An explanation of Wellbeing is that individuals who are comfortable with life will have a somatic sense of "personal optimization, a balance of attributes or demonstrate prosocial behaviors", according to the National Wellness Institute of Australia. And such qualities must be present in an individual in order for them to thrive. The arguable reality however, is that most people live the majority of their time in a state of survival. Survival mentalities are pre-thriving, they are focused on building a stable foundation from which qualities that contribute to "personal optimization" can emerge. There is plenty of data on survival, research that pinpoints exact indicators of how capable people are of surviving in a given environment. Specific metrics measure the values of income and poverty in all societies; studies on education and inequality help to determine the potential for development and income growth in countries. But the other side of the equation, the thriving side, has less specific indicators for wellbeing and general happiness. The thriving state is more essential and often qualitative. But the problem is that essential qualities constituting the goodness of life, are not as easily plotted as measures of GDP. For sure we know it in our bones when life is good, but we often have a hard time plotting it on a chart. At some point between surviving and thriving, is a place where the majority of people should be comfortable with the flow of life. So how do we find that equilibrium in the surviving-thriving dichotomy, if we don't know one side of the equation? We can apply all sorts of math to it from the survival side, but we don't know how to measure the essential. These gaps contribute to negative feedback loops in systems, and drive them away from wellbeing.
The Thursday morning session in DC touched on our relationship to systems, and how we determine our sense of wellbeing in them. One participant noted a "somatic feeling" of contentment, an explanation that could be described as visceral. That description echoes the definition of wellbeing per the World Health Organization that is the "assessment of a person’s quality of life according to his own chosen criteria". That criteria occurs on an emotional or sensory level that is difficult to quantify. Still if we were able to calculate the specific point at which most people transition, on a sensory level, from survival to thriving state, that information would could transform efforts to create homeostatis in human systems. Since wellbeing evokes a visceral reaction, how do we calculate it? If the most advanced organizations in the world that determine social and economic indices still sign off on wellbeing as based on one's "own criteria", it can be assumed that the norms for thriving are equally mystic.
At least one country has taken initiative to measure wellbeing through happiness. Bhutan has attracted lots of attention internationally for its Gross National Happiness (GNH) index, and inspired a sister org in the US, GNHUSA. There are 9 domains in the Bhutanese model, that are used as indicators to determine levels of happiness: Psychological wellbeing, Standard of living, Good governance, Health, Education, Community Vitality, Cultural diversity and resilience, Time use, and Ecological diversity and resilience. Although the first on this list of indicators specifies wellbeing, together the collection can be used to assess levels of comfort in life. As inequality continues to balloon in many countries, especially the most highly developed ones, there is greater interest in finding new ways to figure out what makes societies hum along optimally. Bhutan has taken on an almost esoteric challenge with its GNH initiative; but in a world that is increasing desperate to find ways to enable equality and sustainable systems, there may be a place for the esoteric.
Admittedly the Bhutanese framework might be culturally inappropriate elsewhere in the world. And that is part of the challenge to finding parity across global systems. The factors that produce a sense of the good life will be different to almost every culture, and subculture. But fundamentally they relate back to essentials of comfort and stability, a foundation that is necessary for thriving to take place. So is it possible to have a global standard for wellbeing, that is measurable and applicable to policy? What good will it do to measure what makes people feel good about life from a sensory level? The Bhutanese model could represent the beginning of a standard international framework, yet it remains niche for the time-being. But urgency to transform human systems is growing and with it comes a heightened interest to find new ways to measure them. As the world population expands, the systems that support human life are strained (just as resources become more scarce), and the ability of people to live well is all the more precarious.
New tools, or reimagined tools can help these systems achieve homeostatis. Those tools can be used to define specifically points where most people are thriving, or even just beginning to. This begins to produce the thriving side of the surviving-thriving equation, and thus a better idea of where wellbeing occurs in human systems. If both sides were placed together on charts showing levels of survival and thriving behaviors in a society, would they produce clusters? And is the domain to the immediate left of a cluster on the graph a point of tension, where survival energy can be harnessed and transformed into new behaviors geared toward optimization (thriving)? Answers to these questions would add value to policies directed at inequality, potentially reducing delays in system stocks and other barriers to wellbeing in society.
At the micro level, there is a need to define specific behavioral attributes of wellbeing for individuals in society. Forward of that should be a framework to aggregate those attributes and produce a measure of thriving for the system, such as Bhutan's GNH. Imposing coordinates that show how a system is surviving, onto a graph that pinpoints where thriving behavior occurs may produce clusters. These clusters (if they exist) are areas of wellbeing; and the space to the left of clusters represent dynamic tension (the stock) in a system. That inertia has potential to move a system out from survival and allow it to flow into thriving behaviors that reinforce wellbeing on a macro level. Still the challenge is to first create awareness around the specific behaviors that are both essential and visceral; and that means devoting as much attention to the spaces where people and systems are humming along nicely, as is devoted to the delays where people are stumbling through life. Bringing our attention to these gaps in understanding helps identify what some people have and other people want, or maybe more importantly what they don't want. With a clearer picture of how value is determined at a "somatic" level, there is hope that other potential methods or tools for creating wellbeing in human systems will emerge.
