We have just published this short video on YouTube and many other channels.
This is the transcript:
We're told that success in life means having more money, but that's a very narrow definition.
Many with wealth still lack fulfilment.
So what does success really look like? It's far broader than accumulation. Real success in life revolves around five things.
The first is security, being able to meet basic needs reliably.
The second is having a purpose provided by meaningful work or activity, and lots of us crave for that and are denied it by the current economic system.
The third is relationships, whether that's with family, friends, a loved one, whatever. We need strong human connections.
The fourth is contribution, making a difference to others. We like to think, or we are told to think by economics, that we live in little bubbles of isolation, but that's not how we really live. We do want to make a contribution.
And the fifth thing is autonomy. We do want freedom to shape our own lives, and that does not contradict with what I just said about contribution. The two run simultaneously and in tension, and that's good.
What this means for the economy is this: wealth alone does not deliver these outcomes.
Systems can generate income, but undermine well-being, and that's what we're seeing in the world right now.
Work can lack purpose and security, and vast numbers of people know all about that every day.
The result is that inequality can damage relationships, and autonomy and economic design matters.
Success should then be measured in terms of lived experience.
Economies should support the five conditions I've mentioned. They don't. They reward accumulation for its own sake, and that's all our government, our economists, our commentators, and everybody else concentrates on.
Policy should reflect human needs, and not just markets, is my point. That is what a successful economy should deliver. We're a long way from that right now. We need to rethink our economics for success.
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Wisdom so well epitomised!
Thanks all round!
A distinctive strategy that could fit well with the values of the Green Party. One of the local Greens found your video on the National Debt valuable.
Manfred Kets de Vries, a management guru I still read felt that happiness had three main constituents for individuals:
1. Something to do.
2. Someone/something to love.
3. Something to look forward to.
You seem to be on the same page, you are macro, de Vries more micro.
I don’t know what it is billionaires do with their time and money, but they seem miserable. Most people I know spend their time with their friends and family, and on hobbies. That’s enough. Insecurity ruins that though. Insecurity caused by billionaires, ruining our fun so they can be richer, more miserable, scared and paranoid. Perverse really, when you think about it.
can we speak in flowers.
it will be easier for me to understand.
Nayyirah Waheed
@PSR
That’s a very old and wonderful maxim but you’ve missed out the fourth clause:
4. Something to look back on.
Happiness/contentment builds on the foundations of yesterday, and foundations have to be built soundly to carry the weight of the long and towering future.
When I was young enough to have friends “tying the knot”, those four clauses used to be written in all the wedding cards I sent! But why should they not apply to the national psyche as well?
Something I read recently suggested that we should think about writing a reverse obituary, that is an obituary that we would want our friends and loved ones to write about us when we are gone. In my view it is unlikely that many of us would want the obituary to be about how much money we made, how many cars we or houses we had. I hope that most of us would be hoping that people might say how caring, kind, generous and loving we were and that this demonstrates what what we should prioritise in our lives.
Anne
Kets de Vries is a psychologist who delves into the dark side of human leadership – the past in this case is something one maybe trying to escape from as a means to improve the future, become more self aware. It has a value unto itself . You are maybe right in that it would be nice to go back to the immediate post war future we were trying to build with Clem Attlee.
This society is still trying to escape the past from 2010 – austerity, incompetence, wanton destruction and greed. Not much to look back on really?
@PSR
I would suggest that we can build the past that the future can look back on. Every story must have a beginning – let’s make ours now, because tomorrow it will be our past.
Your points 4 and 5 are basic anarchism – sociopolitics without the toxic lead overcoat of the self serving political class puppeteers.