the ecology of happiness
better lives
Unconferencing Rio+20, Really Changing Things
Normally, I reserve the personal for my blog “at home in… w| Gerald Zhang-Schmidt“, but allow me… I was one of those precocious kids discussing the environment on TV and at conferences just around the time the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – the Rio ’92 “Earth Summit” – took place. I had [...]
Quit with the Band-Aids, Change Lives and Work for Better
Or, Why I Don’t Ask for Donations… “Green” concerns have been moving further into the mainstream of business, companies proclaim their sustainability and CSR (corporate social responsibility) engagement, the rich and famous create philanthropic foundations to address poverty and (other) human rights issues … and in all the excitement over the pretty Band-Aids, radical reason [...]
Sacrifice. It’s All For Economic Growth Now…
It has always been the story that the environmentalists are the crazy ones, the ones who would protect owls rather than create jobs, move back into caves rather than out into space (or the gadgetry of cyberspace, at least). The future, if one listened to “them,” would be green, perhaps, but also pretty archaic. Or [...]
In Your Life, In the World, You’re The One
Our stories shape the way we feel about our role in the world, the basic ideas we come to accept as the way the world functions. Hollywood makes dreams. Bollywood, maybe even more so. Fairy tales aren’t too different. Myths explained what the world was like and why it was like that, and not different. [...]
Personal Development, Not For Records, But For a New Better Normal
Many of the people who are hailed as great examples of personal development and have cult followings online, showing how life could be much better, how you could come to be great – like them – present their elevated status all through grand adventures, world travel and world records, knowledge of languages, and the like. [...]
Occupy, Critics, and the Quest for Unthinking
Occupy Wall Street has recently caught on, the media are starting to notice, people are wondering… Criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement has quickly come to focus on a lack of demands. Many of the pundits seem to think that such a protest is like a hostage taking: there are some central demands, and [...]
Work Less, Live More… and more
Another case being made for putting sustainability – if you don’t like the word, you can call it survival, or progress, or reality – at the center of what we do. And at the same time, not another one of your average calls for sacrifice for the future, or to just grow with a tinge [...]
Eco-Logically, Really, Better Lives
… or, Bringing Lifestyle Design Back to Earth, Making It Multiply-Good Putting things rather too simple (the way it’s often done), there are two choices nowadays:
