Meet John de Graaf, One of the Good Guys in the World
In disturbing times we need his voice of clarity
Mark Cramer (author of Old Man on a Green Bike and Urban Everesting)
Welcome to Fakeville! has the honor of interviewing John de Graaf, one of the great public intellectuals in the USA. He’s a filmmaker, author and thoughtful activist, battling for a more humane society. His book Affluenza: How Overconsumption Is Killing Us and How to Fight Back (with co-authors David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor) was an international best seller, translated into nine languages.
Fifteen of his documentaries have been broadcast nationally in prime time on PBS. (All of de Graaf’s works mentioned in this interview, and much more, can be found at johndegraaf.com. )
“John de Graaf is one of the Good Guys in our world, always there with the next important, life-affirming idea.”
Ann Medlock, founder and director of The Giraffe Project
Mark Cramer: Do you think it may be too late to cure the consumer society disease you call affluenza, at least in the USA? The structure of sprawling suburbia seems to lock people in to driving, malls and long commutes. In so-called communities with no walkable commerce, single-use zoning may still be popular among car-dependent residents because they perceive that such zoning keeps out the riff raff from their housing clusters. (I feel locked in when I visit such places.)
John de Graaf: Short answer, Yes! It may only happen when a crisis hits and the stuff is unavailable, but I hope we can make progress in the near future. Certainly that will be almost impossible if Trump and the GOP are re-elected. The Democrats do have something of a blind spot around this as well, but they are not nearly as aggressively pro-wealth and consumerism and at least have bright spots in their history of strong critics of GDP and consumerism, including Stewart Udall, Bobby Kennedy and even Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. Udall, in particular, warned about these issues and the need for new sustainable cities in 1968. See Resilience.org.
What this change requires is what Herbert Marcuse called a “transvaluation of values,” away from competitive performances for material gain and toward more focus on time, beauty, community, health, etc. We seldom make this case anymore, arguing only that growth be divided more equitably. There are, however, positive signs, as young (and female) leaders of many nations argue for shorter worktime, a different measure of progress and more sustainable production and consumption. But the USA seems the last place to listen.
We cannot stop affluenza, though, by solely focusing on the dangers and crises of overconsumption. We must persuade people that a more frugal, less consumptive life can actually be a happier, more satisfying one. This is one of our goals with the Bread and Roses Party. Gloom and doom is not enough.
MC: To this consumer disease, can we add the accumulation of brief experiences? You touch on this in your “Finding Time for our Parks.” Collecting experiences through quick photos rather than taking it in slowly. Is travel becoming a consumer item?
DE GRAAF: Yes, I’m troubled by the new focus on “the experience economy.” Travel is increasingly becoming a competitive endeavor and a measure of consumer success, and the flying, cruising, etc. necessary for it are not sustainable over the long run and may increase ecological footprints even more than purchase of consumer goods. Also, the “Instagram effect,” with people sharing photos of nature has a double edge. It does get more people out into the natural world, which is a good thing, especially if it increases the constituency for wilderness, open space, parks, etc. But it also leads to overuse of many places and a “been there, shot that” competitive attitude that reduces the spiritual benefits of nature, which must be appreciated at its own pace.
In general, we need to slow down. The current average time that a tourist to the Grand Canyon spends looking at it is 15 minutes. There’s a kind of “use it once and throw it away” quality to that that characterizes consumer society in general.
On the other hand, I am impressed with the number of people I know who have walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain. For most it has been a meditative experience and has positively impacted their values. We need many more of these walking pilgrimage opportunities, so they do not become overcrowded, and then people need the time away from work to have them. Part of the American rush through nature is the very little time we get for vacation compared to Europeans.
MC: One of the various holistic recommendations in your article, “Strengthening Our Health” is: “We can improve our lifestyle by reducing working hours to give Americans more time for exercise, sleep, and healthy eating.”
I agree. However, a majority of American citizens live in car-dependent communities where the most effective and useful exercise, walking, is both boring and with no utility value. I quote the EPA:
“Car trips of under a mile add up to about 10 billion miles per year, according to the 2009 U.S. National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS)…”
If we all chose to power half of these short trips with our feet instead of petroleum, assuming an average fuel economy of 22 mpg and an average fuel price of $2.50/gallon, we would save about $575 million in fuel costs and about 2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year.”
The EPA recommends walkable communities, but there’s little let-up in the building of unwalkable communities. My question: shouldn’t car-dependency be listed as a health hazard, and shouldn’t walkable communities be a major part of any green New Deal? But they are not. You’ve written about the Green New Deal as “simultaneously too ambitious and insufficient.” Could failure to address unwalkable communities be part of the “insufficient”?
DE GRAAF: Short answer, Yes! Walkable communities should definitely be part of the Green New Deal and might have more effect than electric cars, though both are needed. It’s clearly true that people in walkable communities have better health, live longer, are better connected with others and are generally happier.
