In this period of financial jitters, it’s time to ask a rather contrarian question: mightn’t it be better if the economy did cool and we all had to work a bit less?

If the past three decades haven’t left us feeling happier, more fulfilled or optimistic, they have certainly brought us more work, to the point where levels of stress, depression and burnout are all rising, even though we live amid unprecedented abundance.

Research last week showed that work stress raises our risk of heart disease. And our average commuting time has doubled in the past five years. Most of us can’t even take a true vacation, because we feel driven to stay tied to the office via phone and e-mail.

For what? Pretty much everyone in the Western world now owns all the material basics required for contentment, but our socially competitive primate brains seem stuck in an arms race of acquisition that obliges us to buy ever more stuff to keep up with the Joneses. Then we feel compelled to purchase every incremental upgrade simply to get a whisker ahead. But no one feels better off: in the past 20 years, the proportion of Westerners who describe themselves as “rich” has stayed at between 1 per cent and 2 per cent. The rest of us just feel knackered from perpetually climbing a down escalator.

Worse still, our culture seems to have a split personality: all but the most cotton-headed now realise that ever-spiralling production and consumption threaten the Earth, but everyone goes into a panic when our constant-growth economy looks threatened.

We continue to work longer hours and feel less satisfied. It’s causing both planetary and personal burnout. We need to ask a taboo question: what’s the alternative to constant growth and ever more work?

John Naish’s new book, Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More, is published by Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99

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