As all of have been made painfully aware, happiness is an inside job. We make ourselves happy and buying toys and eating food only delays dealing with deeper issues. At the same tine, the worldwide economic crises brought on by over borrowing by governments and the resultant austerity programs foisted on their citizens is both repugnant and immoral.

This is the time to turn around the economic game so it works for all of us rather than the 1%.

From the producers of The Economics of Happiness DVD which will be the subject of a review in February and whose trailer appears below comes a March Conference dedicated to the same theme. Bringing together some of the greatest economic visionaries of our time who collectively are redefining economics so that it serves people and the planet, the conference will be held from March 23-25 at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California.

Conference themes include Breaking Down the Old Economy, Small Scale on a Large Scale, Local Futures and Reweaving the Fabric of Hope.

Among the stellar international group of presenters are Vandana Shiva, a worldrenowned activist, physicist, feminist and the founder of Navdanya, Annie Leonard, the author and host of The Story of Stuff and director of The Story of Stuff Project, Richard Heinberg, the author of ten books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, Bill McKibben, the author of a dozen books about the environment and the economy including The End of Nature and Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Helena Norberg-Hodge, the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC) and its predecessor, the Ladakh Project. She is the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh and producer and co-director of the film, The Economics of Happiness, Judy Wicks, the founder of White Dog Café and an international leader and speaker in the local living economies movement. Judy is co-founder of the nationwide Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), Rebecca Tarbotton, Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and former Project Coordinator at ISEC. Under her direction, RAN challenges corporate power in order to protect endangered forests, transform dirty energy expansion into a clean energy future, and combat global warming.

There will also be performances by Jennifer Berezan (edgeofwonder.com), Nina Wise (ninawise.com) and Wes “Scoop” Nisker (http://woodzie.org/scoop/)

You can download the PDF Conference brochure by clicking here

The date to obtain discounted tickets is January 15, so if this is of interest to you, please check out the brochure and make your ticket purchase before then.

Please let me know if you decide to attend and perhaps a group of us can have a lunch or dinner together. I will be there to interview a few of the conference speakers in preparing my story.

Another great post from Daily Good.

I consider this article to be one of the most important and timely that I have published on NPD. I hope you will agree. Personally, I’ll be sending this to the mayor of Ojai and all members of the City Council to spark the ideas presented below. Please consider doing the same in your community. Together, we can help transform economics into an activity that serves the people and the planet rather than the few at the expense of the many. Clearly it is time to say ENOUGH and act to change things. It’s time for all of us to occupy the earth and co-create a world that works for everyone.

–by John De Graaf and Linda Sechrist , Original Story

Changing the Rules to Benefit America’s People

Most Americans are facing their most significant economic challenges in generations. From the hardships of unemployment to the perils of mounting debt, worry about the health of a national economy that depends on consumerism and market success dominates our conversation. But have we asked what the economy is really for?

Since the Second World War, we have been assured that more economic growth is good for us. But is it? By any measure, the U.S. economy, in its pursuit of constant growth, is in dire need of critical life support. Too many people have lost jobs, homes, scholarships and retirement savings, along with peace of mind, in the face of complex uncertainties. Those individuals that have jobs are earning less in real income than in 2001, even though they spend more hours working and commuting than previous generations.

We’ve had enough of the official mantra: Work more, enjoy less, pollute more, eat toxic foods and suffer illnesses, all for the sake of increasing the gross domestic product. Why not learn ways to work less and enjoy it more; spend more time with our friends and families; consume, pollute, destroy and owe less; and live better, longer and more meaningfully? To do all this, we need fresh solutions that engage America’s people in redefining goals for the economy (what we want from it) as opposed to the economy’s goals (what it demands from us).

An Economy Based on Quality of Life
Although an economy based on a high quality of life that makes people happy may sound revolutionary, Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, enshrined the pursuit of happiness as a human right when he drafted ourDeclaration of Independence. Jefferson emphasized that America’s government was, “to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible for the general mass of those associated under it.” Likewise, the Constitution of the United States declares that government is to promote, among other things, the general welfare of the people.

Americans are able to achieve a better life, as we’ve proved many times in the past, benefiting mightily as a result of forward steps ranging from democracy, women’s suffrage and civil rights to inventive technological leadership. Although history shows that this has been accomplished primarily by changing national policies, any new economy delivering improved well-being is first brought about largely by active citizens that choose to invest more time in building a nation that reflects increasingly enlightened values.

Everyone’s quality of life—from today’s parents to future generations of great-grandchildren—depends upon individuals collectively working to build a new economy based on the concept of genuine wealth. In his award-winning book, Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth, ecological economist Mark Anielski explains this new and practical approach grounded in what people value most, which he states is: “Love, meaningful relationships, happiness, joy, freedom, sufficiency, justice and peace”—qualities of life far more vital than blind economic growth and material possessions.

