Prepared for the conference ”Social Change- Impact and Evaluation in Development Education and Awareness Raising” Helsinki, June 16, 2011 (www.deeep.org)
Social change is in the center of sustainability in high consumption societies. Social change from materialism to post-materialism is also possible because there is lot of evidence that life satisfaction does not increase with the growth of wealth after citizen´s standard of living meets basic needs such as food, clothing, home, energy and security. There is a saying: You are rich if you know how much is enough (Lao Tzu).
Here is a short programme for a social change:
1. We have to help people to ask what good life is for them. Development is fundamentally an empowering process. Empowerment of individuals is based on a community, which includes families, relatives, friends, et cetera. Quality of life includes factors that make life worth living, including those that are not traded in markets and not captured by monetary measures. Basic needs are food, clothes, shelter and energy. What else do we need to flourish? Happiness in daily life is based on good social relations.
2. We have to help people to understand how environment, society and economy are related. Some human needs are met through the production of commodities – but – most of them are met by other activities that take place outside what is described as economy. Human activity takes place within environment. All our actions have an impact on environment. Human life itself depends on environment. The material reality is that economy is also dependent on society. A dominant economy centered worldview is not realistic.
3. We have to give time and acceptance for our children. Loneliness of children is correlating with material values. What we need is acceptance as unique human beings without exceptions. It is not based on material. Currently a new mobile, a new bicycle or new clothes often is an instrument for social participation. Thinking like economists undermines community because it creates competition between you and me.
4. We have to help people to see the origins of goods which they use. Most of commodities and even food is imported from far away. Too many of them are produced by forced work or child labour. In a global world, justice extends beyond people who are physically related in our life, to include those who are a part of the causal chains of consumerism. We need planetary ethics to cover a bigger picture: humans, animals, plants and ecosystems. We have to help people to grow with responsibility. The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
5. We have to help people to recognize a gap between values and behaviour. At the moment Western people say that money is not important but still they are maximizing their income in their everyday life. Our attitudes are positive but behaviour negative. It sounds bad, but we have hope. Very often behaviour change starts from this kind of awareness. The likelihood of a behavior change increases when tension between the current state and the desired situation grows.