9 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2023
    1. Although these approaches may differ, all of them concur onthree essential points:
      • Paraphrase
      • three essential points for having a good life:
        • A good life goes beyond mere survival and moves into a life that humans value
        • A good life ensures that individuals have the opportunity to flourish
        • A good life requires providing the conditions and resources individuals need to satisfy or develop their full potential
    2. Instead of weighing the balance of pleasure and pain,individuals tend to think about a good life in terms of their life beingmeaningful to them

      // - from this perspective, the meaning crisis is a threat to a good life

    3. Often, environmental and social analysts focus on threats, dangers,and damage. They highlight negatives, in terms of limited or non-renewable resources, or the impacts of excessive emissions or effuents.But what if one took the opposite approach and focused on the posi-tives that we want to strive for? We – the authors – believe that everyhuman being, that is you and us and everybody close and far away,wants to be able to live a good life, a life that is worth living. Giventhat the Earth’s resources are limited and distributed highly unevenly,the core objective has to be how everybody can live well within limits.

      // - A key shift is required to mobilize people at scale - This strategy is already being adopted by change agents around the globe but the change in perspective needs to become greater - Living within doughnut economics reaches the same conclusion: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=a+good+life+for+all - and currently, as the "Good Life for All" study showed at a national (country) scale, very few if any countries are meeting this requirement - the great inequality implies that the poor must be uplifted materially, whilst the rich must be encouraged to share material and economic wealth - the poor of the world will receive material and economic gain while the economic elites of the world gain nonmaterial wealth

    4. It requiresa deep and profound orientation toward the good life. It requires usto ponder what the good life is, what conditions must be fulflled forindividuals to live it, and what it takes to create these conditions.

      // - Orienting towards the good life is needed to mobilize action. - Why? - Because shifting from a negative vision to a positive one is necessary to mobilize action (at scale) - It is the difference between: - being coerced vs being self-motivated - being reactive vs being proactive - being depressed and lethargic vs being joyful and energetic - hence, in this transition journey, we must accompany the limits with the positive transformation that allows us to achieve wellbeing within them.

    5. By tying the question of limits to human needsand requirements for their satisfaction, they neither demand asceti-cism or renunciation, nor pursue unspecifed moral suasion in termsof “we should consume less.” Rather, they highlight the necessity –diffcult to pursue but rich in participatory rewards – to jointly defnethe conditions necessary to live a good life, and the subsequent stepsnecessary to make such a good life possible for all individuals. By pro-viding freedom to pursue the good life in an ecologically and sociallyfrayed world, these limits offer the beneft of ensuring that all otherindividuals living now and into the future can do so as well.
      • Comment
      • perspective is critical.
      • Rather than employing moral suasion, we need to really define what is meant by a good life.
      • Many of the materially wealthy are emotionally unhappy, and so material wealth does not equate to "a good life"
      • This point must be really understood by the elites of the world.
      • Often elites come from a background of escaping poverty themselves and wealth acts as a pathological buffer against extreme poverty
    6. Justice in the context of consumption corridorsmeans that every person deserves access to a defned minimum level ofecological and social resources necessary to be able to live a good life,solely because they are a human being (what scholars call a natural-law-based perspective on justice).
      • Definition - Natural Law
      • a natural law based perspective of justice claims that every person deserves access to a defined minimum level of ecological and social resources necessary to live a "good life".
    1. //

      • This is a good resource to explore doughnut economics at a national scale for many countries of the world.
      • The two quadrants show a major pattern and dualism between 1) many developed countries that can meet socio-economic well-being, but only at the high price of exceeding planetary boundaries, and 2) many countries that stay under planetary boundary limits, but only at the expense of poor socio-economic indicators.
      • The conclusion of the study is that currently, a good life for all within planet boundaries does not exist
  2. Jun 2022
    1. Embracing visions of a good life that go beyond those entailing high levels of material consumption is central to many pathways. Key drivers of the overexploitation of nature are the currently popular vision that a good life involves happiness generated through material consumption [leverage point 2] and the widely accepted notion that economic growth is the most important goal of society, with success based largely on income and demonstrated purchasing power (Brand & Wissen, 2012). However, as communities around the world show, a good quality of life can be achieved with significantly lower environmental impacts than is normal for many affluent social strata (Jackson, 2011; Røpke, 1999). Alternative relational conceptions of a good life with a lower material impact (i.e. those focusing on the quality and characteristics of human relationships, and harmonious relationships with non-human nature) might be promoted and sustained by political settings that provide the personal, material and social (interpersonal) conditions for a good life (such as infrastructure, access to health or anti-discrimination policies), while leaving to individuals the choice about their actual way of living (Jackson, 2011; Nussbaum, 2001, 2003). In particular, status or social recognition need not require high levels of consumption, even though in some societies, status is currently related to consumption (Røpke, 1999).

      A redefinition of a good life that decouples it from materialism is critical to lowering carbon emissions. Practices such as open source Deep Humanity praxis focusing on inner transformation can play a significant role.

    2. In this respect, relational notions of a good quality of life, such as ‘buen vivir’ from Latin America (D'Alisa, Demaria, & Kallis, 2014; Gudynas, 2011; Hopkins, 2008), may be key to achieving long-term sustainable outcomes

      relational notions of a good life buen vivir from Latin America