Reclaiming the art of living well and why our future depends on it

[Music]

have you

ever loved somebody so much you felt

you’d do

anything to keep them from harm

16 years ago i became a mother and the

very first time i held my baby boy in my

arms

i felt such a surge of love i promised

then i would do anything i could to

protect him

unfortunately soon after he was born i

discovered a threat to his future that

would make it almost

impossible for me to keep that promise

in 2005 global co2 levels were already

at 382

parts per million that’s about 100 parts

per million

above pre-industrial levels scientists

were warning that we needed to keep our

levels below

400 in order to prevent tipping into

what they called

the danger zone exceeding this number

would lead to a level of global heating

that would threaten

all life on earth

and there i was with my small child

suddenly facing a radically different

future from the one i’d imagined for him

there was so much going through my mind

but one question stood out

how was it possible that scientists knew

this

that industry knew this that politicians

knew this

and yet here we were carrying on with

business as usual

we seem to be in the grip of some big

powerful story

and i kept wondering what it was that

could have such a hold on us

that we would risk our own extinction

i soon discovered that it was a story of

economics

at least the story of economics as we

tell it now

you see if we could travel back to

ancient greece and hang out with

aristotle

as he wandered the dusty streets of

athens in the 3rd century bc

he would quickly remind us that the word

economics comes from the greek words

ecos meaning home or household and nomos

meaning management

so at its core economics is a system by

which humans manage their resources for

the benefit of all

it is the art of living well

aristotle distinguished this from

chromatistics which comes from the greek

word crema

meaning money chromatistics focuses on

the accumulation of

private wealth it is the art of making

money

so we seem to be conflating economics

the art of living

well with chromatistics the art of

making money

and in doing so justifying the buying

and selling

of anything we can get our hands on

regardless of the consequences

to me that seemed like an insane way to

do economics

so i started to look for some hope and

sanity

i found it when i discovered the work of

chilean economist

manfred mack sniff max neef was a

professor of economics who began his

career teaching at berkeley in the 1960s

and in the 70s he traveled to latin

america to work with some of the poorest

people on the planet

he used to tell a story of how he was

one day

high up in the sierra mountains of peru

in an indian village

it had rained all day long and the

ground had turned to mud

manfred walked out and he met a young

man

he knew that this young man had a wife

and four children and a mother to look

after at home

and no job the man looked thin

and hungry and he was standing with his

bare feet

in the mud manfred looked at the man

and the man looked back at him here he

was this

great economist from berkeley what

should he tell him

should he tell him to be glad that gdp

was rising by five percent

or that exports were blooming

it all seemed absurd and he said of that

moment

i looked into the eyes of poverty and

had

nothing to say

he realized then that he needed a new

language of economics

a language of economics that could make

sense of the terrible poverty he was

witnessing

both the incredible hardship as well as

the enormous creativity involved in

overcoming it

so together with his colleagues he

created a framework called

human scale development or barefoot

economics

because it requires us to step into the

mud and practice economics

as if people and planet matter

so what is barefoot economics in a

nutshell it is a framework that judges

the success of an economy

not by how much money is exchanged for

goods or services what we call gdp

but on how well we are able to satisfy

our fundamental needs

without harming ourselves others and the

earth

it proposes nine needs which are

constant across time and place and the

same for all of us

so whether you are in india china or

ecuador

your fundamental needs are the same what

differs are the

opportunities you have to satisfy those

needs which are called satisfiers

so you could say that a culture is a set

of satisfiers

for our fundamental needs at a certain

place and a certain time

so the nine needs are subsistence

to keep our bodies healthy and alive

protection to feel safe and secure

affection to feel loved and appreciated

participation to have a voice and be

able to join in with others

identity to know who we are and where we

belong

understanding to be able to make sense

of the world

we have a need for freedom to have a

sense of autonomy and agency

creation to be able to express ourselves

and innovate

and idleness to have time to rest and

relax

so nine needs and endless satisfiers

let me explain how this works we tend to

think of food as a need

but what if we looked at it through the

lens of barefoot economics and saw it as

a satisfier for our needs

the most obvious one being subsistence

but the way we produce and consume

food can meet many other needs as well

let’s say you had a piece of land and

skills and you were able to grow your

own food

that would mean your needs for

understanding and subsistence

if you made a meal and sat down to eat

with family and friends

you’ll be meeting your need for creation

affection

identity and participation all at the

same time

if on the other hand the only food

available to you

is highly processed and shipped from a

part of the world that has very

few environmental and labor regulations

that food

is likely to harm your health the health

of the people who produce it

and the health of the planet when i

discovered this work

it was as if a door opened in my mind

here was a framework that described

economics as a web of relationships

and i could see how it might help us get

back to the art of living well

so i began teaching this language of

barefoot economics

and for over a decade now i’ve worked

