The Fourth Phase
Peter’s book ‘The Four Phases of Society’ is now with us in a special paperback edition to inspire the World
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Peter Peeters shows us that other options do exist to the materialistic-consumer society in which we are immersed. He opens the path, giving us a clear, unbiased view of how societies have passed through several phases and will ultimately move towards the Fourth Phase.
Changes have always come through understanding, which leads to new decisions shaping our lives as we wish them to evolve.
Time to recognize we have reached the limits our Earth can sustain and act to make sure the *Essential Changes* are met to lead us into a Fourth Phase of human wisdom where we each have our important part to contribute.
Short extracts of the book
Highlighting a transition period by the comparison between our materialistic society and the emergence of a Fourth Phase of Well Being.
THE MATERIALISTIC PHASE
Chapter 1
The Victory of CAPITALISM
P1. The free market economy has brought our society many long-term advantages. By stimulating competition it has been one of the driving forces of progress….
The free market has thus been instrumental in creating higher productivity, which in turn has led to a continuous rise in the standard of living.
Through the exchange of goods and the dissemination of new production techniques, free market has also accelerated economic growth throughout the world as a whole. Until now, therefore, the effects of the liberal economy have generally been greatly beneficial.
Since the collapse of Communism it is generally maintained that the free market economy is the only viable economic system.
We should count ourselves lucky to live in the West…
We are in the vanguard of the race toward ever-increasing material wealth.
P2. We the people of the advanced nations, must live in the best of all possible worlds?
And yet all is not for the best.
…from towns jammed with traffic and a poisoned environment to global climatic changes, human activities are eating into our planet and destroying it like a cancer, maybe irreparably,
The road to greater affluence increasingly resembles a treadmill spinning out of control..
There seems to be no escape: we have to be productive.
We must submit to the dictates of the economic system by which the world is run. Is therefore the materialistic society we have created, with all its excesses and disruptions, here to stay?
How ADVERTISING has turned us into CONSUMERS
P2. The desire to acquire more is now systematically propagated at all levels of society. For many people it has transformed life into one long rush from morning until night to earn enough, not to satisfy their basic needs but to waste on the superfluous which is pressed upon them by the consumer society.
P3. The competition existing in a free market economy gradually forced producers to advertise more in order to stay ahead of their competitors. This competition began to spiral out of control in the 1970s and led to a tidal wave of advertising, flooding the globe in the 1980s. It carried advertising into the intimacy of every household by cleverly exploiting that most powerful of all media: the television. Under its influence, the buyer was transformed into a consumer.
P5. The less accustomed people are to advertising, the poorer their education, or the younger they are, the stronger the impact. The advertisements are now targeting the most vulnerable of all categories of potential consumers: children. These have little or no discrimination …
P7. Looking at a news kiosk displaying hundreds of different magazines for sale which together may contain fifty to a hundred thousand advertisements that no one really thinks about when he (or she) buys a magazine but that stare him (her) in the face and cannot be overlooked. I have visions of thousands of journalists having to rack their brains every week to produce something readable or semi-sensational to fill the pages in between the advertisements. I cannot help thinking also of all those photographers trying to make an ordinary packet of margarine of brand X look more attractive than the same margarine of brand Y or Z, or to make a simple tin of sausages look like a royal gift – thousands of photographers cursing fate for having to waste their time and careers on the dull products of the consumer society. But more than anything else I have visions of the trees falling, of destroyed forests. When people all over the world throw those magazines into the dustbin after a week, they are actually throwing away a large section of forest that has not been allowed to survive because advertising’s need for paper condemned it.
ANYTHING that SELLS
P8. In the past, economic growth was driven by necessity.
…The question is now no longer: ‘What do people need?’ or ‘What is useful?’ but ‘Can it be sold?’
… People are offered glittering illusions and they have to pay a lot for them.
…Our production-orientated society has created another and possibly even more beneficial line of development (from the point of view of the producer, that is): rapidly changing fashion. It used to be confined to clothes, but fashion has now spread to every conceivable product …
P9. Today we have new models and fashion in sports equipment, household appliances, radios, bikes, and even in such unlikely items as electric plugs, switches, and telephones.
P10. Competition transforms life at the workplace into an exhausting race.
Production has become a goal in itself and has become the supreme justification for the creation of a type of society where the individual has first been regimented into becoming an efficient part of the mass-production process and subsequently brainwashed into being a willing consumer.
