To return to Coach Lombardi's area of expertise, a society without an agreed-upon code of conduct would be like football without rules or a referee. People will cooperate and commit to a society only as long as they can choose the person who mediates and voice an opinion on the rules.
It's interesting, then, to observe the effects of the Internet on society. On the Internet, there's no referee, and the rules that govern our interpersonal contact don't seem to hold much sway. With the anonymity provided by a screen name, people feel like they can say things they wouldn't otherwise say, things that may even be hurtful or dangerous.
And because you can do everything from order a pizza online to pay your electric bill, some academics worry that the Internet will erode our real societies, as people opt out of participating in real life in favor of participating in cyberspace. On the other hand, some would argue that the Internet has only made our societies larger -- a person in Delaware, after all, can now converse easily with a person in China.
The health care debate is only the tip of an iceberg. As we look for ways to avoid future economic problems, Professor Marc Hauser says we should acknowledge the impulsive, aggressive inner chimpanzee that got us into this mess, but mirror our patient, altruistic inner bonobo to avoid a repeat. Skip to content The Harvard Gazette What makes a successful society?
For economic success, channel your inner bonobo. Social scientists find health care only one piece of the puzzle. The current national and global crisis in which we find ourselves has exposed the myth that a society based upon individualism can work, flourish and be sustainable. We can A new report from Carnegie UK, Public policy and the infrastructure of kindness in Scotland, explores the decision to put kindness at the centre of the Scottish National Performance Does it anticipate a more radical future too?
This affecting, even moving video above comes As part of its Manifesto for Social Care Reform, the Centre Welfare Reform proposes a radical reinvention of social services and the reintegration and refocusing of social work on The report, now in its eighth year, is part Arthur Marwick said that a society without an understanding of its history The unseen driver of our troubles causes no pain.
But it is quietly destroying you and me. What is it? We reckon that most of you will have thought The speech Last year was a bad year for anti-poverty campaigners. If we are to produce Current discussion of a good society takes place in a period of profound global change, and there is no agreement about what a good society would look like.
Here, Ghiyas Somra What would a good society look like and how can we achieve it? It is a loaded term and people carry so many preconceptions into any conversation on poverty that For too long we have either turned a blind eye to poverty and disadvantage or hoped that a general rising tide of economic wealth would trickle down.
It also supports the burgeoning self-help industry. It implies that if you are not happy you should do something about it. Happiness is an individual problem. Happiness is a fleeting and ephemeral emotion that is difficult to capture in statistical analysis. For this reason, social scientists have tended to focus on various measures of well-being in addition to emotional states, such as life satisfaction, freedom to flourish and also negative states — the absence of well-being.
Again the emphasis is on the individual and their immediate environment. But what sort of society allows people to live well? The focus on economy tends to look at money -— is it enough? The focus on individual well-being asks, what can I do to make my life happier? But both these approaches neglect the social context, even though it is tremendously important for explaining well-being and could also be an important focus for policy developers.
What aspects of society can foster well-being? There has been a long tradition of quality-of-life research in Europe measured through social indicators. The University of Mannheim in Germany collates and analyses them across various categories: work, family, housing, health, and so forth. This research has influenced the EU policy agenda as well as that of particular nations such as Italy, Austria and Germany. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions has been carrying out surveys and publishing reports to help our understanding of well-being across Europe since including both the EU and accession countries.
In the UK, a question on well-being has been added to standard national surveys, which should help us understand what affects it in future.
More policy bodies are starting to pay attention to all this research. We know well-being can be influenced by public services and social policies. It is clear for example that in Turkey, the recent strides in improving public policies and services have had an impact on well-being.
Even really poor countries such as Rwanda have been able to improve their quality of life by focusing on policies to improve societal well-being. On the other hand, societies where social safety nets have been removed and where people are subject to sudden and bewildering change have plummeting well-being.
0コメント