Following is a note from Phil Done, a reader and regular commentator at this blog:
“A recurrent theme on the blog in the great battles of good versus evil is that that free markets are wonderful efficient mechanisms and economic growth is a good thing. But is a big fat Gross National Product the meaning to life.
Does the GNP represent the environment, our heritage, our culture and our true happiness?
The New Economist reports:
“The hippies, the Greens, the road protesters, the downshifters, the slow-food movement – all are having their quiet revenge. Routinely derided, the ideas of these down-to-earth philosophers are being confirmed by new statistical work by psychologists and economists.
First, surveys show that the industrialised nations have not become happier over time. Random samples of UK citizens today report the same degree of psychological well-being and satisfaction with their lives as did their (poorer) parents and grandparents. In the US, happiness has fallen over time. White American females are markedly less happy than were their mothers.
Second, using more formal measures of mental health, rates of depression in countries such as the UK have increased. Third, measured levels of stress at work have gone up.
Fourth, suicide statistics paint a picture that is often consistent with such patterns. In the US, even though real income levels have risen sixfold, the per-capita suicide rate is the same as in the year 1900. In the UK, more encouragingly, the suicide rate has fallen in the last century, although among young men it is far greater than decades ago.
Fifth, global warming means that growth has long-term consequences few could have imagined in their undergraduate tutorials.
None of these points is immune from counter-argument. But most commentators who argue against such evidence appear to do so out of intellectual habit or an unshakeable faith in conventional thinking.
Some of the world’s most innovative academics have come up with strong evidence about why growth does not work. One reason is that humans are creatures of comparison. Research last year showed that happiness levels depend inversely on the earnings levels of a person’s neighbours. Prosperity next door makes you dissatisfied. It is relative income that matters: when everyone in a society gets wealthier, average well-being stays the same.
A further reason is habituation. Experiences wear off. …Those who become disabled recover 80 per cent of their happiness by three years after an accident. Yet economics textbooks still ignore adaptation.
A final reason is that human beings are bad at forecasting what will make them happy. In laboratory settings, people systematically choose the wrong things for themselves.”
Economic theory has a concept called utility. If I give you $1M you’ll be really happy. $2M even happier. But as you go up with incremental millions your happiness does not keep increasing linearly. It tails off (except for Joe).
Most people of course don’t get off the linear part of the curve -like me!
But it’s more than that – our decisions need other values than economics built in.
Like http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=3257.
Led by its young king, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the kingdom of Bhutan is the only country in the world to measure its wellbeing by Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead of Gross National Product (GNP). This unorthodox approach is a serious attempt to question the values of unbridled economic progress, and foreground the importance of maintaining a balance between tradition and modernisation. Bhutan has followed a cautious path of development since the 1960s, with the intention of preserving its heritage and culture and protecting its environment.
GNH is an official policy of the kingdom, having been passed in parliament, and it is perhaps best illustrated by some examples from Bhutan which prove that happiness really does take precedence over economic prosperity there. The country limits the number of tourists that are able to visit it, because the Bhutanese had complained that the environment was being affected and sacred lands were being spoiled. The limiting was therefore aimed at increasing the ‘happiness’ of these people. Similarly, demonstrating that the concept of GNH is inextricably connected to accountability, anyone with a grievance can go to the king himself and get a hearing.
The policy of GNH, as well as focusing on cultural promotion and good governance, also aims to put an end to ‘spiritual hunger’. Material and technological progress is not rejected or banned, but it must not be to the detriment of the value of human life, and humanity’s soul. So the new policy has a spiritual aspect to it, as well as an eminently sensible accountability aspect. Mental and psychological wealth are genuine considerations in Bhutan. Happiness is more important than monetary wealth.
Should we in Australia replace the GNP with the GNH?
Or even better Ian Mott should enshrine the GNH as the prime statistic for the new happy state of Tropicana.
I reckon this blog being the innovative forum that it is (this obsequious grovelling should stop me getting deleted for a week) could lead a national revolution on use of the GNH. We could use it as a mediating concept in environmental disputes. No more taking greenies to court or chaining yourself in front of bulldozers – we would simply use a GHM (global happiness model) to optimise a mutually compatible and happy solution using multiple ensemble runs to explore the happiness chaos space under a variety of future happiness growth scenarios using a model of appropriate happiness sensitivity.
