the ecology of happiness
Side Trails
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 [...]
Davos’ Misunderstanding of Capitalism: The Radical Entrepreneurship Needed for the Future
The World Economic Forum is in session in Davos again, and it’s a rather different story this year. Even established magnates of business and government, after arriving on their private jets and moving in with their entourages, express concern about inequality and worry how capitalism can continue. The WEF’s founder even questioned whether it’s such [...]
Stuck in Debt, or Living Richer?
Affluence is what many still seek – as long as the house and the car get bigger, there is more stuff, they think they will feel better. It goes to the point where 18 to 27-year-olds actually have higher self-esteem and feel better in control of their lives when they have more(!) credit card and [...]
Martial Arts, Extreme Weather – Trouble… and Happiness?
Looking into survival techniques, self-defense, disaster preparedness… oftentimes has a bad ring to it. Expecting to get into trouble, doesn’t that mean that you have a negative attitude towards the world? Won’t facing the potential violence and brutality of other people just strengthen a grim outlook on how people are; and won’t preparing for disasters, [...]
The Creativity of Limits
The big hurt ecology seems to be giving us is that it suggests there are limits to what we can do. Of course, we live with such limits every day. We don’t take the window instead of the elevator because we know what height we can just jump from; we take the elevator and not [...]
Bye-bye, Anti-Nuclear… Cycles of Debate Aren’t Progress
Old habits are hard to break. For the nuclear energy lobby, which continues not to see any problems, just as for the anti-nuclear movement, which seems to ride the updraft from Fukushima to new heights of sympathy. Only too bad that one can already foresee who’ll win this race: money and complacency. Worse that the [...]
Shattered Truths, Reactions True to Culture?
So, you have been suffering through catastrophe, certainties of life have shattered along with infrastructure – now what? It’s a question that is being discussed a lot with regards to Japan (and in the context of Japanese culture), but bears wider relevance. Some of the basic ideas about ecological challenges and sustainability revolve around whether [...]
Success in a World of Skewed Competition
Whether you think “rags to riches” or “study hard, progress every day” (the latter by Mao Zedong), success seems to be the name of the game: getting rich, becoming famous, being the best, getting the girls, finding Mr. Right… Oftentimes, we go for the simplest of measures: money. Personal wealth for individuals, GDP for countries. [...]
Is There a There There?–Careers, Dreams, and Happiness
Sometimes it looks as if we had gone into a dreamworld, even as reality is ever less dreamy: Most people just toil away their lives, in the most usual ways, and even get annoyed at the very thought that things might not be as predictably stupefying as they expected them to turn out. The “promise” [...]