MC: For my meager salary as adjunct university teacher, the gig economy, I once calculated that 20% of my work hours were spent paying for car expenses. “Effective speed” of a car commuter is reduced by the TIME spent working to support that car (according to Ivan Illich and Paul Tranter). So I simply got rid of my car and took my bike to work, or in some instances public transport (much less expensive than supporting a car). Thus, I was able to reduce my work hours by 20%. And my health improved.
There is ample evidence that the culture of the private automobile is a major time thief. Any ideas on what to do about it? (Less car-dependent countries like The Netherlands and Denmark consistently come up in the top five countries on the happiness index.)
DE GRAAF: Again, I agree. But it also does require an urban infrastructure that supports bikes and walking. Certainly, we need to tax auto use more than we do, provide better public transit for the poor especially, and make it possible for people to work at home sometimes and closer to home (always). Life during the pandemic is showing that this is very possible.
I very much appreciated Illich’s analysis that the speed of auto culture, in urban areas especially, is less than that of the bicycle and about the same as that of pedestrians when you divide total mobility by hours of travel plus hours of work to buy and maintain vehicles. It’s a clear argument for the bicycle mode of travel. It was a brilliant thesis and seems quite accurate.
MC: In your “Backpacker’s Theory of Life” you differentiate between needs and wants (“More isn’t always better when you carry it on your back”), and you refer to living in balance, as well. Any specific influence from ancient Greek philosophers on this, or did it come directly from hiking experiences with your father?
DE GRAAF: Well, it came from a number of influences, but I think the strongest was my experiences backpacking. You realize that there are certain things you must have — enough food, water, shelter, clothing, maybe even mosquito repellent — but if you carry too much stuff you are miserable.
Certainly, Aristotle and the Greeks did speak of the midpoint between luxury and deprivation, the sweet spot we all need to find. But just as we fail in this as individuals in a consumer society, so are we failing as a society. We are carrying overloaded packs and have been pulled over backwards and are flailing like upside-down beetles or turtles. And we think the source of our misery is immigrants, Blacks, gays, women, taxes, you name it, when it’s really our mistaken priorities.
Instead of taking some things out of our national backpack and readjusting it to add a couple of things we need — health care in the US for example — we we just think the answer is to load on as much more undifferentiated stuff as possible — we call the “growing the economy.” It is profoundly stupid and self-defeating.
MC: How is Bhutan doing since you shared their Gross National Happiness project in your presentation, “Happiness, Time and Sustainability.” Do you think they can hold firm against the opposite global trend?
DE GRAAF: To some extent they do, but they are a poor country and they need a bit of growth. The seductiveness of consumer goods is clear with the young because they are all hooked into social media, at least in Thimphu, the capital. So it’s still an open question. But at least they are asking the questions and in that they are a model for the rest of us.
But probably, for the West, the better models are those being put forward by the remarkable young prime ministers of Finland, New Zealand, etc., who are calling for new measures of progress and for much shorter working time. But I have a fond spot for Bhutan, and in some ways I think its quality of life is higher than ours.
MC: This is off subject, but in your exquisitely nuanced article, “A Memory of Castro’s Cuba,” you mention the presence of an occasional agent provocateur in the Venceremos Brigades and the anti-war movement. Do you see any parallel with today’s anti-racist movement?
DE GRAAF: Oh yes, it’s so easy for agents provocateurs to infiltrate the anti-police movements and stir up counterproductive violence. Not to mention the openly right-wing vigilantes who also enter the fray.
Many young people just don’t have the historical perspective to perceive this — that the more people call for violent action, the more likely they are to be agents or rightwing saboteurs because the violence, the burning, etc. play into the hands of reaction and in our case, Trump. It’s been a big problem in Seattle and Portland.
Beyond that I think it’s always terrible to dehumanize those you disagree with. We will not get better treatment of people of color by saying “All cops are bastards!” We will just create unnecessary division — many of our police are Black, Hispanic or working class. They are not the enemy. The enemy is a system of massive inequality that results in hateful competition for presumably short resources and leads to our political polarization.
We need to find a way to heal, and the young who want to make change by force and reject the ballot are not helping in this at all. But I had my blinders at that age as well. Time makes us all realize that life is nuanced, that when we think there is a simple answer to a problem it’s wrong, as E L Mencken put it.
MC: Parting shot. Any particular question I should have asked that you wish to highlight?
DE GRAAF: I think the important thing is that we all need to ask the right questions — what makes for a happy life? How do we create healthy communities? How much is enough? How do we reach those whose values are different? How do we keep from demonizing our adversaries? How do we measure progress? How can we convince people to work less and want less (or want less of the wrong things)? How can we reduce climate change? And perhaps most importantly right now, how do we know what to trust in an era of conspiracy thinking and massive cynicism? How do we inspire hope? That’s it, and thanks!
In these times, when one-dimensional thinking pervades public discourse, WTF! invites readers to get inspired with the writing and films of John de Graaf.
