ELSI: Happiness, Purpose, and Society

Happiness Includes: Stress, purpose, freedom, free time, social connectivity, self-development, biophilia, access to loved ones, self-expression Reflects on: human performance, creativity, imagination, suicide rates, freedom of speech and religion, access to nature, work-life balance Happiness. Its position on top of the ELSI stack signifies that happiness is the driver behind the actions of each individual. What constitutes happiness varies wildly between individuals, cultures and stages of life, but there are certain universal drivers behind happiness that seem to hold true for most. These include free time to spend at our choosing, the ability to self realize, spending time with friends and family, and repeated time spent in nature. As our society changes, so does our perception and the drivers behind the individual’s happiness. We are, after all, a social animal, and our relationship to the group can largely affect our self image and feelings of self worth. This drives societal pressure behavior such as the pursuit of status or power, which is of all times. Other values shift, such as the perception of value of free time versus owning material goods. Measuring happiness can be as easy as simply asking someone how happy they are, to involving carefully designed questionnaires. It’s useful to know how happy people feel they are, but it’s not always necessary to know how people perceive themselves to understand that various factors impact general happiness levels. There’s different schools of thought about what drives our emotional well-being. Combining them gives us a good set of areas of interest for investigating the happiness part of ELSI. Let’s look at a few of them: Carl Jung listed five main factors for happiness

: Good physical and mental health Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature Reasonable standards of living & satisfactory work A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life The World Happiness Report has six different factors that influence happiness

: Quite a different list. GDP per capita Healthy years of life expectancy Social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble) Trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business) Perceived freedom to make life decisions Generosity (as measured by recent donations) Yet another perspective is offered by Dr. Roger Walsh, researcher in psychiatry

: Exercise Diet & nutrition Time in nature Contribution & Service Relationships Recreation Relaxation & Stress Management Religious & spiritual involvement As these different lists show, happiness is elusive. Personally, having looked at a lot of these lists in the past, I often miss simple things like having some quiet time alone, a good laugh or the occasion to be silly once in a while. Environmental factors also impact a person’s wellbeing significantly. This is especially true in working environments where people reside without having an option to leave or with limited ability to affect their environment. Things to consider include light, acoustics, comfort, temperature, humidity, colors and presence of nature. Research indicates that improving the quality of working environments increases people’s working performance more than 20%. Instead of trying to make a complete list of what makes us happy, we can also do the opposite, which is a useful way to find strong happiness drivers. We can all easily list aspects that would make us unhappy, for example: Imprisonment Physical pain Seeing loved ones hurt Stress Inability to express ourselves Disconnection from loved ones Suffering injustice done to us or loved ones Being ostracized Mothers-in-law Again, it’s a subjective list to say the least. I did not number this list, because it’s easy to go on for a while. The point is that given a certain situation, you may encounter different factors that affect happiness. We’re looking for a practical working set of topic areas. Happiness may be the biggest demonstrator as to why SiD does not have a fixed set of indicators or subcategories. It would never stop. But if you have a particular situation, for example, when redeveloping a neighborhood or creating policy for a company or government, it’s easier to narrow down the topic areas. Since Happiness is one of the main drivers of the actions of the individual, its here that we often seek for driving triggers that allow us to stimulate a system to make a change. If there’s an action we’d like people to take that is preferable, for example, taking stairs instead of the elevator, happiness is an area we may look at. For example, we may develop a way to make the stairs more fun to walk on. For a great little video of a way to do this, search Youtube for a video on the piano stairs of “the Fun Theory”.

From C.G. Jung Speaking, C. G. Jung, 1987

World Happiness Report 2016 Update, http://worldhappiness.report/

Dr. Roger Walsh, Lifestyle and Mental Health, 2011, American Psychologist, Vol. 66. No. 7, 579-592 SiD ELSI8 flower energy brainstorm aids List of Energy Forms This list is a nice reminder that we’re surrounded by energy, and it’s not even a complete list. Kinetic The motion of a body Potential Any ‘stored’ energy Mechanical Sum of kinetic and potential energies Mechanical work Displacement Mechanical wave Mechanical energy propagated by a material’s oscillations, e.g. that of ocean surface waves or sound Chemical Contained in molecules Electric From electric fields Magnetic From magnetic fields Radiant Electromagnetic radiation including light Nuclear Binding nucleons to form the atomic nucleus Ionization Binding an electron to its atom or molecule Elastic Returning energy from the distortion of a material Gravitational From gravitational fields Intrinsic Rest energy equivalent to an object’s rest mass Thermal A microscopic equivalent of mechanical energy Heat Thermal energy emitted Renewable Energy Sources A small summary of the most common forms of renewable energy. Solar PV Capturing energy from the sun’s electromagnetic radiation Solar Thermal Capturing the heat from the sun’s radiation Wind Capturing energy from air currents Hydro Capturing energy from water currents Wave & tidal Capturing energy from periodic water movements Biomass & fuel Capturing energy from organisms Geothermal Capturing energy from the earth’s core Photosynthesis Capturing the sun’s energy by chemical means Hydro chemical (osmotic) Capturing energy from chemical differences in water bodies Nuclear Fusion Capturing energy from fusing atomic nuclei. Not (yet) made practically possible. Not to be confused with Nucleair Fission (non-renewable). LCA Score of common building materials For you to get a feeling for LCA scores, below table has comparable LCA scores for primary nonrenewable energy (PEI PE), primary renewable energy (PEI RE), GWP CO

equivalent emissions, and Durability. Material per M2 PEI PE PEI RE GWP CO

eq Durab. Limestone & Mortar

3.5 5.4 80-100 Fibre-cement sheets

3.4 40-60 Ceramic panels

> 80 Titanium-zinc sheet

70-100 Wooden shingles

-21 40-70 Insulating glass Ug = 1.1