Our hidden impacts

One of the important features of modern life that Life² helps people to deal with is the increased level of complexity within which people live. One example of this complexity is the chain of processes, people and impacts that sit behind even the most simple products or services we consume. As I noted in 'Modern life' - the ingredients of a typical BLT sandwich could have travelled 31,000 miles before the final product reaches the supermarket shelf.

So, our actions and purchasing decisions have a much more complex and wide range of impacts than we might think, and we all need to become much more aware of what these impacts are. Life² helps people to do this through its resources such as the knowledge base, and there are now other people and initiatives helping people to develop this area of knowledge. Bestselling author Daniel Goleman looks at this topic in his new book 'Ecological Intelligience', which although flawed in its loyalty towards free markets and economic growth, gives some interesting ideas on how 'eco labelling' schemes might be set up to help people understand the impacts behind their products and services.

Perhaps the most successful initiative to show these hidden impacts has been 'The Story of Stuff' - a free web-based video that has now been downloaded 10 million times. Although it has its own inherent biases that one should be aware of, the film provides some useful, accessible information. A book of the same name has now just been published by Annie Leonard.

Older people's well-being

At Life², we're researching the topic of older people's well-being, in preparation for a future project.

Although we’re living longer and in better physical health than ever, many people are still suffering in their later years from preventable causes like depression, loneliness and isolation. The well-being of the over-65's has been neglected to date, and we could do a great deal more, both as a state and in society generally, to understand the factors that prevent or promote flourishing in older people, and to take action to improve the quality of later life.

IPPR have done some interesting research on the well-being of older people as part of an ongoing programme. The findings are interesting and sometimes unexpected. For example, studies show that litter and traffic are more important concerns to older people than fear of crime and young people in public spaces. Click here and here to read a couple of their reports.

Stay tuned in the coming months to find about our project on flourishing for older peoople...

Why equality matters

We've just added The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkiinson and Kate Pickett to our bookshop at Life², and I can't believe it's taken us so long to get round to doing so.

I remember being impressed by this book when it first came out in hardback, and since then it has become well-known and exhaustively referenced by people and organisations seeking a range of types of social change. Its success is hardly surprising, as it has provided progressives with an important resource - namely, hard evidence as to how almost everything - from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy - is affected not only by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is. Its stark conclusion is that societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off.

If you haven't checked it out yet, buy it now - and have a look at The Equality Trust - an organisation set up by the authors of the book to campaign on the same topic.

Making mental health accessible

The Mental Health Foundation do some good work in breaking down the big (and, for many people, scary) topic of mental health and showing how it relates to some more specific topics that can feature in many of our daily lives and experiences of life - including loneliness, happiness and fear. Their most recent report asks whether modern life is leading to greater loneliness.

This is important work, as it encourages people to see mental health not as a taboo subject, but as something we all need to look at and work on in life - just like our physical health. One of the most fundamental ways we can improve our experience of life is by improving the way we deal with this experience and how we see the world. Improving people's mental health is therefore an important component of Life²'s work - part of helping them to live happier, wiser and more meaningful lives.

Here are some links to a few of the MHF's recent campaigns and reports - Fear, Be Mindful and 10 ways to look after your mental health.

More genius from The Onion

I couldn't resist this from The Onion - 'Exhausted Noam Chomsky Just Going To Try And Enjoy The Day For Once'

The lost art of living well

I have written a brief article to provide more details on the rationale for our not-for-profit organisation Life².

Its basic argument is that we face a range of challenges and pressures as individuals living in the modern world, and if we are to flourish in this environment we each need to be given access to a particular range of life skills and information in our lives. Currently, these are not being adequately provided by institutions in modern society, so Life² has been set up to begin providing them to the general public, and to raise awareness of the need for them in society.

Click here to read the article. Click here for an outline of the organisation and some of its activities to date.

Change for the better

There seems to be change in the air: not the vacuous, meaningless version of it pedalled by David Cameron and other election hopefuls, but a sense that we need to address some more subtle issues relating to how people see and deal with the world if we are to secure a better future.

We have been speaking to a couple of these initiatives recently with the possibility in mind of collaboration in the future - one is the Movement for Happiness set up by Professor Lord Richard Layard, Geoff Mulgan and Anthony Seldon, which is due to launch in September this year. Another is Citizen Ethics, set up by Madeleine Bunting and Mark Vernon. Check them out - each has its strong merits and areas of crossover with Life², but each is different from Life²'s work of equipping people with the tools, ideas and information to live more self-determined, wise, happy and meaningful lives.

I see Life² sitting in the middle of all this work, pulling together linked issues such as ethics, happiness and well-being - and I hope this puts us in a good place to move various strands of this agenda forward in the coming months and years.