SDNR

I have read a lot about this recently. Affluenza is an "illness" which is affecting particularly the English-speaking world. It is a play on the words affluence and influenza. It refers to the middle-class obsession with materialism and never being satisfied with what they have.

The psychologist Oliver James, has recently written a book on this subject. In his book he blames the "Americanization" of the English-speaking world, and its self-indulgent obsession with wealth, status, celebrity, and appearance.

I think it is a little simplistic to blame the US for all the western world's ills -- but this is definately a fascinating topic.

How to tell if you have affluenza

Do you agree with any of the following statements?

- I would like to be a very wealthy person.
- I want luxury in my life.
- I often compare what I own with what others own.
- Shopping or thinking about what to buy preoccupies me greatly.
- I'm less concerned with what work I do than what I get for it.
- I admire people who own expensive homes, cars and clothes.
- My life would be better if I owned certain things that I don't have now.
- The things I own are an indication of how well I'm doing.
- I like to keep up with fashions in hair and clothing.
- I would like to hide signs of ageing.
- I would like to have people comment on how attractive I look.
- Possessions can be just as important as people.
- If a friend isn't of use to me, personally or professionally, I usually end the friendship.
- I would like my name to be known by many people.
- I would like to be admired by many people.
- I would like my name to appear frequently in the media.

Diagnosis
If you answered "yes" to any of the questions above, then you have, like most people in the English-speaking world, contracted the virus. The more you answered "yes", the more infected you are and the greater your likelihood of becoming emotionally distressed.
The decisions concern matters unconnected with your core, true needs, leaving you with the feeling that you are an actor in a play rather than living a real life. Sounds familiar?

Extracts from the book:

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Are you suffering from affluenza?

If Oliver James is suffering from what he calls "affluenza" – a depressive middle-class sickness brought on by social and material envy – then he has the symptoms well under control. It is true that his moon-pale face is a little lugubrious, and the black-rimmed specs and black hair growing ever further back on his academic forehead give him a serious air, but he is essentially quite cheerful and apparently sane. His strange jumper, with hearts on the elbow patches, does not suggest an obsessive follower of fashion. And the place he had chosen to spend the new year with friends – St Mawes, towards the extremity of Cornwall – is not a resort that social climbers or status-seekers would be seen dead in at this time of year.

"Nearly all of us want bigger and better," he says. "Houses, breast implants, penis extensions, televisions, cars. We define our lives through earnings, possessions, appearances, celebrity, and it's making us more miserable than ever before. The bad news is that a quarter of British people have been mentally ill in the last 12 months and another quarter have been on the verge. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way."

Sea spray mottles the windows of the hotel lounge, where his long body is hunched over a cappuccino and soon the grey waves are crashing over the sea wall towards us, but the psychologist hardly notices. He is babbling like a man just released about the relief of having finished his latest examination of human behaviour.

"I will never do it again," he says furiously. "I will never work that hard in my life." His study of why the middle classes in the English-speaking world are in such an emotional mess, despite being wealthier and more comfortable, took him on a "mind tour" of seven countries in three months, interviewing people all day and writing their case studies into the night.

The research made him scornful and despairing of the way the over-mortgaged, aspirational middle classes shackle themselves to unfulfilling jobs, working excessively long hours and cutting themselves off from proper relationships – yet here he was, shut up in a Moscow hotel room, working like slave while his wife, Clare, and young daughter, who accompanied him on the first leg of his odyssey, were back home. "It was the irony of ironies. 'What am I doing this for?' I asked myself. 'Do I want to be famous? Do I want to be rich? Doctor, heal thyself.' "

James's contention is that we confuse what we want with what we need and we have become obsessed with measuring ourselves and others through "the distorted lens of affluenza values" – essentially, keeping up with the Joneses.
The affluenza virus is a set of phoney values that increases our vulnerability to emotional disorders and James, at the outset, imagined himself as some itinerant Marie Curie, returning triumphantly from his global tour with phials of vaccine to immunise a grateful nation against contagion.

In fact, he returned with an unwieldy travelogue running to hundreds of thousands of words that had to be rewritten when a friend pointed out that it was sexist, biased, jingoistic and much too long. He had given in, he admits, to that side of his personality that is "bombastic, one-sided and rather dogmatic", so he painfully jettisoned "vast amounts of science" and nine-tenths of the case histories, producing Affluenza: How to be Successful and Stay Sane, an eloquent polemic at a mere 382 pages.