Preferred Measure of Progress
To determine whether our economy promotes the greatest good or the happiness of the American people, we need to understand what makes us happy and how economic policies enhance or thwart our pursuit of happiness; we also need a better instrument of economic measurement than the gross domestic product (GDP).

The GDP counts remedial and defensive expenditures for pollution, accidents, war, crime and sickness as positives, rather than deducting these costs. GDP also discounts the value of contributions such as natural resources and ecosystem services, improvement in quality of life, unpaid domestic work, volunteer work, good health and social connection.

Anielski, in concert with economic experts such as Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economy, Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, recommends that economic policies aim to boost societal welfare, rather than GDP. All agree that a new indicator of well-being, such as the U.S. Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), could be used to more accurately measure economic progress.

The Science of Happiness
A respected “science of happiness,” pioneered by University of Illinois positive psychologist Edward Diener, Ph.D., dubbed Dr. Happiness, and other researchers, has existed for more than a decade. The study of what makes people happy and life fulfilling repeatedly demonstrates that the economic route to happiness does not consist of endlessly widening the superhighway of accumulation. Rather, it resides in a host of personal values that are closer to our hearts, as illustrated by the Himalayan nation of Bhutan (population: about 700,000).

For many years, Bhutan has measured its general well-being—as the people themselves subjectively report it—using a Gross National Happiness (GNH) index. Its government bases policy decisions on how they might effect the kind of happiness associated with contentment, family, community, spirituality, education, compatibility with nature and good physical health. After years of primary research, the Bhutanese have identified nine domains for assessing happiness: psychological well-being, physical health, time use (work-life balance), community vitality and social connection, education, cultural preservation and diversity, environmental sustainability, good governance and material well-being.

In 2004, the first annual International Conference on Gross National Happiness was held in Bhutan. Hundreds of government representatives, scholars and other thought leaders from more than 40 nations gathered to explore the possibility of making GNH the true indicator of a country’s health and quality of life. As of 2011, a non-binding resolution by the United Nations General Assembly urges that countries now measure their health and happiness, as well as wealth. Sixty-six countries backed it.

Measuring Americans’ Life Satisfaction
Seattle, Washington, the first U.S. city to implement a measurement of life satisfaction, is parlaying Bhutan’s indicators—psychological well-being, physical health, work/time balance, education and capacity building, cultural vitality and access to arts and culture, environmental quality and access to nature, apt governance and material well-being—as part of its own Sustainable Seattle Happiness Initiative. Spearheaded by Sustainable Seattle Executive Director Laura Musikanski and her team with encouragement by City Council President Richard Conlin, it may become America’s first GNH city.

Initial survey results, intended to spark conversations that matter, will be discussed at future town meetings in Seattle neighborhoods and used to recommend policies for consideration by the city council. Repeating the survey every couple of years will reveal progress.

Interest in a similar Happiness Initiative is growing in cities and towns from coast to coast, such as Napa, California; Bowling Green, Kentucky; Duluth, Minnesota; Santa Fe and Roswell, New Mexico; Bellevue, Nebraska; Portland, Oregon; and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Some 100 colleges and universities also are beginning to apply the Happiness Initiative survey.
How to Become Happier

To improve our own well-being within any economy, we need to attend to our security, social connections and the way we balance our time. Choosing to live with less stuff and lighter debt supports a better life with less income but more time, lower stress and better health. As individuals, we can:

TOOLS TO NAVIGATE THE NEW ECONOMY

New Economics Foundation:
The Great Transition
NewEconomics.org
BrowseNewEconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/Great_ Transition_0.pdf.
This independent think-and-do-tank inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being.

The Economics of Happiness:
Building Genuine Wealth
GenuineWealth.net
Author Mark Anielski maps how to measure genuine wealth and create flourishing economies grounded in people’s well-being.

Transition United States:
Transition Towns
TransitionUS.org
Participants in this vibrant, grassroots movement seek to build community resilience in the face of challenges such as high oil prices, climate change and economic crises.

Sustainable Seattle:
The Happiness Initiative
SustainableSeattle.org
Founders provide tools to comprehensively assess well-being, involve citizens and inspire people, organizations and policymakers to take action.

World Café:
Real Conversations for a Better World
TheWorldCafe.org
This application of powerful social technology helps engage people in conversations that matter, offering an effective antidote to society’s fast-paced fragmentation and lack of connection.

Living Economies Forum:
Agenda for a New Economy:
From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
LivingEconomiesForum.org

“The old economy of greed and domination is dying. A new economy of life and partnership is struggling to be born. The outcome is ours to choose.”
~ Author David Korten

• Focus more on matters of family and community and on building trust.
• Devote less attention to maximizing incomes and more attention to acts of generosity.
• Ask our employers for more time off instead of higher pay.

