的客户和承包商的标准工作日概念根深蒂固，所以让他们在下午一点之后别跟我要任何东西是不现实的，即使我能让我的老闆这样做。 八小时工作日是在十九世纪英国工业革命中发展起来的，解救被剥削的每天工作14或16个小时的工人。 随著科技和技术的进步，所有行业的工人都能在更短的时间生产更高的价值。你可能以为这会让我们的工作日变短。 可是八小时工作日对于大企业来说太有利可图了，这并不是因为人们在八小时中可以完成的工作（办公室职员在八小时中平均完成少于三小时的工作量），而是因为它能创造“买高兴”的大众。保持空閒时间的稀缺意味著人们会为便利、喜悦和任何其他的舒缓付上更高的价钱。这让他们一直看电视，看广告，在工作以外毫无动力。 我们被引入一种故意让我们疲倦、渴望放纵、愿意为便利和娱乐付大价钱、更重要的是对我们自己的生活模模糊糊地不满的状态之中，这样我们就会继续想要那些我们没有的东西。我们大买特买，因为老觉得缺了点什麽。 西方经济，尤其是美国经济，已经为快乐、癖好和非必需消费建立起了计算方式。我们花钱来为自己打气，来奖赏自己，来庆祝，来解决问题，来提升自己的地委，来去除无聊。 你可以想像，如果所有美国人停止购买那些并不能为我们生活增加价值的非必需品，会发生什麽事吗？ 经济会万劫不复 所有那些广为人知的美国问题，包括肥胖、抑郁、污染和贪污，是创造和维持万亿美元计的经济的成本。为了经济“健康”，美国要保持不健康。健康幸福的人不觉得他们需要那些他们还没有的东西，这意味著他们不会买垃圾，不需要常常被娱乐，而不会老在看广告。 八小时工作日的文化是大企业最有力的工具，将人们保留在不满的状态中，而解决所有问题的答案就是，买东西。 你可能已经听说过帕金森定律。它常被用于时间运用：你在某件事上花的时间越多，它就会花你更多的时间。如果你只有20分钟，你就会发现20分钟够你做很多事。可能如果你有整个下午，你可能就得做更久。 我们中的许多人也是这样对待自己的钱的。赚得越多，花得越多。并不是因为我们能赚钱就忽然需要买更多东西，而是我们能买，所以买。事实上，要在升职加薪的同时不提高自己的生活标准（或至少我们的消费率）是挺难的。 我觉得没有必要迴避整个丑陋的制度，然后到丛林中生活，装聋作哑，就像霍尔顿考尔菲德（Holden Caulfield）常常幻想的那样。可是我们的确能更好地瞭解大商业其实想我们变成什麽人。他们几十年来一直在制造数百万理想消费者，而他们也成功了。除非你是一个真正的异类，否则，你的生活方式早已被设计好。 理想消费者是不满而有希望，对于严肃的个人发展不感兴趣，高度依赖电视，全职工作，赚得不少，在空閒时间放纵自己，或者浑浑噩噩额。 这是你吗？ 两个星期前我会说，当然不是我，如果我所有的星期都像现在这个一样，那我就休想不是了。 |
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