So why did he write it, if not to be rich and famous and the envy of his peers? Well, he says, suspiciously aware of his own worth, the publisher's advance was much less than he had hoped and he has "scraped a living" on roughly the pay of a university lecturer these past three years, so it can't have been for the money.

He postulates a few glib answers about wanting to grapple with the bigger picture, discovering the causes of human behaviour, but really, when a book idea takes him over he is an out-of-control workaholic. "There seems to be an automatic programme that clicks on from time to time. I get locked into it and nothing else matters."

We go through his 16-point questionnaire designed to identify those infected with affluenza. No, he is not motivated by money. No, he does not want to be a famous face and has declined several television roles. He clings to moth-eaten jumpers. His receding hairline is not an issue. He likes things for their aesthetic value rather than because other people have them. His favourite possession is a large double bed he bought 20 years ago from Simon Horn Furniture. So far, so good.

But then we touch on competition. As a pugilistic boy, he was fiercely competitive in sport and not a very good team player. Competitiveness usually sticks. He once launched into an irrational attack on Anthony Clare, a professional competitor, on the Today programme.

"It was inappropriate and unprofessional and I regret it," he says. And now? "I suppose I would feel threatened if someone started barging in on what I regard as my turf." Two of his previous popular psychology books – Britain on the Couch and They F*** You Up – were bestsellers. So for all the self-deprecation about its genesis, there is a lot hanging on this one.

It is every psychologist's conceit that he is as messed up as the people he analyses, if not more so, and James is as superficially confessional as the next shrink. He admits to having disturbingly regular dreams about property. In the early stages of affluenza, he and his wife agonised about whether to increase their mortgage to build an extension to their former home in London. It was a three-bedroom house in Shepherd's Bush. They had two children. What was the problem?

"One day, pretty much out of the blue, the answer came to my wife: do nothing. It was a revelation. The minute she said it, we both had a great sense of relief. There were things we wanted to do, but we needed to do none of them."

Later, they moved to a former council house in the Cotswolds. "I'm not trying to speak from a position of holier-than-thou puritanical supremacy at all," he insists. "I am in the s––t along with everyone else. I've got the same worries but, having seen so many people obsessed with this rubbish, I am not as bad as I was."

He blames "selfish capitalism" for the parlous state of our mental health – with America to blame for the greed, envy and ennui that is at the rotten core of it. "Americanisation is poisonous," he says. "But I am glad to say it has not taken root everywhere, by any means." In Russia, he found a heightened awareness of beauty and art, and a love of serious conversation and intellectual debate. He also found gorgeous, naturally sexy women, quite different from the Sex and the City tarty individuals he encountered in New York.

"However beautiful the woman, none seemed to want beauty to distract me from communicating with them as a person," he says somewhat prissily, "or to use it to impress or control me." In China, he discovered a positive attitude to life and the sort of stoicism that used to be the preserve of the British. The Danes, he found, were the least materialistic people he interrogated. And the women were not hung up about their looks, either.

In English-speaking countries it is the creeping sameness that distresses him. "Worst of all is the feeling of homogeneity. There is little room for eccentricity, for individuality. Individuality has been replaced by consumerism. People have confused the idea that they are expressing themselves as individuals with the idea of purchasing goods and services."
But in Britain, he believes, all is not lost. "We still have some great virtues you don't find in other countries; a fantastic sense of humour, understatement, a distrust of show-offs – basically, we don't like Richard Branson – our scepticism and logical positivist traditions: we want to see the evidence with our own eyes. New Labour are a long way from understanding the list of virtues: they have embraced Americanisation."

The anti-affluenza vaccines, he says, aren't all that complicated. "I would say, go back to being British and stop being American. Stop thinking you have got to have more and start concentrating on getting on with your real life, your personal relationships, work that interests you, rather than work motivated by greed."

He says he isn't telling people how to be happy, just how to be more real. "I regard happiness as chimeric and temporary, akin to pleasure, and I tend to agree with the saying 'we were not put on this earth to be happy'. My focus is on why we are so f–––––up, not with dangling a false promise of the possibility of happiness." It is more about being, he says, not having.

