The Five Essentials of Eudaimonics
If I were to ask you, “what are the economics of this country?”, you’d probably point to GDP, income, and productivity. If I were to ask you, “what are the economics of this company?”, you’d point me to unit revenues and costs per employee and so on. But if I were to ask you, “wait a minute. How is this country or company or town or city, this organization, really doing? are people’s lives really growing, developing, flourishing?”, then you’d probably frown, and draw a blank. The two aren’t the same, are they? Today we’re seeing that whole economies can “grow” — but somehow, human possibility, life as a quest for self-realization, doesn’t. The old paradigm — where organizations exist only for an economic purpose, maximizing income — is deeply, badly broken.
So let’s change it.
