Decline of consumption no longer a weak signal

Thought I’d tie a couple of themes we’ve been talking about here together: consumption and weak signals. I’ve had a three or four posts over the last couple years on declining consumption in affluent World 1 nations (more on “3 worlds“). They could be called “indicator” posts of the basic driving force of “declining consumption.”  Declining consumption in turn is linked to a Soft Path scenario. Lots of other things need to happen for the Soft Path scenario to emerge, but I have argued that if consumption levels returned to pre-recession levels as the recovery strengthened, then I missed the boat. I made the case in ConsumerShift that the recession would strengthen the long-term trend to less consumption driven by values shifts by making consuming less easier (in the sense that tough economic times provide a great incentive to consuming less).

To tie to weak signals, my colleagues and I have been talking about some version of what I’m now calling a Soft Path scenario for years. And lots of other people have, too. At the heart of the scenario, for me at least, was a choice by people to live differently, including living more sustainable and consuming less. I still remember my very beginning as a futurist in the 1980s as an undergrad and reading Limits to Growth and grasping its message of the potential for “overshoot and collapse,” in essence being driven by over-consumption. I suppose that drove me to look for answers and I eventually found the values work. The idea that affluent people would choose “less” was a fringe idea for a long, long time.

In classes now, we refer to Everett Roger’s Innovation Diffusion Curve and note how many ideas languish in no-mans land at the beginning of the curve and never shoot the gap toward the mainstream. To bring in another teaching point, if we applied an Integral perspective (see “Evolution of Integral Futures“, a lot of times what happens to those promising ideas (or weak signals in our parlance) is the context needs to catch up. Looking at our four quadrants, maybe the support for the signal is strong in one quadrant, and weak in the others, e.g., the motivation or intention is strong, but the systems or support infrastructure is weak.

We also talk about an indicator that signal strength is growing is that mainstream sources begin reporting on it. Nasdaq.com hosted this story on “The End of the Consumer, for instance. I hope you’re enjoying this exploration of weak signals — fun for me, too! Andy Hines