James is 53, the son of famously erratic and contradictory parents. His father was a psychoanalyst, analysed by no less a figure than Freud's daughter, Anna, and his mother was a psychiatric social worker. Perhaps because he came to fatherhood late, he is almost evangelical about the value of continuity in a young child's life and of taking an active part in the upbringing of his own – Olive, aged four, and Louis, two.

In They F*** You Up, he claimed that the way children were cared for in early childhood, rather than their genes, is the decisive influence on the way they turn out. Now, he has discovered, they are an equally decisive influence on how their parents turn out. His children, he believes, make him a more authentic person than he used to be. And authenticity (not to be confused with mere sincerity) is a big anti-affluenza vaccine, up there with vivaciousness (not hyperactivity) and playfulness (as opposed to mere game-playing).

OK, he admits, he is probably "as boring and earnest as I ever was" but, as a father, he's bound to be more real than the virus-infected marketing types, Machiavellians and chameleons who, he notes, don't spend very much time with their children.

"There is almost a religiosity about the truthfulness of children," he says. "Their bell rings true. It can't but rub off on you, unless you are hopelessly trapped in a bogus personality. You almost feel that until you have children, and close contact caring for them, that you've been living a virtual life. It makes you honest, legal and decent in a way that nothing else can. What makes me happiest," he says, "is telling my daughter her bedtime story, when I manage to make one up that really makes her laugh, and the gradual shift in her breathing from short to long breaths as she drifts off into the land of nod."

Mr. M

Thanks for the read Rob... I'll examine it in greater detail later.

From the questions, I can safely say I've been infected by Affluenza.

The Artist

yep i have it to.. Affluenza.. i wonder if i can get some benefits for having this..
LOL

SDNR

I think if we are honest, the great majority of us struggle with this problem -- but I must say I am not as materialistic as I used to be. There are still a lot of things I would like to own, but I realize they are not the most important things I should aim for in my life.

Giannis

Oh, i have this Affluenze virus and i think that i am very effected... I don't have much time left...

PS. Nice read Roberto!

Bruce

Very interesting post Rob.


-I would like to be a very wealthy person.
Yes

- I want luxury in my life.
Yes

- I often compare what I own with what others own.
No

- Shopping or thinking about what to buy preoccupies me greatly.
No

- I'm less concerned with what work I do than what I get for it.
No

- I admire people who own expensive homes, cars and clothes.
No

- My life would be better if I owned certain things that I don't have now.
Yes

- The things I own are an indication of how well I'm doing.
No

- I like to keep up with fashions in hair and clothing. No. I buy one or two shirts per year. I have two pairs of jeans, which I wear constantly. As for my hair, I would say I don't keep up with the "styles". Although I do use Gel.

- I would like to hide signs of ageing.
No.

- I would like to have people comment on how attractive I look.
Certainly. I'd like to hear that I'm not ugly

- Possessions can be just as important as people.
No

- If a friend isn't of use to me, personally or professionally, I usually end the friendship.
No. This is something I feel strongly on. I never ditch a friend when they have a problem.

- I would like my name to be known by many people.
No. I do not want to be a movie star

- I would like to be admired by many people.
Well I'd by lying to say if I didn't like the attention of being admired. However I don't use something like that to boast.

- I would like my name to appear frequently in the media.
No


After reviewing all of this I can honestly say I don't suffer from Affluenza that much. Sure I have a few signs, but material possessions have never been that important to me. Watches (don't own one), cell phones (don't own one) and clothing mean very little to me. I don't want to be famous, I don't want to be in the public eye.

I've never been a showy person. In fact all I want in my life is to be left the hell alone. While I won't go into it, my feelings about the above are driven by my hard times and problems over the last eight years.

siko

Rubbish... I'm sure that every single person in this world would at least answer yest to 1 question.

The rest is pretty interesting.

Yannis

I 'm guilty like everyone else.

NarutoRamen

This is just retarded. Besides monks, everyone in this world wants something that they don't have. Otherwise, why would you want something you already own? Everyone on this board is infected with affluenza if this guys is right. Personally, I just think that this is just some stupid way of getting people to think about some stupid stuff.

Let me put it this way. Everyone in this world wants something.

Bruce

I suppose it's how you interpret the article. You are right though, everyone in the world wants something they don't have. You could intrepret it in saying people who want things (cars, watches, houses, etc) for the purpose of showing off, have true Affluenza.

I think this question sums the above

- I often compare what I own with what others own.