the ecology of happiness
Ground Rules
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 [...]
Realizing The Power In Our Own Hands
“It’s no good believing in somebody else If you can’t believe in yourself You give them the reason to take all the power and wealth” (“Turn It Up” – Alan Parsons Project) There is a very strange paradox of power about today. Never before has such a large part of humanity lived so well, and [...]
Killer Comfort, Crazy Convenience…
Life is about the pursuit of happiness, the experience of it all, the rush that makes you truly feel alive… or is it? Often enough, it looks as if we were all too happy to just settle for a bit of comfort. A cozy home, enough food, a little entertainment, a little excitement every now [...]
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. [...]
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:
Balance: Hard Work, Not Harmony and Rainbows
The most basic rule or guideline I keep returning to is the need for balance – and it seems to be the idea that’s easiest to misunderstand. It just sounds so new-age, compassionate, eco-friendly… Have you ever tried slacklining? It’s a new sport, basically a modern, climber’s, version of tightrope walking (except it’s not a [...]
In the Face of Catastrophe, Live. Live, anyways!
A long-standing observation about us humans is that we like to think that our world is fixed and stable (and even just). As a survivor of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami just said (and as people said after 9/11, as well): I never would have thought that such a thing was possible. It’s an equally [...]
Ground Rules–Intro
There are laws, there are cultural norms, there are hidden scripts – lots of rules govern our lives. Lots of them are either the domain of specialists, or hidden behind “how things are.” The way things are, however, is not making us live well. Often enough, we are not really getting happiness from it, even [...]