In our local communities, we can find ways to design more relationship-friendly places such as farmers’ markets, where shoppers tend to engage in many more conversations than in supermarket aisles (Worldwatch Institute). In cities, we can call for public and private spaces that facilitate social connection, instead of discouraging it via urban sprawl.

Ecological economist Dave Batker, co-author of What’s the Economy for Anyway? (film clip at Tinyurl.com/3tc9dlk), believes that moving forward requires greater citizen involvement in the shaping of democracy, laws and our collective future. By ditching pundits and talking with neighbors, city by city and town by town, citizens throughout the United States are moving to do this using newly learned techniques such as those offered by Open Space Technology, World Café, Transition Towns, Sustainable Cities, The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences’ Worldview Literacy Project.

In St. Petersburg, Florida, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and other places, citizens are cultivating a stronger sense of community with real discussions about local issues and economic goals. They aim to arrive at a clear-eyed view of what citizens really want from the economy.

In St. Petersburg, the culmination of Sharon Joy Kleitsch’s 10-year effort to build a flourishing community through helpful workshops on timely subjects, meaningful conversations and aligning constructive partnerships is reaching a crescendo this month at Beyond Sustainability: Ecosystems, Economics, and Education, the Institute of Florida Studies’ 36th annual conference, at Hillsborough Community College (Tinyurl.com/3avntte). Kleitsch remarks, “I show up, pay attention and listen for opportunities where my connections with policy makers, educators, nonprofits and community activists can help convene people in meaningful conversations that can make a difference in building a resilient community.”

In Oklahoma City, Sustainable OKC, a volunteer organization working towards community sustainability at the crossroads of business, environment and social justice, frequently partners with the city’s Office of Sustainability, the CommonWealth Urban Farms project and the Oklahoma Food Cooperative (Sustainableokc.org). The grassroots organization advocates shopping locally and sustainably.

Jennifer Alig, Sustainable OKC president, is consistently delighted by the growing number of residents that don’t just attend events such as movie screenings of The Economics of Happiness, but also show up to plant food to feed the hungry and join Commonwealth Urban Farms work parties to feed neighborhoods using the products of thriving urban farms on vacant city lots. Alig notes, “After events, we sometimes use Open Space Technology to talk about topics that people are passionate about and willing to invest their time in.”

The kind of society that makes for health, happiness, true prosperity and sustainability is one with strong local economies and flourishing communities that includes many activities provided by local nonprofits. It’s one characterized by:

• Local small businesses and banking
• Farmers’ markets and urban gardens
• Urban designs that favor shared walks instead of isolated commutes
• Public spaces for social interaction
• Circumstances in which buyers know sellers
• Businesspeople that sponsor and volunteer for local activities
• Salary differences that are not vast
• Citizens building a better world together

We intuitively know what is required to create such a society, starting in our own community. What we need is the determination to make sure the economy serves us; rules that benefit all of the people; a commitment to widespread quality of life, social justice and sustainability; and the political will to make good change happen.

This article originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of Natural Awakenings and is published here with permission.

John de Graaf, media and outreach director for the Happiness Initiative, speaks nationally on overwork and overconsumption in America. He recently co-authored What’s the Economy for, Anyway? – Why It’s Time to Stop Chasing Growth and Start Pursuing Happiness, with David Batker. He is also co-author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic. Fifteen of his documentaries have aired on PBS.

Linda Sechrist writes and edits for Natural Awakenings.

At 15, as he sat in an algebra math class watching his teacher demonstrate an equation, Emmanuel Itier converted the numbers to words in his head that formed a poem. That night he had a dream about the poem that gave birth to his existential script, The Cage, about a man’s mid-life crisis. He thought to himself that he should turn it into a film and recruited a few friends, one of whom had a video camera to shoot the short film in 24 hours. He showed the dark film with lots of blood to his father who was a doctor and mother, a teacher. After watching it they said “Emmanuel, you’re very creative and it looks like you won’t become a doctor or teacher, so go do what you are called to do.”

After The Cage, Emmanuel produced a few other short films and upon graduating high school he spent a week in film class at a local college in Paris and immediately sensed he could do better on his own. He left and got a job in sales for a cable company while simultaneously interning for production companies.

About this time, he met an American flight attendant, a relationship developed and they were married and moved to US in 1988. Upon arriving in Hollywood, Emmanuel spoke no English, nor had he any real credentials ,so he did odd jobs until he began teaching French to Hollywood film executives one of whom, Peter Hoffman, the CFO of Carolco, the production company responsible for Rambo, Basic Instinct and other action films, befriended and mentored him. He learned the ropes by observing and reading scripts and self-trained to become a producer. During his teaching days, a Paris friend contacted him and asked if would like to be a US correspondent for a French film magazine to which he said yes.