We would ask Ian Castles as the special envoy representing the stats office as a post-retirement fellow (having sorted out those SRES chappies and feeling very happy) to conduct a “basket of goods” type survey on happy indicators. You wouldn’t ask the Land and Water Audit or the IPCC as happiness might be going up when they tell you it’s going down?
Maybe happiness is affected urban heat islands? Would Warwick Hughes be happy with our happiness measurements? Would Louis insist there was an abiotic theory of happiness? Could Motty define happiness on the back of envelope. Would Ender insist on renewable happiness. And would Thinksy explore the inner semantic nature of happiness. Joe would be happy trading derivatives in higher happiness. If all else fails – Detribe could implant us with genetically engineered happiness.
And you would have to compensate for Rog being happy to be unhappy.
Be happy!“
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Thanks Phil.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
If the King of Bhutan wants to be the sole provider of his kingdoms’ happiness (“demonstrating .. accountability, anyone with a grievance can go to the king himself..”) then so be it but I would be most unhappy if assumptions derived from such a nutty crackpot scheme were to be applied to my patch.
The 1776 US Declaration of Independence states “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..”
Under this marvelous piece of legislation the Govt must protect the individuals right to pursue their own happiness. The rulers of Bhutan have now made individual happiness government business.
George Orwell wrote “1984” warning of Big Brother and how the power of the state could come to dominate the lives of individuals through cultural conditioning. Undeterred central planning advocates continue to opine on “happiness” linking it with the economy with the view to gaining political power.
There is no solid proof that wealth and happiness are co-dependant. There is ample evidence that happy people do better than unhappy people in most realms of life; they have better social relationships, do more volunteer work, have better health and make more money. Money may not make you happier, but being happy may make you more money.
This notion that we do not know how to live properly and need to be advised, directed or counselled by a government that is more skilled needs to be dispelled if not euthanised. Govts role is to provide the legal and constitutional framework for peace, freedom and prosperity of the individual and my happiness is definitely not their business.
I find the notion of GNH very appealing, and ideally it captures the notion of what government should be all about.
But the notion that the greenies might like it is a total non-starter. For them, humans seeking happiness is destroying the environment. Gotta wonder if Bhutan is doing something about happiness-destroying NGOs.
Schiller.
There is also the theory that nation states go into decline precisely because of the accumulated effect of all the economically inefficient compromises that have to be made, eg spending trillions on trying to stop GW instead of spending it on hospital back logs, deficient education systems, better water supply.
Or, spending money on wars that achieves no benefit to the nation state that pays for it.
Or, political masters making decisions based upon patronage by business and individuals to the detriment of the state.
Or, fill in your own eg
Like barnacles on a boat, eventually the ship of state goes slower and slower and chews up more and more energy going nowhere, with those on the bottom feeling the effect first.
Thats what makes people unhappy.
rog, Schiller & Malcolm do you think that GDP/GNP is an adequate assessment of national progress? If not, then what do you suggest?
More general, objective well-being, quality of life indicators are being considered by a number of democratic govts around the world.
Phil, Could I commend for your interest the new book on ‘Happiness’, published by Penguin Books in 2005? I’ll quote an extract from the blurb:
“From one of the leading voices in the new field of happiness studies comes a groundbreaking statement of the case: what happiness is, exactly, and how to get more of it, as individuals and as a society.. ..
“The central question the great economist Richard Layard asks in Happiness is this: If we really wanted to be happier, what would we do differently? First we’d have to see clearly what conditions generate happiness and then bend all our efforts toward producing them. That is what this book is about – the causes of happiness and the means we have to effect it.
Until recently there was too little evidence to give a good answer to this essential question, but, Layard shows us, thanks to the integrated insights of psychology, sociology, applied economics, and other fields, we can now reach some firm conclusions, conclusions that will surprise you. Happiness is an illuminating road map, grounded in hard research, to a better, happier life for us all.”
I need to warn you that Lord Richard Layard, the author of the book, was a member of the Select Committee of the House of Lords that recently reported unanimously that there were ‘weaknesses in the way the scientific community, and the IPCC in particular, treats the impact of climate change.’
The Committee also considered that a reappraisal of the IPCC emissions scenarios was urgently needed, in the light of criticisms by Castles & Henderson and others. They believed that the convergence assumptions were open to some question, that political factors should not be allowed to influence the scenarios, that poor analysis could not be excused and that the balance of evidence suggested that the high emissions scenarios contained some questionable assumptions and outcomes.
