Originally Posted by Midas

A little while back JAMC asked whether anyone had read and got any views on the book “Affluenza” by Oliver James, in relation to the various social ills which affect our modern day society – I can’t find the actual post for some reason, the forum search engine isn’t co-operating. Having now read the said book, my thoughts, however I’ve no doubt that several forum members reading this will be thinking “what the ....”, so to start with I’ll give a quick summary of the book:-

Observing that there is an inverse correlation between the psychological health of a population and the magnitude of the gulf between its highest and lowest paid, television psychologist Oliver James contends that many people living in the western world have been infected by the ‘Affluenza virus’. This virus is a set of values that leaves us at increased risk of emotional distress and entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.

To prove his point, James sets out on a quest across industrialized nations, whereupon he is disgusted by the unrestricted greed of a New York banker, and then bats away tears engendered by the purity of the Nigerian taxi driver who drives him home. After America he seeks out equally polarized people in Russia, Singapore and Australia. Global infection proven, James then seeks to construct us ‘vaccines’ against our temptations and finally demands our genuflection as he bestows on us a ‘blunt unsparing statement of what needs to change’.

Where to start! The fundamental concept underlying the book is good, there is undoubtedly a correlation between materialism, or perhaps it might be more correct to say ‘greedy materialism’, and the happiness or otherwise of people. However I’m afraid I was not impressed with either the style of writing of the book nor, and more importantly, the way that the author appeared to have hand-picked his 60 or so subjects for interview to specifically illustrate the main points he was trying to drive home. We can all find either very contented or very screwed up people from any country, and any level of income, but to use them as the subjects of what’s supposed to be a serious book is to my mind, stretching credibility and destroys to a large part what the author is trying to illustrate.

Another bone of contention that I had with the book is that the author has concentrated solely on the correlation of ‘emotional distress’ with income disparity from a World Health Organisation survey of 15 or so different countries. What isn’t mentioned in the book but which is emphasized in the WHO report is that the quoted figures should not be used for comparative purposes, yet that is exactly what the author has done, again damaging what is a fundamentally sound basis premise. He has also completely ignored two other major international surveys of happiness, one entitled “A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge to Positive Psychology?” by Adrian G. White of the University of Leicester - http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2000-2009/2006/07/nparticle.2006-07-28.2448323827 and http://www.le.ac.uk/users/aw57/world/sample.html - and another, the annual “Quality of Life Index” by International Living Magazine - http://www.il-ireland.com/il/qofl2009/?field=final. Whilst there is some correlation between the WHO data as interpreted by Oliver James and these much wider surveys, in general they don’t offer up anywhere near the same conclusions.

The author’s solutions by way of a ‘vaccine’ against the ‘Affluenza virus’ are also ill thought out as to their possible implications and extremely subjective. Despite his saying somewhere in the book that he ‘s not politically motivated, his ‘solutions’ read like a Socialist’s wet dream! Paying a parent the national average annual wage for three years to have time off with their child, placing significant limits to earning potential in relation to average earnings, raising taxes, preventing foreign ownership of the media, limiting the amount of American TV people can watch...... I seriously wonder whether he’s sat down and thought out what the implications, both short term and long term of these wacky ideas might be, and how damaging to the very thing he’s trying to solve they could be. There's some merit in some suggestions, but I get the distinct impression they're nothing more than his personal wish list, hardly objective!

It’s a shame that this is such an ill-researched and put together book because underlying all the waffle and lack of factual evidence there is a definite problem. There’s little doubt that today, despite the huge growth in both the number of and the quality of our material possessions, society is quite sick in many ways. However to try to blame American consumerism and its promotion throughout the world for all our ills in such a general way, again whilst there’s an element of truth there, is far from objective.

I agree that there is too much greedy materialism around, which coming from someone who never has to worry one iota about how much anything costs, might sound strange, however there’s a big difference between wanting possessions to make life easier to wanting possessions simply to keep up with the Jones’s. There’s also a great difference between buying possessions for the sake of a ‘designer’ name, which doesn’t guarantee quality at all, to buying them because they’re representative of high quality craftsmanship. I’d also agree that there’s far too much emphasis on ‘celebrity culture’ in our society, something which I do believe has originated in America and which, along with fast food, has done a great deal of damage to society generally.

