John Lanchester on Enough

Between 1989 and 2010, the economy of China grew at an average rate of 8.9 per cent a year. Growth figures of that sort are normally only achievable in small countries; but China has 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world’s population. The numbers involved are so big that they are hard to get your head around—I think that was intended to be the message of Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seed installation in the Tate turbine hall. Here’s one way of thinking about the numbers: there thirty million more Chinese people called Wang than there are inhabitants of the United Kingdom.

This fact is going to shape this century in ways that are hard to enumerate and harder to foresee. The rise of China and the other developing countries means that an unprecedented number of people now want, and are on course to have, a first-world upper-middle-class lifestyle. The problem with that is that the earth simply doesn’t have the resources to make it possible.  We are running out of planet.

Nobody in the developing world is going to take, as an answer to their aspirations, the developed worlds’ reply ‘sorry, you can’t, we’ve already used it all up’. To earn the right to look the developing world in the eye and start this conversation, we need a reassessment of how we live, and what we want . Our societies have achieved a general level of prosperity of which most of all the human beings who have ever lived could only dream. Now we need to show that we can stop continually wanting more—more money, more stuff. We must show that it is possible for people to realise that they have enough.

John Lanchester is author of 'Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay' (Allan Lane 2010). He will be giving The School of Life Sermon this Sunday12 December 2010 at Conway Hall, London.  To book visit www.theschooloflife.com/sermons

Comments

[Richard Philip Witt]

I've been mulling this idea over in my mind for a couple of days now and I can't decide which is more likely. In a world where resources, and therefore the means for luxurious consumption, are limited. Then we will:
a) come to appreciate other human qualities other than what bank balances can offord (e.g. empathy, forgiveness, curiosity, etc...);
b) become totally fixated on luxury goods and their attainment, because they will be only available to the ultra rich/elite; nothing else would matter;
c) see some bizarre unforeseeable of both of the aforementioned.

There are probably other possibilities too. I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts.

[Drew Byrne]

"Enough is enough", but "even some more" is always nice to get.