WAUKESHA – One of the three authors of the book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, Thomas Naylor will speak at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha on Thursday, October 7, at 7:00 p.m. in the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, located in the Fine Arts Center on campus at 1500 N. University Dr., Waukesha.
Invited to campus as a Distinguished Lecturer, Naylor is a professor emeritus of economics from Duke University. He will address “Affluenza: The All-American Bug.” Tickets are $5 and are available by phoning (262) 521-5212. (He also will speak with students at 1:00 p.m. in Northview 055. Admission is free to the afternoon session.)
For 30 years, Naylor taught economics, management science, and computer science at Duke but more recently has been teaching classes at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont, close to where he now lives. He was a visiting professor at UW-Madison in 1969-70. As an international consultant specializing in strategic management, he has advised major corporations and governments in more than 30 countries. During the 1970’s, he served as president of SIMPLAN Systems, a small computer software firm that drew clients from among Fortune 500 companies both in the US and abroad.
Widely published in such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Business Week, and The Nation, this rebel with causes also has made guest appearances on national TV news magazines and programs as well as on public radio. The most recent of his 30 books are Downsizing the USA, Aflluenza, and The Vermont Manifesto. He currently is working on a new book, Rebél.
In the book Affluenza, Naylor and his co-authors, John de Graaf and David Wann, diagnose a disease that is overpowering human instincts. According to them, affluenza, the unbridled pursuit of material goods, is robbing its victims of their most human attributes. It represents an imbalance, where the hunger for acquisition has gone haywire and is strangling the joy that comes from giving and, thus, is leaving behind only hollow shells.
They prescribe a simpler life to achieve a happier one – less work and more interaction with each other. “We’ve mutated from citizens to consumers,” they cite, and consumers do not have responsibility for their fellow consumers, as citizens do.
The disease became virulent after World War II, and, as the title of the 2001 book states, it now has become epidemic. People are replacing human relationships with entertainment generated by material items or simply by the act of shopping for them. This cancerous ailment is ruining the environment – physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional – of the world we all share and shall bequeath.
The book has been translated into six languages
Naylor holds bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and industrial engineering, an MBA in quantitative business analysis, and PhD in economics.
He now focuses his efforts on the home front, trying to improve life where he lives it. He founded the Second Vermont Republic movement, whose grassroots members peacefully oppose “the tyranny of the US government, corporate America, and globalization” with the aim to return Vermont to “its rightful status as an independent republic.” For this, Utne Magazine editor Jay Walljasper has dubbed him “Tom Paine for the 21st century.”
The Distinguished Lecture series is sponsored by the University Convocations Committee at UW-Waukesha.
UW-Waukesha has the largest enrollment among the 13 freshman-sophomore campuses of the University of Wisconsin Colleges. For information about programs, admissions, or financial aid, contact the Student Services office at (262) 521-5040 or visit the Web at waukesha.uwc.edu. |
