What does progress mean to you? If you had to sum it up concisely in a sentence, what would it mean to you in the context of your own life and experience?
Recently I participated in a workshop sponsored by Anew NZ and Statistics New Zealand. The workshop, entitled What Matters Most to New Zealanders, aimed to explore measurements of sustainable development.
While there is still a lot of work to be done in this area, I was impressed with both organisations for taking on such important research. Genuine progress indicators are really valuable to have as, without them, governments tend to rely on figures like GDP to guide decision making, rather than really getting at what is important to the country’s people.
The saying goes: what we measure is what we act on. GPIs are important because they expand the scope of what we measure to include environmental, social, cultural and economic aspects of life, rather than focusing primarily on the economic element alone. (as an interesting aside, a discussion with Joeseph Stiglitz touches on why GDP isn't a very effective measure)
Equally interesting was something that dawned on me during the course of the group work. Groups were asked to define the following:
What is wealth?
What is progress?
What is wellbeing?
Like many of the groups, mine discussed these topics at length and then defined wealth with words/concepts like: being able to provide for the future, having enough to live comfortably with basic needs met, community connections, self-sufficiency, and abundance.
Defining wellbeing came somewhat easily with reflections/references back to wealth, e.g. living life, happiness, contentedness, friendships, social connections, being healthy, and having a sense of place. In fact, we spent a good portion of the time drawing lines back and forth across the page, referring the columns of wealth and wellbeing to one another. We then had to define progress. The table sat in silence for a moment considering what we had just accidentally accomplished.
Unintentionally, what had taken shape in our work was progress defined as a translation of wealth into wellbeing.
Why these dots hadn’t connected for me so lucidly before, I’m not sure. After that simple exercise, it all seemed obvious. It made me question many aspects of life, both my own in the micro sense, and the bigger world picture.
Defining wealth merely in terms of tangibles such as money, property, etc. is a rather narrow way to look at it. Historically, any number of factors can erase these quite effectively. Likewise, leaving wellbeing merely to a healthcare capacity really neglects the big picture. Being well is a state of being, not just something you balance with a high-geared lifestyle. And progress, from every bit of mainstream reading, that word seems to carry notions of bigger/better/faster/more—but for the sake of what exactly?
If you were to sum up “business as usual” in the world today, it is driven largely by money and self-interest, and characterized by competition, greed, domination, and control. It is a process of acquisition, dividing, and conquering. (That’s summing it up in the most general terms of course, and not everyone acts like that all the time.)
If this sort of behaviour has brought us the laundry list of problems we face in the world, then it would seem if we are going to make any real headway on solving them, we need to move in the opposite direction. The time has come to consciously evolve beyond behaviours dictated by the past and into a new era.
Reversing “business as usual” would mean a greater attention to life and
really living it, rather than trying to step into an image sponsored by advertisers. Material wealth for its own sake has not lead to greater fulfillment. We need to move in a direction for the common good, assign better value to relationships, and cooperate on pivotal issues like climate change. It’s time to drop selfishness for an atmosphere of sharing, empathy, and compassion.