Thanks for clarifying, Treebeard. I got my figures from the National Gardening Association via my Clemson University Master Gardener course.
To answer your question about the shifting paradigm, I am going to start with a literary quotation. In the book, The Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits get back to the Shire at the end of the third book, they have to clean out some ruffians who have taken over. Now, if you recall, Sam–Frodo's friend and servant–stuck with Frodo through all sorts of horror and danger: giant spiders, hordes of goblins, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, temptation, betrayal, and evil. Yet when he gets home and they have to deal with a bunch of vagrants, his girl asks Sam why he had left Frodo just when things were getting dangerous (the vagrants). Sam thought to himself that this would take a week's answer, or none, and just went off to deal with this final minor crisis with no explanation.
I feel as if you've asked me a question that will require a week's answer, or none.
Curious on your thoughts about the broader point, it seems that there are positive trends that are accelerating. There is something much deeper that is going on that I was also trying to point to which transcends surviving within the current paradigm. There is a different narrative that is building on a different set of values that is gaining strength.
If by "a different narrative" you mean that people are beginning to realize in large numbers that keeping up with the Joneses and consumer culture are a broken narrative, I think you are correct. However, people in Western industrial civilization are coming to this realization from different start-points and different generations. Many of their philosophical conclusions have similar end points but they come from a variety of backgrounds. I speak here of American culture, because that's the one I know, but it affects the Western world.
The greatest generation, WWI, my parent's age, are of two minds. They remember the Great Depression–they were children then, and it scarred their psyches. They also see that our money is worth 100-times less than when they were children. In my anecdotal experience, most of them blame the devaluation of our purchasing power on debt, which the Depression taught them to avoid, and on leaving the gold standard. They did work hard for their retirement, and try very hard not be be a burden - most of them. But some of them got caught up in a display of wealth that was more consumer-oriented than others and got an entitlement mindset. At this point, most of the Greatest Generation are elderly, tired, and dependent on Social Security and socialized medicine for the elderly. They are too old and tired, as a rule, to be part of the solution. And if they have any brains, they are frightened for their future, If they have a heart, they are frightened for their children and grandchildren. Their entry point into the new paradigm is their concern for their children's future. Their proposed solutions usually involve a return to basic values: live simply so you can stay out of debt, work hard, family first.
The Baby Boomers, which I am a part of (age-wise), really seem to have bought into the materialist mindset with a will. This is the generation of "he who dies with the most toys wins" and I blame television and movies and advertisers for stoking the flames of materialism to a fever pitch. And here's what a lot of people miss about them: they thought money could buy happiness, and most of them did not make enough money to find out if that was true (it's not). So this generation is bitter that they did not "get theirs." New flash - most people just get by - money is not the root of all evil, the love of money is. This was also the generation of hippies and a counter-culture that threw out the baby with the bath water, threw out the good parts of their parent's lifestyles with the bad. At this point in their lives they are to a large extent disillusioned and–unless they became tech-savvy-- irrelevant to an economy that is no longer industrial, but knowledge-based and information-aged. These are the generation that are most likely to invoke "growth" as a blanket solution, since they lived their whole lives in an era where fossil-fueled growth was the norm. To them, growth is "normal." Their proposed solutions usually invoke this unquestioned belief in growth. Boomers who see through this lie seem to be turning to simpler lifestyles, but whether they do so out of necessity or cheerfully is a very individual thing.
Generation X is the tech-savvy generation who grew up with computers in the Information Age. As a group, they seem to have seen the two basic paths of their parents–consumer culture without morals or counter-culture without sense–and see them for the dead-ends they are. Rather than dog-eat-dog competitors, my experience with Gen Xers is that they are more likely to look for cooperative solutions. They've had to become more cooperative to survive in a much more difficult economy. They, as the old Beatles song goes, "Get by with a little help from their friends." Their proposed solutions are high-tech and cooperative, and often have no profit motive. A simpler lifestyle has bee foisted on them by fate, so they don't get credit for shunning a materialistic lifestyle so much as ignoring it as unattainable.
The Millennials really are getting the short end of the stick, in my opinion. The hard work of their great grandparents is no longer rewarded in a meaningful way, the industrial work of the grandparents is pretty much gone due to global competition, and the few high-tech jobs the Gen-Xers left them are not enough to keep body and soul together. They see materialism as what killed their future, not realizing just how much of that was due to debt: individual, corporate, banking, and nations are drowning in several generations of debt. Much of this recent debt was supposed to be a temporary stop-gap measure until "things got better." The Millennials realize that things are not going to get better. This is the generation that identifies with The Hunger Games, that sees the present system as immoral. What absolutely terrifies me is that they seem ripe for a revolution, but are not schooled in the dangers of the wrong revolution.
Your word-choices tell me that you are somewhat more "American liberal" than I am and that's not necessarily a bad thing. We can share solutions off the usual playing field here by being positive, solutions-oriented and listening to those we would normally not interact with. Bluntly, my fear is that you hope for a socialist revolution, which perhaps you think is more "fair" but–historically–has led to institutionalized poverty and merely a different elite class. We've not had real capitalism in this country for 100 years, and yet many blame corporations and free-market capitalism for the woes of state-ism.
100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one-one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.
Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market. (source)
I think a consensus is forming that we need to reject STATE capitalism via rejecting the federal reserve. We cannot afford the things we once thought of as normal, but shopkeepers should not be demonized for contributing to the economy in the same way multinational banking corporations like JP Morgan are, rightfully, demonized. My person opinion is that we need to stand up to the powers that be so that no one is above the law. When the John Corzines of this world are jailed for their crimes, things will improve. But the average Joe on the street is basically clueless to the fact that his money and future are being stolen right under his nose. In waking up from this lambs-to-the-slaughter mentality, I worry that they will be manipulated by a demagogue into a future that is even worse than the train-wreck we already have.