The Economics of Happiness:

[handy]

I just watched a brilliant new documentary called "The Economics of Happiness".

Everyone should see it.

I don't know if it is available anywhere for free at this point in time. I expect that after they recoup their costs that it will be made freely available.

It is a superb film that cuts to the core of the prime problems & poses some very workable solutions for humanities ways of living all over the planet, in cities, suburbs, towns & villages.

Many of these solutions are being put into place by many millions of people all over the world today, which gives us hope.

http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/

[areteichi]

Wait, we still cared to be happy? ;)

I only watched the trailer and the interview on the website so I can't comment on the details, but the points raised in those short clips sound rather too optimistic in my view. I think the reality (which is a harsh one) is that most people don't even agree on the 'facts' (or what it would take to become 'economically literate'), and so they don't even share the same assumptions that are being made in this documentary film. This is quite obvious, for instance, if we attend to those who deny climate change. The problem is not with the 'facts' or 'literacy', but the inability for people to mind about their surroundings and environment until their own life is directly affected. (call this laziness or lack of interest or heteronomy or whatever) We're just too comfortable living our 'ordinary' life, being isolated from all the problems that are now clearly manifesting. Global capitalism, in this sense, is a mechanism by which all the suffering and misery are exported elsewhere. People in such a system are secured of their peace of mind.

I'm sure there are some activists and organizations who are doing their best to promote an alternative lifestyle and social condition, but I'm inclined to think that it's not until we IN FACT destroy the environment and use up majority of the resources that we actually begin to change the way we live and organize society.

People often wonder how the Germans could support the Nazi party at the time in the early 1930s. Well, we now clearly know how as we do the same today. We're mindlessly buying petrol from Exxon and Shell, driving our cars instead of walking, cycling, or taking a transit, drinking Starbucks coffee (produced in Ethiopia or wherever) from disposable containers, buying poorly produced groceries (typical supermarkets and McDonald's), electing idiotic government officials, and the list goes on. Thinking outside of the paradigm isn't as easy as some people might think.

The only point at which we will turn around is when the resources do INDEED run short (if not disappeared) and the global economy collapses to the point of un-recoverability. At that point, our consciousness should reach the point where we then can start to think differently, perhaps convert the global wastes into resources and try to 'reuse' them, as it were, since that would be the only thing left for us. Going local, as this film suggests, might be a more realistic solution then.

[krapp]

Why the Happiness component? Is it to make the political stuff more palatable?