The Committee were critical of IPCC procedures, which struck them as opening the way for climate science and economics to be determined in part by political requirements rather than the evidence, and said that sound science cannot emerge from an unsound process. They were especially concerned that there might be political interference in the nomination of scientists to the IPCC.
So you’ll gather that Lord Layard and his colleagues on the Committee are among those IPCC bashers about whom you’ve had so many harsh words to say on this blog. In fact, your mate William Connelley from ‘realclimate’ has gone so far as to accuse their Lordships of telling ‘bald-faced lies’, and to urge them to get off their bums and produce some scenarios of their own.
My apologies for leading this thread away from your theme, which of course I agree is an important one.
Oh gawd.. save us!! When economists start rubbing their hands together with glee over the prospect of reviving the economic importance of welfare, utilitarianism and a taking a rational approach to generating and assessing happiness you know it’s time to join Motty’s ratty mob and create a defiantly independent self-governing state. Taxes to internalise the negative externality derived from income differentials with your neighbours, anyone?
Having just run a quick predictive model on this particular scenario, I arrived at the conclusion that is setout in an absolutely brilliant book: “Happiness” by Will Ferguson. I recommend it.
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a method of traveling.
“Politicians mistakenly believe that economic growth makes a nation happier.”
I disagree, SOME politicians know that economic stagnation makes a nation very unhappy (with its government). I’m not sure that Federal Labor has really worked this out, still being concerned with trendy issues like Kyoto as they are.
Personal happiness is not the business of government, being accountable to the electorate is.
I wonder if “sceptics” are happier than “warmers”? I reckon they are, as you have to believe the world is heading for hard times if you accept all the AGW arguments, what with CO2 emissions still rising.
Commentators from Aristotle to Czikszentmihalhyi have noted that happiness occurs as a by-product of the pursuit of other goals. Conversely, if sought for its own sake, it recedes out of reach. Or, as Jennifer puts it, happiness is a method of traveling, not a place of arrival.
That aspect of happiness is what makes it difficult to measure; it is something which arises in the course of other things. Like, for instance, the myriad activities that lead to GDP. Conversely, anyone who’s held a job they hate knows that some contributions to GDP generate *un*happiness.
For that reason, I’m skeptical of the use of GDP as an indicator of general happiness.
There are other reasons to be skeptical. For instance, the fact that happiness can often arise in the course of activities that have nothing to do with GDP. Indeed, it’s often said that “the best things in life are free.” If they’re free, the only economic values you can assign are either priceless or zero.
That’s not to say that GDP is completely worthless as a proxy measure of general happiness. This much is certain: GDP is a measure of the economic conditions help make happiness possible.
When one is free of anxieties over where the next meal will come from, where to sleep or get health care, the potential for happiness increases. However, after the point where wealth has provided the necessities of life, the actual experience of happiness is very much up to the individual.
There’s a bias that confounds discussions in squishy areas like this, and that’s a bias in favor of numbers. What’s countable is easily established as authoritative, after all. But one has to beware what one is counting. Money does not buy happiness, so counting money (via GDP) doesn’t actually count happiness. Counting suicide rates is far more likely to quantify mental disease than anything else, and may reduce to the prevalence of genetic predispositons in a given population.
So, GHP is a great idea, but until it’s quantifiable–and I’d like to know how–the contributions of a government to GHP will remain largely unknown and many terrible mistakes will be made in the course of trying to boost GHP. Like they are now.
Schiller.
Phil says:
Economic theory has a concept called utility. If I give you $1M you’ll be really happy. $2M even happier. But as you go up with incremental millions your happiness does not keep increasing linearly. It tails off (except for Joe).
I almost didn’t read it, Phil and then decided I ought to as I suspected there would some sort of backhanded slap against me. I was disappointed in my hunch.
This stuff get back to Ckive Hamilton’s rants about us being unhappy and I guess you would be one of his avid readers.
Let me tell you what I think. I think Australians are the happiest bunch of people on th planet. The main reason is we are prosperous and our way of life is unbeatable. Most people don’t hae to work too hard to lead what the rest of the world would consider to be unreachable.
I like the idea Phil, but might not Gross National Hope be a better criterion? Given basic survival needs, hope is the prime psychological need for humans. Poor people with hope are happier than rich people without hope. No hope leads to depression and suicide. Hope is destroyed by those who continually predict, report, and exaggerate disasters. I don’t mean we should ignore problems, but let’s not be neurotically obsessed with them.
