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the bearable lightness of just ‘being’

Would you like to be a very wealthy person? Hide the signs of ageing? Be admired by many people? Think possessions can be just as important as people? If the answer is yes, then according to psychologist Oliver James you’ve contracted the ‘Affluenza virus’.

Spread by an increase in economic inequality, Affluenza (Vermilion, £17.99) teaches us to define our lives through earnings, possessions, appearance and celebrity, and, says James, “those things are making [us] miserable because they impede the meeting of our fundamental needs” - for emotional and material

security, to be part of a community, and to feel competent and autonomous.

Having diagnosed the virus, James puts in the legwork to find the vaccine, travelling all over the world to research the global middle-class state of mind. If emotional distress, as he contends, “is best understood as a rational response to sick societies” how, other than changing those societies, can we protect ourselves from their worst effects? For starters, by putting the emphasis on ‘Being’ not ‘Having’. Sounds like a reasonable proposal to me.

Laura Tennant

SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT