MATERIALISM: A SYSTEM THAT EATS US FROM THE INSIDE OUT 

1. That they are crass, brash and trashy goes without saying. But there is  something in the pictures posted on Rich Kids of Instagram that inspires more  than the usual revulsion towards crude displays of opulence1. There is a  shadow in these photos – photos of a young man wearing all four of his Rolex  watches; a youth posing in front of his helicopter; endless pictures of cars,   5  yachts, shoes, mansions, swimming pools and spoilt teenagers throwing  gangster poses in private jets – of something worse: something that, after you  have seen a few dozen, becomes disorienting, even distressing. 
2. The pictures are, of course, intended to incite envy. They reek instead of  10 desperation. The young men and women seem lost in their designer clothes,  dwarfed and dehumanised by their possessions, as if ownership has gone  into reverse. A girl's head barely emerges from the haul of Chanel, Dior and  Hermes shopping bags she has piled on her vast bed. It's captioned 'shoppy  shoppy' and '#goldrush', but a photograph whose purpose is to illustrate  15  plenty seems instead to depict a void. She's alone with her bags and her  image in the mirror, in a scene that seems saturated with despair. 
3. There has long been a correlation observed between materialism, a lack of  empathy and engagement with others, and unhappiness. A series of studies  published in the journal Motivation and Emotion in July showed that as people  20 become more materialistic, their wellbeing (good relationships, autonomy,  sense of purpose and the rest) diminishes. As they become less materialistic,  it rises. 
4. In one study, the researchers tested a group of 18-year-olds, then re-tested  them 12 years later. They were asked to rank the importance of  25 different goals – jobs, money and status on one side, and self-acceptance,  fellow-feeling and belonging on the other. They were then given a standard  diagnostic test to identify mental health problems. At the ages of both 18 and  30, materialistic people were more susceptible to disorders. But if in that  period they became less materialistic, they became happier.
5. In another study, psychologists followed Icelanders weathering their country's  30  economic collapse. Some people became more focused on materialism, in  the hope of regaining lost ground. Others responded by becoming less  interested in money and turning their attention to family and community life.  The first group reported lower levels of wellbeing; the second group higher  levels.   35
6. Another paper found that people in a controlled experiment who were  repeatedly exposed to images of luxury goods, to messages that cast them as  consumers rather than citizens and to words associated with materialism  (such as 'buy', 'status' and 'expensive'), experienced immediate but temporary  increases in material aspirations, anxiety and depression. They also became  40 more competitive and more selfish, had a reduced sense of social  responsibility and were less inclined to join in social activities. The  researchers point out that, as we are repeatedly bombarded with such images  through advertisements, and constantly described by the media as  consumers, these temporary effects could be triggered more or less  45 continuously.
7. A third paper, published (paradoxically) in the Journal of Consumer Research,  studied 2 500 people for six years. It found a two-way relationship between  materialism and loneliness: materialism fosters social isolation; isolation  fosters materialism. People who are cut off from others attach themselves to  50 possessions. This attachment in turn crowds out social relationships. 
8. The two varieties of materialism that have this effect – using possessions as a  yardstick of success and seeking happiness through acquisition – are the  varieties that seem to be on display on Rich Kids of Instagram. It was only  55 after reading this paper that I understood why those photos distressed me:  they look like a kind of social self-mutilation. Materialism forces us to compare  our possessions to those of others. There is no end to it! If you have four  Rolexes while another has five, you are a Rolex short of contentment.  The material pursuit of self-esteem reduces your self-esteem. It may also  60 leave a trail of unpayable debts, mental illness and smashed relationships.  Materialism smashes the happiness and peace of mind of those who succumb  to it.  
9. The poor can be as susceptible to materialism as the rich. It is a general  social affliction, visited upon us by government policy, corporate strategy, the  collapse of communities and civic life, and our acquiescence2 in a system that  65 is eating us from the inside out. 
10. This is the dreadful mistake we are making: allowing ourselves to believe that  having more money and more stuff enhances our wellbeing, a belief  possessed not only by those poor deluded people in the pictures, but by  almost every member of almost every government. Worldly ambition, material  70 aspiration, perpetual growth: these are a formula for mass unhappiness. 