Emmanuel went on to produce ten films and direct three, many of which were low budget horror films made because the Hollywood financiers were essentially “unconscious, making films for unconscious audiences”.

After ten years, Emmanuel remarried, had his first child, and had a second revelation. He heard a voice say “You need to do something with your life”

A few minutes later, the idea of oneness popped into his mind and his first conscious film, Invocation was born. Invocation answers the question, “What’s the meaning of existence?” In his mind, Emmanuel heard narration by Sharon Stone and pursued her for 3 years. When they finally met, she read the script and told him that the film was very important and should be seen by every member of Congress and screened at the Smithsonian. When he told her he had no money left, she told him that was not a problem and that she would be honored to narrate. She became the Executive Producer and will share in any profits.

The film has been screened at twenty festivals winning six awards and has received great feedback from luminaries including director Oliver Stone and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu both of whom appear in the film.

While watching his engaging and important film, I was taken on an journey through the minds of a wonderful group of people from many walks of life who illuminated many areas of great interest to me and NPD readers including peace, mystery, awakening, the material and spiritual, science and religion, consciousness and non-locality, I and We, and silence.

Among the many powerful quotes in the film is this one: The terrorism of the strong brings about the terrorism of the weak. And it’s opposite may well be true. The peacefulness of the strong could bring about the peacefulness of the weak. It’s an idea whose time has come. The underlying message of this film is that we must come to see the divine everywhere and in everyone we see for we and life are one seamless whole however it may look and we may then, finally, realize the peace we seek in ourselves and the world.

Photos are Emannuel with Puppet Ji, Desmond Tutu and Sharon Stone.

“So far, we haven’t come far in solving our deeper cultural problems but we can do a lot”, says Itier, if, we focus on action rather than what’s wrong. The way I see it, humanity is not failing but is rather reinventing itself. There’s been far too much talking and thinking. Many more of us need to put the idea of peace into action and actually become it.

What took place historically is what Emmanuel calls the “castration of the feminine” by and in the masculine. “For the past 10,000 years. we have been the victims of a controlling masculine dominated system that directed women away from their power and positions of power and, at the same time, also killed the feminine in the head and hearts of men and turned them into killers rather than lovers

To help reconcile this dangerous historical split, Emmanuel is completing production of his next film, Femme: Women Healing the World featuring visionaries including Nobel Peace Prize Winners Shirin Ebadi and Mairead Maguire and modern day visionaries Barbara Marx Hubbard, Riane Eisler, Jean Houston, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and Marianne Williamson. And, Yoko Ono contributed a song for the film.

“Today”, Emmanuel says, “we have a group of serial killers and psychopaths in charge of the planet. A re-balancing is underway, so I have been called to produce my trilogy of Invocation, Femme and the last, We Come in Peace: A Re-Evolution of Economics and Politics that integrates the themes of oneness and the reunion of the feminine and masculine in all of us and applies this union to a vision of a transcended economics and politics in action.

Emmanuel is a man on a passionate mission of peace and film is his vehicle of love. I look forward to reviewing Femme and Come in Peace for NPD the minute they become available. Should you wish to support the making of his next two films, please contact Emmanuel through his production company’s website http://www.redefinegod.com or at wl1@cox.net.

I predict this single graphic will mobilize more people to call for the elimination of tax breaks for large corporations than any other campaign to date. It’s simple, presents the facts without emotion and allows readers to decide for themselves what to do next. I’m guessing simplifying the tax code, perhaps with the flat tax that has been talked about for years, will be on the front burner very soon. It’s never been that we don’t have the money to fix things, just that it was not distributed fairly and that the few were enjoying the use of high priced lawyers and accountants to use the law to save billions while the burden was on the many paying their taxes. A core piece of shifting the economic paradigm are fair taxes that level the playing field for all.

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Worried about the meaning of existence? You might turn to political economist Raj Patel’s book The Value of Nothing. Its title, however, isn’t a reference to how much a vast supply of nothing might be worth, or how to make a buck doing nothing. Instead, it comes from an Oscar Wilde quote: “Nowadays people know the price of everything but the value of nothing.”

Patel’s message about how we value — and misvalue — the world and ourselves isn’t entirely new. Citing Buddhist economist E.F. Schumacher, he says what we need to strive for is a middle path: one where our financial and economic choices aren’t dominated by Big Brother or big corporations. And he feels the viability of our future depends on us organizing and fighting for a society in which we value meeting people’s basic needs over greed.

See full article from DailyFinance.

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