I wonder how much forieign aid the desperately poor nation of bhutan asks for, ( and gets )from the UN, the japanese, indians? and assorted ngo’s each year?
Heaps I bet. See! money does buy happiness!
And no tourists to put up with, ( or live off )either!
If I tell a joke and an Aussie laughs have I upset the hapiness balance of trade? Can I tell the joke if he promises not to laugh? Will the tax collector still impose a duty laugh or no?
“We hope in that which we do not see”, or something like that, goes the quote from Paul, he of falling off his horse and bumping his head whilst travelling on the road to Damascus fame. Apparently this experience was akin to playing Black Sabbath records at 78rpm – he saw God. Actually, I might have the order of events wrong here, he listened to Black Sabbath at 78, saw God and then fell off his horse.
Optimism and happiness in the face of challenges or difficult circumstances seems to come from the hope that things will work out okay in the end. We often have to solve a problem that we don’t understand and so the problem may appear to stretch to the horizon in all directions, but with hope, you work your way through it. Perhaps hope is the way of travelling and happiness is the return on the investment of hope?
So Davey, I’m with you on Gross National Hope, and the most amazing thing is, we won’t have to change the acronym.
On optimism, Boxer (& given yr earlier comments on other thread) you might be interested to read the Stockdale paradox: http://www.jimcollins.com/lab/brutalFacts/index.html#
then click the link: Chapter 4, page 83-85
Is the manic depressive not happy when their expectations of disaster or disappointment come to fruition? Is the addict not similarly euphoric when their dependency is gratified?
Happiness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. If central government was to represent the public interests according to GNH, would the provincially disenfrachised be any more likely to accept the happiness of the metropolitan majority?
On an environmental note, are you happy that there are more than 6 billion humans on the planet and that a miniscule portion would argue for less air-conditioners?
And yet there is life, as inexplicable as it is, and its infinte potential.
Perhaps the enlightened government would supply its citizens with the fruits of the GM opium poppies that thrive in Tasmania. GNH for free!
Thinksy,
I read your reference about Stockdale, and what an outstanding person he was. But it is drawing a very long bow to relate what he did in prison, to what might govts use as better indicators of wealth and happiness.It is also drawing a long bow to extrapolate from his experiences where the optimistics didnt survive very well, to this situation.
Very few of us have ever had to endure his hardships in incarceration.
Wasnt there as theory, or principal about, “Maslowes hierarchy of needs”,as to what drives/motivates people.
I would have thought that GDP etc is the first of a number of measures that people and govts.
use, that are generally related to satisfying the Maslowes needs list
At least in a liberal democratic society if one dont like ones job, then move, if one doesnt like ones lifestyle then change it,up or down.If one is generally a complete misery guts who can’t see any joy in anything,and is unable to change anything then take some more Prozac,and/or blame the Govt.
But then I am an Optimist.
Ive been reading many of the comments made at this sight without commenting, but stumbled across a very fine website (via ALD) that realy should be read my Thinksy in particular, as it hits the mark on many contributor’s comments here, I’d venture – the confussion between ideology and truth seeking:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/about.htm
Why Butterflies and Wheels?
The web site takes its name from a comment made by the philosopher Mary Midgley in a footnote to an article she wrote called Gene Juggling. She had this to say about the work of Richard Dawkins:
Up till now, I have not attended to Dawkins, thinking it unnecessary to break a butterfly upon a wheel. But Mr Mackie’s article is not the only indication I have lately met of serious attention paid to his fantasies.
Richard Dawkins said of the footnote, correctly in our view, that it would be ‘hard to match, in reputable journals, for its patronizing condescension toward a fellow academic.’
If the footnote were the only thing wrong with Gene Juggling, then that would be bad enough. But, in fact, the whole article is riddled with elementary errors and misunderstanding. Why? Well, that’s a complicated story, but at least part of the reason has to do with the fact that Midgley’s motivation in writing the article was to challenge a moral outlook – psychological egoism – that she found repellent. That’s why Butterflies and Wheels is a suitable name for this web site. It’s a reminder that it is never a good idea to allow one’s political, ideological and moral commitments to infect the judgements that one makes about truth-claims which have nothing to do with such considerations.
On my third reading I reckoned this thread on measuring happiness and its comments has to be answered. But Phil; we don’t need this blog to feel deleted, that feeling comes from just being alone. However let’s say abstinence is so good for the sole and I feel so sad for the ones who can’t leave it alone.