But whilst “Affluenza” has perhaps opened my eyes to some of the problems in today’s society, in general I felt it a shallow attempt to get the author’s name into the best selling lists by the misuse and misinterpretation of statistics about a serious subject. Good marks for the subject, poor marks for both presentation and attempts at offering a solution.

Ahh... Midas, I remember recommending this to you..... hmmmm....

1. Don't you think you were reviewing the book perhaps with an overly critical eye, given that you yourself would be one of the people Oliver James would probably criticise for your way of life? - i.e. that your criticism is actually only veiled as such, but is in fact defensiveness, of your way of life?

2. If you came away from the book thinking about the link between unnecessary materialism - the importance of want versus need, then the book achieved it's objective, no matter what criticisms you may have of it. Bear in mind that you would be perhaps one of the most difficult readers for the book to convince - someone who already has a great deal of wealth and for whom excessive consumerism poses little economic reasons to abandon.

3. He's already been on the best selling lists for the superb They F*ck You Up. I don't think Oliver James is motivated by privilege or esteem, he actually wants to change society for the better.

4. In terms of political motivation, Oliver James has advised both the New Labourites, and the Cameron bunch - his motivation isn't (Party) political, it's societal, and I don't think he really cares whether people are for one kind of politics or another - the theme of the book isn't really political in the sense of economic theory, it's more personal, societal, psychological. I agree that some of the views he espouses have elements of socialism to them, but isn't it possible that that's because some socialist views are based on sound psychological/sociological evidence?

5. In regards to the sources he uses, e.g. specific different subjects, and the WHO study, I don't think OJ was aiming to appeal to academics with Affluenza - if you doubt the evidential basis as no doubt academic critics would, you should read the accompanying book - The Selfish Capitalist, which contains much more of the statistical information he uses to back up his assertions. I haven't read it for a while, but I recall that this was explained at the beginning of the book?

6. For me, no matter what you make of his style or his use of sources, two things came out of the book as abundantly clear; a) consumerism, based on wants not needs, is not very good for you psychologically, and the assertion that marketing is designed to make you feel bad, and hence that countries where modern marketing techniques are particularly evidently used there tends to be a lot of people with mental health issues and not generally much happiness b) that people don't care enough about their kids anymore and this is particularly evidence in a few heavily consumerist nations. I'd be very surprised if anyone came away from the book not thinking there was a lot in that, even if they do disagree with parts of the book or the manner in which it was written.

Originally Posted by KeiranMac

Ahh... Midas, I remember recommending this to you..... hmmmm....

1. Don't you think you were reviewing the book perhaps with an overly critical eye, given that you yourself would be one of the people Oliver James would probably criticise for your way of life? - i.e. that your criticism is actually only veiled as such, but is in fact defensiveness, of your way of life?

Possibly I was reading the book with a very critical eye, however that's not unusual for me, in particular where the objectivity of the writer is questionable, something I felt fairly soon into the book. I don't believe that there was any defensiveness however, perhaps because I'm somewhat atypical of many people with a substantial amount of money; for instance when I ran through the preliminary questions, I scored just 8 out of 16 for the "Have you contracted the Affluenza virus" section and only 10 in the "Do you suffer from Affluenza distress" section, i.e., the lowest possible with all 'never' answers.

2. If you came away from the book thinking about the link between unnecessary materialism - the importance of want versus need, then the book achieved it's objective, no matter what criticisms you may have of it. Bear in mind that you would be perhaps one of the most difficult readers for the book to convince - someone who already has a great deal of wealth and for whom excessive consumerism poses little economic reasons to abandon.

That's true enough, but as I pointed out, it's not the underlying subject of the book I'm criticising, that is very valid for a significant number of people (although I don't believe so for myself), it's the way in which Oliver James set about trying to illustrate it which I found less than honest for the reasons I gave before.

3. He's already been on the best selling lists for the superb They F*ck You Up. I don't think Oliver James is motivated by privilege or esteem, he actually wants to change society for the better.

