Summary
ROGER DEAN'S office in the Sudan reached 55C in the dry season. Outside, the scrubby, dusty semi-desert was baked hard; inside, the 30-year-old Scot was bathed in sweat. He went to work at 4am once to see if it was cooler, but the temperature never dropped below 38C in that room. Dean worked as a logistician for Goal, a Dublin-based international aid agency. Goal does disaster relief and social development programmes. It doesn't do air-conditioning. After weeks of intense build-up, Dean would watch clouds forming overhead, swelling until they burst with the phenomenal biblical rains of the wet season. Overnight the temperature would plummet 20C, torrents of water bouncing off the earth, drenching the clay-like soil, creating rivers of mud in which the wheels of his car would simply spin helplessly.
It puts rush-hour traffic on the M8 into perspective. Or that irritating computer glitch at work. Add the fact that Dean was working in a voluntary capacity, with only a basic allowance instead of a wage, and his employment choices become even more interesting. We live in a society that celebrates 'me' over 'you'. If anything captures the zeitgeist of our times, it is advertising campaigns telling us we deserve expensive things. Why? "Because I'm worth it." Who says? Well, me, mainly. And those who want my money.See the full content of this document
Extract
Giving It Everything
So what makes a child of the 'me' generation run a supply base in Sudan, or work 48-hour shifts in an Islamabad hangar to bring emergency supplies to Pakistanis traumatised by earthquake, as Dean did? And is he any happier than the rest of us?
Materially, we are more affluent than ever before. Research suggests we are also more unhappy. Last year, Affluenza, written by the psychologist Oliver James, showed that the wealthier a country was, the more stress and depression its inhabitants suffered.Professor Phil Hanlon of Glasgow University is undertaking government-sponsored research into the relationship between our way of life - or culture - and our well-being. "A new set of problems in public health in Scotland has emerged in the last 20 years," he says. "I'm not talking about the problems everyone is familiar with, such as heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease and so on - we're combating those illnesses. What we're n...See the full content of this document
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