with people from all across the world

from over 30 different countries many

different walks of life in different

ages

some as young as 12. together we explore

the many different ways people attempt

to meet these fundamental needs

which satisfies work which don’t and why

and this is what i’ve learned when

people look at their lives through the

lens of fundamental needs

they quickly realize the limitations of

our current economic system

many of them describe having to work

long hours to meet their needs for

subsistence

only having to sacrifice the needs for

affection

idleness and participation or

when they do decide to stay at home and

do the important work of caring for

children and the elderly

that work is invisible so we begin to

question what it means to be successful

if you have lots of money in the bank

but no opportunities to express yourself

creatively

build healthy relationships or get to

know yourself deep down

can you really call yourself rich

perhaps you’re poor in ways that our

current economic language simply cannot

describe we also start to question what

it means to live sustainably

we look at electric cars for example

which are often presented as a win-win

solution

by promising to lower emissions and at

the same time

grow a booming industry but when we

examine them through the lens of human

needs

we see that as well as requiring raw

materials from parts of the world that

often have lower

environmental and labor standards all

cars require roads roads go through

neighborhoods

and they destroy opportunities for

people to connect with each other

and for children to play freely and

safely in the street

and no matter what your car runs on it

won’t lessen the time you spend in

traffic jams on your daily commute to

work

so this process of separating needs from

satisfiers

allowed us to drop some of those single

measures that we use such as gdp and

parts per million

instead of simply trying to green our

existing lifestyles

we asked how can we meet the needs that

all humans have without harming

ourselves

others and the earth we open our

imaginations

and together we build a completely

different picture of the economy

one where our care compassion and

creativity are allowed to flourish

in service of meeting each other’s

fundamental human needs

and we discover that we are the engine

of the economy

we are the real wealth creators and that

we are part of a growing movement of

people

whose efforts are dedicated to growing

good lives for all

rather than making a profit for some

unfortunately all those efforts are

dwarfed by the powerful forces

of the growth economy our economic

system requires growth

regardless of whether what it produces

actually meets our needs

often only creating the illusion of

satisfaction

maxinee call these pseudo-satisfiers

they always leave us craving more

i was once working with a group of

teenagers when i asked whether anyone

could give me an example of a

pseudo-satisfier in their own lives

immediately this one young man’s hand

shot up

it’s my xbox he said i’m only on it

because my friends are on it

i’d much rather be doing something else

in person but i don’t feel i have a

choice

or as another young woman said i never

think about shopping when i’m just

having fun with my friends

pseudo-satisfiers are really the basis

of a growth economy

in such a system our most important role

becomes that of consumer

and the satisfies available to us become

limited to the ones that we have to pay

for

that is why each year companies spend

billions of dollars on advertising which

is becoming

increasingly sophisticated in 2019

pre-covered

that figure was nearly 587

billion dollars

that’s an worldwide force to resist and

it’s no wonder that most of us don’t

manage it

for many of us buying stuff pseudo

satisfies our needs for

affection and identity it gives us a

sense of care and belonging

in a world that at times seems devoid of

meaning

we are in a strange bind if the things

we produced were made to last

easy to repair not subject to fads and

really met our needs we could grow

our well-being our real wealth and at

the same time

protect the well-being of others and the

earth

but then the growth economy we believe

we are dependent on

would tank that is why you’ll see

that as soon as lockdown ends the first

thing governments will tell us to do

will be to get back on the treadmill

never mind that under lockdown we

realized that we need

loving touch and good health much more

than we need the latest gadgets

that we get more pleasure from our

hedges than our hedge fund managers

and that the people who bring real value

to our lives

are not the bankers they’re our food

growers

our delivery drivers our medics our

health care workers

our teachers our musicians our artists

our neighbors families and friends all

those

people whose efforts meet our real needs

nevertheless we will be told to put that

aside and return to the usual cycle

of overworking and undercaring to grow

gdp

barefoot economics is an attempt to help

us break out of this potentially

fatal economic story it shows us that

good economics

isn’t at odds with our innate generosity

and kindness

that we don’t have to choose between

decent meaningful work

and a healthy planet that we are all

interdependent

and we all deserve lives live with

dignity and respect

a good economy is not a prison

a good economy is a thriving web of

relationships

capable of nurturing and protecting what

we hold dear

it’s 2021 that little baby boy i held so

lovely in my arms

is now nearly 16 taller than his mom

and ready to step out into the world

unfortunately global co2 levels are now

at 417 parts per million

we pass the 400 part per million mark in

2015

six years ago we are now officially in

the danger zone

still i cling to the hope that if we

reclaim economics as the art of living

well

and focus our efforts on growing our

real wealth

i may just be able to keep my promise

i certainly don’t want to have to look

my son in the eyes

and tell him that we couldn’t protect

his future

that we couldn’t protect the future of

all our children

because nobody could find a way to make

a profit from it thank you