Maybe not, however he was most certainly motivated by the desire to get the book into the top seller lists again; that's fairly clear from what he says in the prologue. Extrapolating somewhat from that, and the fact that he's already a successful 'pop-psychology' author, there's a definite case to be made that this book is aimed 'at the masses' rather than being an authoritative work, and as we all know, a significant number of such books are less than accurate in their presentation of facts. Getting into the top selling lists and making a profit is more important than anything. Subsequent to reading the book I've browsed through some of the reader's comments published on bookseller's websites (such as on amazon.co.uk) and found many of them critical of exactly the same points I picked up, so I'm definitely not alone in thinking this. In fact on Amazon, out of 62 reviews, 44 gave the book 3 stars or less, by far the largest group (22) only gave it 1 star (out of 5 possible).

4. In terms of political motivation, Oliver James has advised both the New Labourites, and the Cameron bunch - his motivation isn't (Party) political, it's societal, and I don't think he really cares whether people are for one kind of politics or another - the theme of the book isn't really political in the sense of economic theory, it's more personal, societal, psychological. I agree that some of the views he espouses have elements of socialism to them, but isn't it possible that that's because some socialist views are based on sound psychological/sociological evidence?

I accept that in principle, however I doubt anyone can deny that his suggestions are wacky in the extreme and are far, far more socialist orientated than anything else. I doubt whether much thought as to the possible consequences was given beyond the initial "that sounds like a good idea" - a good idea for him that is (sounds rather familiar in respect of socialist governments too). For instance paying a parent the national average wage not to work for 3 years to look after a child in the home. Yes, it sounds a good idea, but when you actually look at the cost of it and the way in which much of that money would undoubtedly be spent, increasing the very consumerism the author is against, and the way in which many people on less than average wages would jump at the chance to be paid more by not working and having a child than actually being productive (how many more unmarried mums would it result in I wonder?), it's a different matter.

5. In regards to the sources he uses, e.g. specific different subjects, and the WHO study, I don't think OJ was aiming to appeal to academics with Affluenza - if you doubt the evidential basis as no doubt academic critics would, you should read the accompanying book - The Selfish Capitalist, which contains much more of the statistical information he uses to back up his assertions. I haven't read it for a while, but I recall that this was explained at the beginning of the book?

Again that's a valid point, and he does make reference to it in the book itself, however the misuse of the WHO data according to the WHO themselves and the total omission of data from the other two published 'happiness' surveys, which conflict with much of what he's saying, does significantly detract from his argument.

6. For me, no matter what you make of his style or his use of sources, two things came out of the book as abundantly clear; a) consumerism, based on wants not needs, is not very good for you psychologically, and the assertion that marketing is designed to make you feel bad, and hence that countries where modern marketing techniques are particularly evidently used there tends to be a lot of people with mental health issues and not generally much happiness b) that people don't care enough about their kids anymore and this is particularly evidence in a few heavily consumerist nations. I'd be very surprised if anyone came away from the book not thinking there was a lot in that, even if they do disagree with parts of the book or the manner in which it was written.

I'm not denying that the underlying premise is a valid one for many people in many societies, and that it both stems from American marketing 'ideals' and has affected many parts of the world which have been exposed to American consumerism. A lot of that is self-evident, many surveys have revealed that on average people are less happy despite having much more, and that society is becoming more rudderless and less family focused. It's the way that Oliver James tries to link cause and effect using very selective interviewees to illustrate his point, and the way he specifically uses the WHO data for national comparisons despite that organisation itself saying the data should not be so used that I found particularly concerning.

The subject matter itself is certainly worthy of considerable discussion, and something does need to be done to reverse many of the highlighted trends, but turning the issue essentially into fodder for a profitable pop-psychology book isn't the way to go about it, certainly not IMO.

Originally Posted by KeiranMac

Ahh... Midas, I remember recommending this to you..... hmmmm....

Yeah. Mistaken identity guv'ner! I woz elsewhere and got the witnesses to prove it! I don't think I've read this, and judging by the synopsis-come-review here I doubt I will.