"Happier not Richer"

Spent the day in Stirling considering issues around how we can create a "Greener" Scotland. What I found interesting was a graph which mapped satisfaction with life against the gross domestic product of Scotland. What it demonstrated was that although our GDP has increased steadily over the last decades our life satisfaction doesn't actually change - it's pretty much plateaued. We also thought about the government's strategic objective of creating a Scotland which has sustainable economic growth, but we considered what we meant by that, is this about more consumption? If we keep using energy at the same or a higher rate this has a consequence globally. What if every country desires to grow it's economy based on consumption and the greater use of energy? It is clear that things need to change.

When participants were asked to describe their ideal world of the future, they talked about things like being happy, having a good balance in their lives, having close relationships and connections with others, with family and with community, meaningful work and activity. Actually no-ones ideal world was about buying more "stuff". People were describing values which were beyond material wealth. Someone speculated that perhaps beyond the economic downturn people might not return to their old patterns of consumption.

We had a great input from the Children's Parliament and they said some pretty fantastic stuff like one boy's horror at people "shopping as a hobby, it's buying stuff you don't even want or need, it's over-consuming" and a girl who talked about us being less selfish and knowing the difference between "what we like, what we need and what we want" and learning to know the difference. These kids are about 11 years old!

Check out their video here.

We talked about some of the things we can do in addition to looking at our own patterns of consumption and energy use, maybe we could do some of these in the church

Create new spaces which facilitate new conversations.

Ask outrageous questions.

Articulate a vision of what we want to see.

You can also check out my maladjusted friend who's made a good start on this kind of stuff.