Reflections from life from within a prison got me thinking again about the “Act of Creation”. I struggled through it reading backwards and forwards over and over till inspired enough to read Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon.
Years ago I with several others had to mind a hot head out on parole. Done for arson they held this immigrant responsible for all the crime against our insurance companies. There he had a lot of time to think. On the inside he said “as you go in, you suddenly become aware there are two kinds of individuals in any cell of our society, those on top and those underneath”. Only the scum survives. Although his new found ability with a fine paint brush was his ticket of leave, our man was hell bent on revenge after a foster father killed their youngest child while he was “away” in “her” absence.
We turned him off a detour on his way to a secret overseas location where a private lender had sent the rest, but only after the last beer before the long dash to the local airport. “Cheers” on a postcard time and date stamped in the Middle East received weeks later was the only clue his schedules were changed.
Happiness for five lost redheaded girls was finding their grandma through a publican. There are no records for stats in many cases.
When I sent some youthful volunteers one after the other to our tent left in the wettest of wilderness, to mind the death of a dune system we also had the responsibility off maintaining their contact with civilisation and debriefings afterwards. One uni student wrote her thesis but another youngster lost his marbles. A third found our gear attractive and sold some of it in a pub on his way home. Happiness in isolation means different things to different people.
Life is only an opportunity.
I reckon Phil, if this blog is any indication , we need other people!
The Germans think Happiness means Lust, and this blog provides depressing evidence (for us retired folk) that this is true.
Phil is happiest when he is boring it up Rog. The IPCC are forever running after hot models, and when they find them, inserting their whopping exaggerations. Even the gurus recommended on this red thread (if they are real and not just blue movie actors) are called Lord Layard and King Wangchuk.
Like all depressing things about life, this one has been known since time immemorial. The first dismal scientist, the author of Ecclesiastes, urged us to:
Remember thy Creator in the days of they youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say “I have no pleasure in them.”
The real meaning of this passage becomes clear when one realises that “Creator” is a euphemism for “private parts.” I have this from Bertrand Russell, who had it from a scholarly friend, and who himself wrote a book on The Quest for Happiness.
May the capable take note, before the evil days come
Speaking of happiness, and after that last utterly classic post, one is reminded
that climate simulation modelling is like onanism – an essentially harmless and pleasurable activity for the idle-minded but should not be confused with the real thing.
All this psych talk! detribe was it a freudian slip when you wrote “my Thinksy” above? I did read after all, on yr blog a while back, that you like me after all! ;D Looks like an interesting site, thanks for the link, I will read.
Re: the talk of happy castles in the sky, and Layard, George Monbiot wrote of his astonishment that this happiness business is being treated as news (or is it just more business?):
Beyond a certain degree of wealth – an average GDP of around $20,000 per head – “additional income is not associated with extra happiness”. Once a society’s basic needs and comforts have been met, there is no point in becoming richer.
I am astonished by the astonishment with which their findings have been received. Compare, for example, these two statements:
“So one secret of happiness is to ignore comparisons with people who are more successful than you are: always compare downwards, not upwards.” Richard Layard, 2005.
“It put me to reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings.” Daniel Defoe, 1719.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/01/31/property-paranoia/
Yours,
It’s not a new idea, good people – Aristotle called it eudaimonia. Thanks for the support on hope, Boxer. I hope you maintain your hope, and hang in there long enough to see CALM regain some integrity by actually managing land again, rather than dancing eco-ballet for the benefit of its political commissars. With your nom-de-plume I am sure you remember the scene the animals eventually saw through the kitchen window.
Alas My dear thinsksy, if wasn’t a freudian slip, merely a finger slip leaving out the courteous dear. (And I do apologise for unintended pompous patronising words. I really should proof read before pushing the post button!).
BUt the site Butterflies and wheels is really interesting.I’m a great fan of Paul Gross, Norman Levitt, Martin Lewis, Dawkins, and Steven Pinker who all feature in the site. The debate between dawkins and others on sociobiology type topics is really illuminating because it provides muchto emulated in terms of clarity of thinking and a clash beteen differeent cultural worlds. The legal-logical sections of the site are great too, and it’s not about primarily environmental arguments also – which makes a pleasant change from AGW duels to someone with strong interests in biology in all its guises.