[Adapted from www.monbiot.com] 

SUPERHEROES – MORE THAN COMIC CARICATURES 

Who is your favourite superhero? The interest in superheroes is increasing … but what  makes superheroes so popular with children and adults alike? Do superheroes make  appropriate role models? Importantly, the relationship between superheroes and  societal factors is a direct one, with a strong impact on individuals.  
When we read comics featuring superheroes, particularly as children, we develop our  emotions, reading ability and morals. Just as we idolise celebrities, we idolise  superheroes. These comics likely influence our behaviour, leadership ability and  attitudes. It is not unusual to see a child wearing a Batman or Superman cape, battling  imaginary supervillains and saving the world, one tree-house at a time. Pretend play  based on the concept of superheroes helps children learn language and allows the  expression of emotions, both negative and positive.  
Children can use superheroes and supervillains to form various perspectives on a  situation and test the consequences of actions. Superhero comics provide the  exaggerated opportunity to play out moralistic and ethical dilemmas for both children  and adults. In fact, superheroes likely feed straight into boys' tendency to control or  'master' the world. 
It is quite common for superheroes to be presented with the option of whether to fight or  not to fight – to use their moral compass, so to speak, before making big decisions.  Importantly, children are given the opportunity to observe how their favourite role model  problem-solves through ethically sticky situations. 
Past research indicates that adolescence is the stage in which social comparisons are  most common. Teenagers use villains as avoidance role models, while imitating  superheroes who display pro-social behaviour, leadership and a variety of positive  attitudes. Leadership is transactional – that is, 'leaders do something for the group and  the group in return does something for the leaders', a dynamic best shown between  superheroes and the cities they protect.  
Superhero stories also address the superhero's unwillingness to be a bystander. Human  social behaviour is learned from appropriate models – it could be argued that learning to  help others occurs through the models of superheroes. We feed off their images,  integrating their characteristics into our personalities, ethics and morals.  

[Adapted from Art & Popular Culture, Issue 1, 3 August 2015] 

What sort of world will this little girl grow up in? Many experts agree that it will be a considerably more energy-hungry one. There are already seven billion people on our planet.  And the forecast is that there will be around two billion more people by 2050. So if we're going  to keep the lights on for her, we will need to look at every possible energy source. At Shell  we're exploring a broad mix of energies. We're making our fuels and lubricants more advanced  and more efficient than before. With our partner in Brazil, we're also producing ethanol,  a biofuel made from renewable sugar cane. And we're delivering natural gas to more than  40 countries around the world. When used to generate electricity, natural gas emits around half  the CO2 of coal. Let's broaden the world's energy mix. www.shell.com/letsgo

V FOR VICTIM 

1. Everyone's a victim of something these days – it's time we toughened up. I knew little about Terry Waite before I interviewed him. But after doing my  research, I was blown away. He was taken hostage for almost five years.  He spent most of it in isolation, chained, with no stimulation – not even natural  light.  5 
2. He was freed in 1991. He laughed as he was freed without shoes, so he had  to ask his rescuers to find some size 14s. Waite's attitude during his captivity,  and since, is: 'No regrets, no self-pity, no sentimentality.' Now we live in  a different era, one that seems to celebrate victimhood, in which people have  been encouraged by society to cling to every perceived injustice, keen to  10 claim that they are oppressed. Sometimes it feels like a race to the bottom, in  which oversensitivity and intolerance causes people to celebrate adversity.   
3. No wonder victim status is coveted by so many, when it infers benefits.  The pity game has become profitable: some people land book deals out of it.  Being a sufferer attracts sympathy and immunity – you can never be wrong.  15
4. Playing the victim minimises real harm. Crying wolf leaves people indifferently  apathetic to serious victims. 

[Adapted from FAIRLADY, June 2016]