Curating Content To Support Learning About Humanity's Transition

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This content was posted on  21 Aug 22  by   Metamoderna  on  Facebook Page
“Happiness is quite difficult to grasp and is therefore difficult to make the goal and …

“Happiness is quite difficult to grasp and is therefore difficult to make the goal and meaning of politics. It is much easier to relate, for example, to the hard currency in which we measure our material resources. There is no one who can point to happiness and say exactly what it is. Yet our need to understand and politically relate precisely to happiness and suffering is increasing.

The next level of economics is therefore about transforming the human drives that govern our actions, our economic production, our consumption, and our entire working lives. This is what we call the economics of happiness: managing the entire stream of human actions in a sustainable way that promotes the greatest possible well-being for all. The simplest way to understand this is to ask: what levels of happiness and suffering do we create through the use of our time and resources, and how sustainable are these levels?

When we ask these questions and make policy out of them, we will have begun developing an economy of happiness. The economy of happiness means that we use society’s resources in a comprehensive and conscious way to reduce suffering and improve quality of life. Just take a minute to think of how many resources we have: so many talented and inventive people with so much money and materials at their disposal. Are these resources currently being used in the best possible way to create happiness and meaning? Are we really creating safety and freedom in the best possible way? It is a reasonable assumption that we can make much better use of our resources. Surely it would be strange to assume that society could not be improved, truly improved in depth.

It is not just a question of managing material resources, but of managing all of life. It is about how we spend our collective time and attention—and what results this produces. Above all, it’s about reallocating our time and attention so that we achieve greater happiness in a more sustainable way. It is by transforming the human drives of our economic systems that we can make the economics of happiness more effective. The means to this end is so-called ‘economic co-development’.”

—Hanzi Freinacht

https://medium.com/@hanzifreinacht/the-economy-of-happiness-f50562b753a9

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medium.com

It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s how the economy makes us feel: it’s about time, attention, and human drives

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