(*I want something better!) I took this photograph of my daughter this summer: we are in an alpine meadow about an hour outside Munich, hiking up to a hut where some friends would be married. These two girls were thrilled to be together, conquering the mountain and communing with cows, carrying all they needed for […]
The “pursuit of happiness” is a phrase Americans know well. The United States Declaration of Independence established it in 1776 as an inalienable right for all citizens. Fast forward to 1955, and happiness becomes a national pastime, epitomized by Disney’s “Happiest Place on Earth.” Now in the first quarter of the 21stcentury, happiness is a […]
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to achieve a Good Life for All—how a life built on a strong foundation of wellbeing would actually look in practice. While this may not make me the life of the party, I’ll gladly trade small talk for BIG ideas any day. The challenge now is […]
The places people live, whether by choice or circumstance, can offer clues as to who those people are, and an intentional community like the Srisa Asoke Buddhist Center speaks volumes about its residents. This post introduces Srisa Asoke and the people who live there. Isan Srisa Asoke is located roughly fifty kilometers from the Cambodian […]
As I was writing yesterday’s post, How to Thrive: Specifying the Universal Elements of Wellbeing, I started thinking about this paper I had presented at the International Conference on “Happiness and Public Policy” in Bangkok several years ago. It elaborated a democratic procedure through which communities could create a list of capabilities they wanted to […]
Although wellbeing can be subjective—the specifics of what makes a good life for one person surely differ from another’s—it seems safe to say that there are universally necessary elements. On a broad level, we must attend to all six dimensions of wellbeing: an individual’s mental/physical, material, social, and existential wellbeing, as well as that of […]
When most people think about the wellbeing of society, they tend to think in financial terms—how is the economy doing? Is it growing? By what percent? Yet there are fundamental problems with the overemphasis on economic growth as THE path to prosperity. Besides the fact that it’s based on Western values of material accumulation and […]
With the GDP turning 80, this year is sure to bring fruitful discussions on alternatives that will better measure wellbeing. These discussions are already happening, not just on the fringes of public discourse but in initiatives sponsored by world leaders in government and premier global organizations like the United Nations (UN) and the Organization for […]