There’s nothing like a pending presidential election in the U.S. to make you wonder if you should move abroad again. (Trump? Kanye? Really?)
Other aspects of life in the U.S. also inspire this train of thought for me, one of which is a concept that I would like to explore here on how-matters.org…
Overdevelopment.
During my graduate school years, we learned and discussed how to “help” underdeveloped countries and ensure they achieve economic growth. Despite our exploration of dependency theory and the rights-based approach, modernization was at the core, i.e. some nations were better than others.
Though we learned about such things as the gini coefficient, colonialism, hyperinflation, and logframes, none of that training prepared me for the disturbing signs of the overdevelopment phenomena that I’ve observed and experienced lately in the U.S., beyond presidential candidates exhibiting signs of narcissistic personality disorder.
Such aspects of our global reality like climate change, excessive consumption, and political capture by corporations are the obvious expressions of overdevelopment. But overdevelopment signifies something perhaps even more fundamental for me – a breakdown of society through a veneration of self-reliance and self-indulgence. As the notion of “community” is eroded by overdevelopment, these five trends highlight how misguided that idea that some nations are better than others really is:
1) Selfie sticks
When you can’t stop and ask someone to take a quick photo of you or your friends, society is suffering. It’s not just about the “narcissistic, psychopathic and Machiavellian personality traits,” which incidentally might also be a result of overdevelopment. For a society to survive, our social skills need to include asking a stranger for a quick favor and happily obliging.
2) Toilet paper please…thanks Amazon
Amazon’s labor issues and environmental impact make me want to avoid using the home shopping website. But most folks in this overdeveloped nation don’t feel the same way. They want to get toilet paper or laundry detergent delivered to their door, without any effort on their part, even if they live only a small distance from a store. Even if folks do get off their duffs and go to the store or the restaurant(!), they can still avoid human contact. There are plenty of self check-out lines.
3) Helicopter parenting
I am not a parent, so I have nothing to say about helicopter parenting as a strategy that does or does not raise well-adjusted children. But I can say, as someone who knows a bit about development, that helicopter parenting just isn’t possible if you are struggling for your family’s survival. Who has the time or energy to hover over their children and monitor and “enhance” their every minute of existence? Those with economic security in abundance, that’s who.
4) Box store blues
A few Sundays ago, I went with friends to a large retail chain. As a survival strategy, I get in and I get out, quickly, so I had 20 minutes or so just to stand outside and watch people leave the store as I waited for my friends to finish shopping. I noted just how miserable people looked. Maybe I’m projecting, but these folks seemed stripped of energy or happiness, things that the big red dot—and development—is supposed to supply. (Oops, now you know where I was.)
5) Pet toys, an industry with a capital “I”
I grew up on a farm, where dogs ran free. When I think of all the pets locked in apartments all day in the D.C. neighborhood in which I live now, it makes me so sad. Is that why people in the U.S. spent an estimated $58 billion on pet products in 2014? They feel guilty? (For comparison’s sake, about $23.4 billion of the US federal budget was devoted to poverty-focused foreign assistance in FY2014.) By all means, love your pet, but isn’t it overdevelopment that makes the pet industry possible?
Don’t just think me a curmudgeon. There’s signs that our overdevelopment is a concern to others as well, such as a turn back towards local food systems. Perhaps overdeveloped nations are not meant to stay this way.
Regardless, those of us from these countries need to be asking ourselves, and others, how these global inequities play out in international aid and philanthropy and whether they make it harder for us to connect and understand one other.
Luckily, societies everywhere are always evolving. And that’s why whether I live in yet another Bush and Clinton regime (ugh!), community building will always be at my core.
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