Do Good Design

I call it the “But I Deserve It” Syndrome: where you think you should have the nice cars, house, clothes, holidays because you see it all around you in the media.

You deserve it. You’re worth it. I know the siren song well.

The problem is, like the Sirens, it can lure you to your death. Or at least a lot of depression.

As the BBC article about The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza explains, rising numbers of depressed people is due to our addiction to getting more stuff.

‘We all know the old saying: “Riches won’t make you happy.” But is it possible that riches - or even aspiring to be rich and wanting to live a Footballers’ Wife-style life of luxury - might make us mentally ill?

Clinical psychologist Oliver James claims in his new book The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza, that “selfish capitalism” (the kind of capitalism we have in Britain) is making us sick. Literally.’

This ties into the science of happiness — yes, it really is a science — which maintains that one of the factors that most affects happiness is how well off you think you are compared to others.

If you think you’re doing better than most of your friends and family, you feel pretty good. If you think you’re doing worse — even if that means you “only” earn £1 million compared to your friends who earn £2 million — then you’re likely to be less happy.

The problem is, our movies and TV show people who seem to live on several hundred thousand a year. Who look perfect, with perfect bodies, perfect partners.

How many films have you seen where the main characters have gorgeous city flats, or nicely manicured houses? All by the age of 35. Or 28, if you’re in Friends.

I thought of this when I watched Knocked Up recently. A bunch of slackers who get high all day and play computer games mysteriously manage to have a nice house in LA, plenty of food and clothes but no apparent job. Huh.

I have to say that a relative lack of Affluenza is one of the joys of Orkney.

Few people wear expensive clothes, drive nice cars, or have lavish houses. If you’re relatively new to the place like me, you have no idea who’s rich or important. And therefore it doesn’t matter whether you are.

No one cares where you went to school, either. All that work to get into Bryn Mawr and do well, and no one here knows what a Seven Sisters College is (the tiniest of sighs).

So there’s the answer: move to Orkney.