P11. The principal aim of most people in the West today – and also now in the East – appears to be to live well materially. They consume indiscriminately while generally turning a blind eye to the poverty and the ecological problems that beset the largest part of the globe. The people of the rich countries live in luxury compared to the rest of the world, yet they are dissatisfied and harassed because modern life, with its productivity and competitiveness, often stresses them beyond endurance. They are trapped, chained to the treadmill of the liberal economy, and they can look forward only to the prospect of having to tread ever faster. Is this going to continue forever? …there appears at the moment to be no other system that could conceivably take its place. However, even the most solidly implanted systems one day become history.
Phase of Human FulFillment
Chapter 12
THE NEED FOR A NEW MEASURE: HUMAN WELL-BEING
P135. Today higher incomes no longer automatically signify higher well-being, not only because the modern economy stimulates a bout of activities that do not add to well-being, but also because the work ethic obliges people to incur expenses which could be diminished if they had to work less.
P136. The imposed longevity of durable goods and the elimination of all activities that are not strictly necessary will make this possible. The pcGNP will then drop significantly, although material living standards will remain the same, free time will increase, and life will have more to offer. In other words, well-being will increase considerably. Since it is unable to reflect that, the pcGNP will become largely meaningless, so we will need a more reliable measure by which to describe the state of society. This brings us to the notion of what we might call Human Well-Being.
Human beings have a variety of needs and requirements, some physical some mental, all of which contribute to HWB. Among these are sufficient food; access to medical treatment; warmth, shelter and clothes; comfortable, equipped housing; easy transport and communication systems; an organised society; general education; and a culturally stimulating environment where one has the possibility to go to movies, theatres, concerts, libraries, book shops, architectural exhibits, museums and the like. Most of these points are undoubtedly more relevant to urban life in the advanced nations, and are generally included in the pcGNP.
Other ingredients of HWB, however, are not included in the pcGNP. Some lie in the realms of health or the environment and could be quantified up to a point: healthy, natural food, as opposed to treated or processed food containing additives or the residues of pesticides, unpolluted rivers and streams, and pollution-free air. Related to these but more difficult to quantify are having access to unspoiled natural areas or living in the countryside; almost no manmade noises but mainly natural sounds; low population density, which stimulates the desire for contact; security, being able to go anywhere and feel safe. They used to be the conditions of traditional rural life and are now sought after by many retired or richer people.
Other ingredients such as extensive free time, long holidays, or flexible work schedules adapted to the personality can also be measured, but many others are extremely difficult to quantify.
P137. The mental ingredients. Which are not counted in the pcGNP, are extremely important and should be counted in HWB. At the personal level a high degree of mental well-being leads to a happy and long life, at the level of society it contributes to responsible behaviour, the creation of a positive human environment and security. It should be observed that, although the material well-being of people in primitive societies was much lower than ours, their mental well-being was considerably higher. In future it will therefore be necessary to switch to HWB as a measure of the state of advancement of society. Its introduction might stimulate a return to conditions more in line with our genetic make-up.
THE LIFE WE ARE EXPECTED TO LEAD
P138. Our world is now ruled by the dictates of the economy as never before, and few imagine that the future can be different. Making money seems to have become the central theme of human life. Success is associated exclusively with money or power – one leading to the other.
Yet life is a totally different matter. It is a multifaceted, interesting, and sometimes curious phenomenon. Work and money, developed, respectively, 10,000 and 5,000 years ago as a way to survive more safely and trade more easily, will in future come to be seen for what they really are: as a means to improve living conditions and not as the aims of life. When the Fourth Phase arrives, people will wonder what the point is of spending seventy or eighty years on this planet if life has to be impoverished to the point where it consists for the largest part in running after money.
P139. Modern society is not geared to encouraging people to lead an existence that is as human and pleasant as possible. That has never been its purpose. On the contrary, we are expected to submit to the onslaughts of modern society upon our most basic psychological needs and to continue to function efficiently. In the Third Phase the economy is not at the service of the people. It is the other way around. We are dominated by the interests of work and industry and are expected to be no more than willing producers-customers. Those who reject the impoverishing life pressed upon them today are treated as untrustworthy anarchists – or at the best as unrealistic dreamers. People will have to wait for the Fourth Phase to be able, finally, to adapt work and the way they live to the particular rhythm of their bodies and to have the opportunity to choose a life in which their personalities can develop to the full instead of being steamrollered from childhood into becoming useful, functional parts of the complex machinery of modern society.
Peter PEETERS’ FUTURE of HOPE