According to the latest findings of modern science–or at least that portion of modern science employed by the California-based consulting firm SRI Research–I’m an Achiever. Frankly, I’m flattered, if a little bewildered, by the assessment. According to SRI’s Values and Lifestyles Survey (or VALS), I’m a proud member of a group of “successful career and work-oriented people who like to, and generally do, feel in control of their lives.”
If I’m a typical Achiever, the researchers concluded, I live on a diet of rice cakes, frozen yogurt, low-fat cheese, and liquid nutritional supplements. I’m likely to while away the hours reading Parenting magazine and the Wall Street Journal. I’m likely to own a snowblower, have a self-cleaning oven, and belong to the PTA. Approximately 16 percent of the adult population is just like me.
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The most achieverlike thing I’ve ever done is buy a decent computer–on credit, of course. Computer companies fill my mailbox with alluring offers–lovely glossy, almost pornographic photos of computers promising more POWER! more MEMORY! more SPEED!–but I don’t have the money to buy any of this merchandise right now, thank you very much. Not that I’m entirely out of the computer loop. I’m planning to buy paper for my printer sometime in the near future. And I’m seriously considering a box of disks.
The types described so far on the list have been what advertisers like to think of as the more desirable market segments–generally people earning more money than I do. But now we come to the less desirable segments, and the language of the survey becomes a little more euphemistic.
The only group to which I feel any real connection is the last one on the list, the lowest of the low, the people the VALS researchers call “the Strugglers.” The name alone brings a nod of recognition from me. “Struggler lives are constricted.” I nod. Strugglers have “limited material and educational assets.” They lack “strong social bonds” and are overly “concerned about their health. Strugglers are often resigned and passive…limited by the need to meet the urgent needs of the present moment.” If you disregard the part about education–I’ve got it coming out the wazoo–that’s me!
