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human wellbeing

ALTERNATIVES

Your money or your life? Putting wellbeing before GDP

27th December 2019

Researching public perceptions of the future, I’m not aware of any progress indicators that reflect the real depth of people’s concern. The current wave of global political unrest and protest is commonly attributed to growing inequality, corruption, austerity, thwarted expectations and climate change. But the real reasons also go deeper, challenging the entire narrative of modernisation itself….

ALTERNATIVES

Getting to the heart of democracy’s decline

27th February 2019

The crisis in democracy is much discussed these days, but almost entirely in political terms that ignore its deeper causes. It’s the continuing failure to have this deeper discussion that has led to the democratic crisis we have. In this sense, the mainstream news media can be considered ‘enemies of the people’, peddling ‘fake news’….

ALTERNATIVES

The science and politics of human progress: Closing a widening gap

15th February 2018

Richard Eckersley writes: The core flaw in the dominant model of progress arises from the equation of progress with modernisation, especially the processes of cultural Westernisation and material progress (measured as economic growth). Global politics is based on this outmoded and increasingly destructive model of human progress and development. Can science change a dire situation?…

ALTERNATIVES

Sulak Sivaraksa on the structural violence of the global economy

13th November 2017

Sulak Sivaraksa, the 85-year-old Thai Buddhist monk, thinker and peace activist, is currently facing the prospect of a fifteen-year jail sentence, for criticising his country’s royal family and military junta. Here, he speaks on the global economy’s built-in inequities and biases. Also included is ‘Heavenly Messengers,’ an excerpt from his book, ‘The Wisdom of Sustainability.’…

Paintings by Meenakshi Subramaniam

Culture/Cognition

Suprabha Seshan: The music of everything

15th August 2017

I’m no elephant whisperer, nor do I claim to have complex exchanges with them by moonlight, but the reverse is true: when they come by, I’m whispered out of my den by their calls and cries, by their trumpets, rumbles and whooshing sighs. When elephants arrive in the valley, I scoot out of my sheets….

ALTERNATIVES

Layla and the owl’s eyes: Ecopsychology and being human

24th July 2017

Will Falk writes: Just like an owl on a chain is no longer an owl, and an elephant in a zoo is no longer an elephant, humans cut off from the nature are no longer human. We are animals and animals are an ongoing process of relationships. When those relationships become impossible, we lose ourselves….

Frida Kahlo

ALTERNATIVES

Fight back: An ecopsychological understanding of depression

6th July 2017

Will Falk writes: I’m an environmental activist. I have depression. To be an activist with depression places me squarely in an irreconcilable dilemma: The destruction of the natural world creates stress which exacerbates depression. However, acting to stop the destruction of the natural world exposes me to a lot of stress which, again, exacerbates depression….

ALTERNATIVES

Can we live without progress?

1st July 2017

Kurt Cobb writes: The idea of progress is embedded in the socio-economic system, and we cannot attack carbon emissions without attacking the idea of progress itself. If the progress we’ve made since the beginning of industrial civilization only leads to a complete reversal of all our supposed gains, can we really call what’s happening progress?…

From Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert's 'Ashes and Snow' series

ALTERNATIVES

Exclusive essay: Towards an Ethics of Permanence

10th May 2017

On the occasion of Buddha Poornima, Ecologise presents an exclusive essay co-authored by Nyla Coelho & M.G. Jackson, calling for a fundamental transformation of our perceptions of reality, and a befitting code of conduct to govern our relations with one another and with every other entity on earth; a planetary imperative in need of assertion….

ALTERNATIVES

Learning from the past: A new protocol for agricultural education and research in India

16th March 2017

We scientists, each one of us, should ask ourselves what the agricultural establishment needs to do in order effectively to address our current agricultural crisis. Given our present mechanistic scientific paradigm, we are part of the problem, and thus cannot, be part of its solution. Our first task, therefore, is to change our outlook fundamentally….

ALTERNATIVES

M.G. Jackson: A new worldview for our times

19th February 2017

The worldview that informs contemporary global culture was conceived during the European ‘Enlightenment’ of the 17th century. Its shortcomings have become increasingly evident today, and they are beginning to be seen as the root cause of the many seemingly intractable global problems that confront us today. This essay presents an overview of an alternative worldview….

ALTERNATIVES

Is Costa Rica the world’s happiest, greenest country?

15th February 2017

Ariana López Peña writes: Costa Rica was the most environmentally advanced and happiest place on earth last year, followed by Mexico, Colombia and Vanuatu, according to the Happy Planet Index, which measures life expectancy, well-being, environmental footprint and inequality to calculate nations’ success– all areas where Costa Rica’s government has made significant effort and investment….

ALTERNATIVES

Wellbeing and sustainability: irreconcilable differences?

13th February 2017

Modernity’s dominant narrative of material progress– which represents an industrial model of development–gives priority to economic growth and a rising standard of living. It is being increasingly challenged by the alternative narrative of sustainability, which seeks to balance social, environmental and economic priorities and goals to achieve a high, equitable and lasting quality of life….

ALTERNATIVES

The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene

5th February 2017

Enlightenment thinking is coming to an end… But our civilization still operates as if reality is about organising inert, dead matter in efficient ways. It is impossible to achieve sustainability with our prevailing ‘operating system’ for economics, politics, and culture if the underlying ‘bios’—our unconscious assumption about reality—remains tied to an ideology of dead matter….

A view of the Manhattan skyline

ALTERNATIVES

The mismeasure of progress: Is the West really the best?

27th January 2017

Western liberal democracies dominate the top rankings of progress indices. But are they the best models of development when their standard of living is unsustainable and their quality of life is, arguably, declining? Only when environmental impacts are given significant weight, as in the Happy Planet and Sustainable Society indexes, does this ranking change substantially….