SOC 220 Section 1 Human Flourishing and Sustainability - - - Happiness: best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world Human Flourishing: rational use of one’s individual human potentialities, including talents, abilities, and virtues in the pursuit of his/her freely and rationally chosen values and goals 1. innate potential of each individual to live a life of enduring happiness, penetrating wisdom, optimal well-being, and authentic love and compassion PERMA (nothing involving food, water, shelter, clothing, goods and services, technology, natural resources) 1. Positive emotion: maximizing pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, peace, gratitude, warmth, comfort, minimizing pain, “pleasant life” 2. Engagement: being “in the flow” or “in the zone”, state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities 3. Relationships with other people (people are considered to be human resources): doing a kindness produces most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise scientists have tested 4. Meaning: belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self 5. Accomplishment: winning, achievement, success, and mastery for their own sakes “It is impossible to do noble acts without the proper equipment” (Nichomedean Ethics I:8). Resource: source or supply from which a benefit is produced Technology: processes that allow the conversion of inputs or resources into outputs As more of an input is used, it usually becomes more difficult to substitute that input for another keeping output the same Multiple Step Process: rationally choosing which concrete instantiations of human values and virtues will comprise their well being when given some resources and freedom to decide Sustain: to keep up, prolong, support or nourish Adaptability: capacity of actors in a system to manage resilience, either by moving the system toward or away from a threshold that would fundamentally alter the properties of the system Human flourishing is necessary for sustainability and sustainability is sufficient for human flourishing and human flourishing is sufficient for sustainability Five/Six System Constraints on Sustainable Human Flourishing 1. Physical Possibility: satisfy the laws of physics and consistent with laws of nature 2. Technological Feasibility: solutions must be consistent with available designs, techniques, skills, and methods that define the processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives Lock-in: inability of a producer, a consumer, or society to move from one solution/state to another without extremely large transition costs 3. Economics: describes how individuals and societies choose to employ scarce resources that could have alternative uses to produce goods and services, and distribute them among various individuals and groups in society in such a way that the society maintains itself over time - - - Economic sustainability: the ability of an economic system to produce a constant or increasing standard of living over time Solutions must be profitable/ have a market rate of return 4. Environmentally Sound: some potential solutions may be so harmful to the natural environment that they destroy its ability to provide useful resources that support human flourishing Actions should mot release toxic materials, should limit the depletion of resources and should not be irreversible 5. Social Acceptance: some solutions that promote human flourishing for some part of society may not be acceptable to “society” at large 6. Paradigms: set of practices that define a discipline, community of thought, or approach to problem solving at any particular period of tiem In my cases, received paradigms limit our ability to envision or design alternatives to current systems Paradigms constrain us Sustainability: meeting the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs Basic needs: food, water, shelter, clothing All individuals should have access to: 1. Proper sanitation 2. Primary and secondary education 3. Basic healthcare Negative externality: an activity that imposes a negative effect on an unrelated third party Sustainable development: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs 1. human development within the ecological means of our planet, while 50% of the biosphere to species other than humans 2. Main objective is to improve the quality of life for all in current and future generations When a system is sustainable: if it is more or less able to reproduce or maintain itself over time without significant external injections of resources Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable Sustainable society: one that can persist over generations, one that is far-seeing, flexible, and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or its social system of support Three Factor Model / People, Profit, and Planet - - - Economic Sustainability: occur when development (which moves toward social and environmental sustainability) is financially feasible 1. ability of an economic system to produce a constant or increasing standard of living over time Social Sustainability: practices to ensure that the cohesion of society and its ability to work towards common goals are maintained 1. Maintaining social capital Social capital: investments and services that create the basic framework for society Environmental Sustainability: practices to ensure that the natural resource capital remains intact Physical Sustainability: ability of a natural system to more or less reproduce itself over time without significant external injections of energy or increases in entropy Human Sustainability: maintaining human capital 1. Human capital: private good of individuals rather than between individuals or societies Sustainability of human flourishing is inherently a social process Resilience: capacity of a system to undergo change and still retain its basic function and structure Psychological Resilience: an individual’s capacity to withstand stressors and not manifest psychological dysfunction Ecosystem Resilience: the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes Technology - - - Technology: includes all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating, and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them Describes the processes that allow the conversion of inputs or resources into outputs Can be: 1. The knowledge of techniques and the skills used to implement them 2. Embedded in machines, computers, devices, and factories Technological change: the overall process of invention, innovation, and diffusion of technology or processes Innovation/invention: the creation of something new Diffusion: the spread of a technology through a society or industry Natural resources are often inputs along with technology and other human-built inputs in various production processes WEAK Environmental Sustainability: maintaining total capital intact without regard to the partitioning of that capital among the four kinds (natural, human, human-made, social) So it is “okay” to deplete one kind of capital if another is increased so the total is still the same STRONG Environmental Sustainability: requires maintaining separate kinds of capital Absurdly STRONG Environmental Sustainability: never deplete anything Technology, Systems, and Constraints -
