Tellus Institute - For a Great Transition

A sustainable and equitable planetary civilization will need to transcend the waste and isolation of the consumer society. On the foundation of material sufficiency for all, the good life in a Great Transition would come to emphasize individual fulfillment, community cohesion, and esthetic, spiritual, and environmental experience. Human well-being – today gauged by economic indicators – should be understood in a richer and more complex way that includes, but moves beyond, the economic dimension.

The Well-Being Project is concerned with how shifts in lifestyles and values might come about.

Three papers explore the concept of well-being in greater detail:
Strategies for Exiting the Squirrel Cage
John Stutz and Erica Mintzer – Sept. 1, 2006

Like squirrels caught in a cage, many of the relatively affluent are running faster and faster and faster, trapped in a cycle of work and spend that is exhausting as it leads nowhere. The endless pursuit of greater material wealth fails to deliver the well-being it seems to promise. How we got here and how we get out are the questions this paper explores. We can make choices as individuals to exit the cycle. And we can make choices as a society to make the passage easier. Among various personal avenues of escape are options such as downshifting, voluntary simplicity, smaller living spaces, and slow food. Social choices include options like better availability of benefits and legislating shorter hours. These are among the various “pushes” and “pulls” that can lead us beyond over-work and over-consumption.

The Affluence Paradox: More Money Is Not Making Us Happier –
A Review of Statistical Evidence
John Stutz and Erica Mintzer – June 2006

The affluence paradox is simply this: In the early stages of rising income, well-being rises also, but at a certain point well-being levels flatten out. At high levels the trend can reverse. For example, the average suicide rate in affluent countries is higher than in countries just below the affluence threshold. A similar trend can be seen with food consumption, where higher affluence correlates with higher levels of obesity. Using a variety of measures – comparing GDP to indicators like life expectancy, suicide, and time spent commuting – this paper examines the correlations between affluence and well-being. It finds that on virtually every measure examined, rising affluence does not contribute to high well-being after a certain threshold. The implications are profound. For the affluent at least, it’s not necessary to consume as much in order to be happy. People can slow down. Equally as promising, it may mean that developing nations can find paths to broad well-being that do not follow the path of excess affluence – and excess environmental impact – that Western nations have taken. When we succeed in unlocking the meaning of the well-being paradox – that more money is not the route to greater happiness – our lives, and the world, may never be the same.

What Does Happiness Look Like? The Well-Being Mandala
John Stutz – May 8, 2006

If well-being is not simply about consumption, what is it about? This paper reviews various viewpoints on this and offers its own conception: the well-being mandala. It’s a nested image of various facets of personal well-being (physical, subjective, reflective) residing inside broader social and environmental well-being. Well-being is a concept that’s vital for us to understand, because “the pursuit of happiness” may be one and the same as the pursuit of sustainability and planetary well-being. Just as excess consumption has a negative spill-over effect on society and the environment, the reverse is also likely to be true. By pursuing our own well-being, we will – serendipitously – be contributing to societal and planetary well-being.

More About the Well-Being Project

The program centers around three themes:

  • Frameworks - assessing the factors that influence well-being across nations and cultures using theoretical structures of human needs
  • Modeling - applying quantitative methods to assess the relative strength of the factors that affect well-being and the potential for reducing necessary labor time
  • Policy Assessment - developing strategies and programs for enhancing well-being

What features of our current economic, social, and political institutions contribute significantly to the quality of life? What changes in these institutions, and the way we function within them, are likely to offer an improved sense of well-being? What are the synergies between dematerialized lifestyles and environmental sustainability? The program is building a network of researchers and advocates to help shape a coherent vision of the meaning of well-being in a Great Transition.

*New*The Role of Well-being in a Great Transition *New*
This paper highlights data and findings on well-being and envisions a post-consumerist world in which the pursuit of well-being is the norm. It is published as part of the GTI Paper Series, Frontiers of a Great Transition.

Program leader: Dr. John Stutz
Contact: jstutz@tellus.org