We first purchased in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast 14 years ago when our modest Queenslander priced at $150K was one of the few homes available for sale on the mountain just west of Mooloolaba.

Having been a visitor to the Sunshine Coast for at least 15 years prior to that we naively never expected that a sleepy village such as Buderim, that had remained the same for decades and decades, would ever get carved up into a suburb resembling any other in trendy parts of Brisbane by the year 2002.

Still we kept with our original vision and decided to downshift in 2003 reasoning with ourselves that whilst Buderim was no longer the yesteryear village we first bought into in 1991, we would still have the close proximity to the beach that we’d always dreamed of.

Besides, the move from Brisbane to Buderim came with some other irresistible benefits.

ABC Background Briefing: 9 Feb 2003

Mick O'Regan: Small coastal towns in regional Australia used to be better known for dairy products than designer homes. Agriculture is still crucial in many such places, but now farmers are having to contend with another local growth industry: people.

Population grown along the coastal strip is transforming regional communities in a number of ways, and prompting debate about regional development.

Hallo, I’m Mick O'Regan, and this week Background Briefing is heading for the coast to explore what’s going on.

Read the rest of Mick O'Regan's program, from a couple of years ago, which looks at the impact of downshifting and sea-changing on both the people and the communities here.

The decisions of downshifters are taken under the influence of powerful social and cultural currents, shaped to an unprecedented degree by the symbols provided by the market and the ideology underlying modern consumer capitalism. Evidence suggests that the decision to downshift requires a process of unshackling oneself from overriding social expectations which are manifested at the broadest level of society and which seep down to the personal reactions of intimate friends and family.

Since downshifting is now such a numerically significant phenomenon − it is a choice made by nearly a quarter of adult Australians (23% of those aged 30-59), and similar proportions in the USA (Schor 1998; Ray and Anderson 2000) and Britain (Hamilton 2003b) − it has become a social force. Already, marketing companies are advising their clients on how best to pitch their messages to these ‘anti-consumers’. In recent years, several books have appeared to cater to the downshifting trend, mostly ‘how to’ manuals, but also some serious social analysis (e.g. Drake 2000; Etzioni 1998). Downshifting is not yet a conscious political force, although the shift in priorities of this segment of the electorate must be beginning to influence voting patterns.

Perhaps before it becomes a political force, the social critique adhered to by most downshifters, whether explicitly or after some consideration, will need to be debated more widely. There is no doubt that aspects of this critique are widely held in the community amongst those who have not contemplated downshifting. For example, 83 per cent of Australians agree that our society is too materialistic, with too much emphasis on money and not enough on the things that really matter (Hamilton 2002) and most would recognise, with resignation, the Deferred Happiness Syndrome described earlier (see Others’ Reactions under What Pressures Have to be Overcome).

In a sense downshifters differ because they have taken this critique and acted on it in their personal lives by reordering their priorities. In other words, rather than society perceiving the notion vaguely as ‘out there’, downshifters think about what it means for their own decisions. Thus, in the words of one downshifter, Franco:

I think that because of the changes I have gone through I live more consciously and I believe that this will help my transition into living with less money. I have thought a lot about marketing and consumerism and I am now more conscious of the effect that these have on me. This in turn has affected my politics [emphasis added].

In a world where we are unconsciously, or semi-consciously, influenced by powerful forces to behave and think of ourselves in certain ways, living more consciously is a radical act. It is clear from the research that for most downshifters the change is one which involves taking control of one’s life and living more consciously, and that making the change takes courage. This is paradoxical in a society that celebrates individual freedom and which, over the last two decades, has been dominated by the politics of neoliberalism that deifies consumer choice. Why does it take an act of courage to choose to devote less time to earning money and acquiring things and more time to other pursuits?

If people today are the authors of their own lives, why do they hesitate for so long before writing the next chapter? The answer is that, despite all of the rhetoric, only certain forms of choice are socially permissible, those that are consistent with acquisitiveness and the desire to get on. The result, as we have found, is that downshifters lose friends and lose status and their relationship to society changes, sometimes in a fundamental way. This is why it takes courage to decide to work less or take a lower-paying job. At the same time, downshifters often forge stronger friendships with supportive others and create lives that, for them, are more autonomous and fulfilling.

We know that downshifting is already widespread in Australia, and it appears that downshifters are more willing to ‘come out’ and defend their choices, suggesting that soon downshifting will no longer be seen to be an act of defiance. It will become an ordinary decision rather than a daring one. At that point, we will know that modern consumer society has undergone a far-reaching change.