So while the Germans confuse socks-and-sandals with lust, and while Mr P. Done wants see us all in a tight bondage of regulations for his own compulsory Gross National Pleasure, and Mr Detribe has butterflies doing cartwheels in his belly while he tried to think clearly ;), other commenters are concerned that the govt shouldn’t concern itself with the happiness of its public.
Although some comments above have been playful, and funny, we’ve haven’t bitten into the meat of the issue. It’s less about enforced happiness, more about enhancing our ability to create enabling conditions that permit people the optimal quality of life, maximum well-being.
The GDP measures both goods and bads. Early attempts at filtering out negative externalities (eg hosing bodies off roads) from GDP have concluded that (in the US? or UK or both? can’t recall) while GDP has steadily grown since its inception, a balanced GDP measure of national well-being has either remained constant or slightly declined (failing memory again).
Happiness is a state at a point of time, dependent on many variables and their interactions in the circumstances leading up to that point in time. To experience more happiness then, you need to constantly recreate the conditions that produce that state. Other research has shown that individuals tend to maintain a relatively constant state of happiness or unhappiness, whatever their tendency, regardless of circumstances. And there are cultural tendencies. Hence the poms move to a wonderful country like Aust and keep on bloody wingeing. Hence an African lady I met in Europe said to me ‘white people are always unhappy, worrying about money, stress etc but in Africa, even when we’re dirt poor, we still laugh and have fun. You see them there, they’re always laughing laughing laughing and making fun’. So happiness is a highly personal (and culturally relative) affair and probably more of a metaphorical label than a strictly derived application in GNH.
So some commenters are right to say that the govt can’t create happiness for its people. But the govt can and does create enabling conditions for a satisfying or unsatisfying life. Taking a broader consideration of national well-being and quality of life, it falls firmly within the government’s mandate. Consider tax laws, education, health system, working conditions. Do we want a society, for eg, with increased inequality, with more people entering a poverty trap? (Please don’t imply that I’m suggesting a socialist model as I’m not – govt policies already influence these areas and will continue to do so – either increasing or decreasing inequality).
We shouldn’t ignore GDP – it’s a useful measure of what it measures. But we should bear in mind that it only measures what it measures. Let’s not rely too heavily on GDP/GNP as an indication of progress.
I reckon we should consider a national measure of well-being / quality of life. These kind of factors are already considered anyway (eg measures of health, lifespan, education, income bands, discrimination etc) and already influence the public’s vote, so it’s really just a matter of devising and tracking a consistent, comprehensive measure. There is a lot of activity now going into developing such measures.
You really are a thinker, Thinksy. I agree with much of what you say, and you are right in saying that, despite the flippant comments (I may be guilty), this is an important matter. When animals are unhappy, they stop breeding – hence local extinction.
How can we progress the matter, and get it into the public and political arena? Is it really a matter of Human Ecology? Some years ago, I did a Master’s degree in that at Brussels University. It was in the Faculty of Medicine, since its central emphasis was on human wellbeing, including hope and happiness. Do Australian Universities need to consider courses in Human Ecology, probably best run by humanities people with some historical depth? As far as I am aware, the only such course at present is run by the Forestry School at ANU. I am not sure of its historical and philosophical depth.
I seem to remember that H.G. Wells, long ago, suggested that the rulers would eventually be human ecologists – Plato’s philosopher kings? The pity is, when we are all ever so wise, we might all die of boredom. Maybe we need Osama and George to shake things up a bit. Don’t complex systems function best on the edge of chaos? Would the Feigenbaum number be a quantitative measure of social fitness? I am beginning to wander a bit … we old chaps do that…
Davey thanks for that response. Don’t worry about the flippant comments, they boosted the GNH and probably upped Phil’s personal Gross Domestic Pleasure!
Interesting on Human Ecology: Edinburgh seems to be the active centre for such courses – I expect there are radically different approaches – their’s is a deeper shade of green no doubt, with strong celtic roots. I doubt anyone here would disagree that we need more joined-up thinking and cross-skilling in our education. When my mind wanders I sometimes imagine compulsory national service of a new type where youths can choose from working on farms; land restoration; among extreme poverty (LDCs); waste management.
QoL/well-being is an issue I’ll continue to observe. Activities are happening and we’ll learn from them. eg the isle of Jersey – being a haven for $$, they had general concerns about the path their development and lifestyles were taking, hence started worked on a well-being indicator.
this bonus 😉