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