The Wellbeing of Nations: Meaning, Motive and Measurement

8 Conclusions

We the peoples of the United Nations determined … to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

From Preamble to the United Nations Charter, 1945

8.1 Progress

We humans appear to have somewhat ambivalent attitudes to progress. In a number of aspects of life, winning is all. In others, drawing on a line of Grantland Rice's poetry, it matters not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. This echoes the ancient Greek idea of good strife and bad strife: good strife, what we might nowadays call good competition, should spur us to reach greater achievements. Bad strife is all the rest. Is there a natural human competitiveness in everything we do, not just when we are playing a game?

Some people talk of ‘moving on’ and ‘putting the past behind us’, in relationships and in life more generally, while others are ‘comfortable in the place they are’. Some political parties and movements are described as ‘progressive’, meaning that they want to change the world, while others are more conservative, reluctant to change or even striving to re-create the values, conditions and mores of an earlier time. Advertisements for financial services invite comparisons between relentless economic growth and growth in the natural world, without appearing to reflect on the cycle of natural growth. Yes, sunflowers can grow tall, for example, but they are also harvested and then die back. In his seminal work on the collapse of complex societies, Joseph ...