12/16/2013 @ 1:07PM
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I'm a psychiatrist and discuss business, markets and human behavior
When Texas teenager Ethan Couch drank himself into a stupor at more
than twice the legal limit, got into his pickup up truck, and plowed
into four young people, killing them, you’d have thought he’d get
sentenced to prison for a few years at least. But the court, which tried
the 16-year old as a juvenile, heard a novel defense for manslaughter,
and bought it:
affluenza.
The witness for the defense, a psychologist, said Couch was the
victim of a lifestyle of privilege and entitlement, raised without
consequences for bad behavior. As a case in point, he described the time
this boy, at the age of 15, was caught with an unconscious naked 14
year-old girl in his parked pickup, doing who knows what. He was never
punished, setting a standard of not being held accountable.
The ultimate irony is that Couch, who got drunk on beer he stole from
a Walmart, is not being punished for cutting short the lives of these
people, either. Two sisters had stopped to help a young woman who had
pulled over by the side of the road to fix a flat tire. A youth pastor
who was driving by stopped to help as well. Then this 16-year old boy,
who was driving 70 miles per hour in a 40 miles per hour zone, slammed
into the group. He got 10 years of probation and will likely spend a few
months in a pricey rehab center in Newport Beach, California –
something more akin to a half-million dollar vacation paid for by his
father.
A
portmanteau of
affluence and
influenza, a more detailed definition of affluenza can be found in the book
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, which describes it as “a painful,
contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload,
debt,
anxiety and
waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”.
As disturbing as this trend may seem, it is nothing particularly new.
Economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen introduced the term
conspicuous consumption in the 19
th
century to explain the behavior of the newly wealthy social class that
emerged during the second industrial revolution in the late 1800’s.
Veblen applied this term to what he called the
nouveau riche—families who spent their accumulated wealth in ostentatious ways to show off their newfound prestige and power.
But what is new, is how commonplace it has become. A century later,
with the growth of a middle class with more and more discretionary
income, the term has come to apply to a much broader group of people,
particularly in developed economies like the U.S. Most conspicuous of
all is that top 1 percent that owns 42 percent of the nation’s financial
wealth. But the behavior, just like a virus, has spread from there to
the population at large.
Despite, or perhaps even because of, a vast wealth gap in this
country, the affluenza disease is spreading among all socio-economic
groups. Through social media and reality television shows like
Keeping Up With the Kardashians,
we feel we can, and should, keep up with this conspicuous consumption
at all cost. Kids of all demographics are raised to believe they deserve
the latest and greatest must haves and luxury goods, be they iPhones
for five-year olds, the latest X-Box for 10-year olds, or designer
handbags for teenage girls, regardless of what families can afford.
The social and psychological consequences can be devastating. We are
raising a generation of narcissistic consumers and losing our moral
compass along the way. Why? Because the more valuable money and objects
become to a person, the less valuable other people or emotions or
finding inner happiness becomes.
A case in point: the recent Black Friday door buster sales, where
fist fights broke out over who got the last flat screen television on
the shelf. One
woman even used a stun gun on another in a Philadelphia mall.
These days, we’re seeing consumption on steroids. Who doesn’t know
those families who go crazy with the Christmas shopping? They leave so
many toys under the tree that their children seem almost annoyed with
all the unwrapping they have to do, playing with their new gadgets for a
couple of minutes before heaving a sigh of boredom and tossing them
aside.
They’re not grateful. They don’t appreciate the hard work that went
into earning the paycheck that made a bountiful Christmas possible – or
indeed the credit card debt their parents incurred. Some younger
children are so overwhelmed, they cry, and not tears of joy. They don’t
appreciate what they have, and yet somehow getting more and more is
expected.
I won’t speculate on whether or not Couch feels any remorse for his
actions or compassion for the families who lost loved ones because of
him. But a lack of empathy is definitely one of affluenza’s worst
symptoms. Recent research by University of Michigan social psychologist
Dr. Sara Konrath finds that levels of
empathy among Generation Y have been steadily diminishing.
Her study of 13,737 college students found that there was a 40% decrease in
empathy
currently, when compared with 20 or 30 years ago. The conclusions were
based on the results of the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index test,
which looks at the ability to imagine another person’s perspective and
feel what they are feeling. A narcissist has no use for those pesky
emotions.
It’s a disturbing trend, and something to think about as we fill our
Christmas shopping lists and attempt to stuff yet more presents under
the tree this year.
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