NZ Escapes “Affluenza” Virus

NZ gets off relatively lightly in UK psychologist Oliver James’s treatise on rampant materialism, Affluenza: How to be Successful and Stay Sane. James defines affluenza as an unhealthy obsession with wealth which has led to epidemic levels of depression, over-consumption and spiritual emptiness in the developed world. To research the book, James interviewed 240 people in the US, Singapore, Australia, China, Denmark, NZ and the UK. After spending three months in NZ in 2004 he found its citizens to be comparatively unaffected by what he terms “selfish capitalism.” “The New Zealanders are the most individualistic nation on earth, even more so than the Americans,” he writes. “But I suspect New Zealand individualism takes a much more genuine form than that confected in America.” The publication of Affluenza in NZ has caused widespread media speculation as to who the prominent interviewees really are.