WELL-BEING

Went into a bookstore today. I saw a whole wall of books with the above heading. That is what I write about all the time, isn’t it? It seems that I have come very late to the parade. A flood of writers have been sharing their ideas on the subject for a long time from every possible point of view. Do you need another one?

We, most of us, are pre-occupied with questions of wellbeing in a variety of contexts. It is certainly a concern of mine. Many of my diatribes have a concern for wellbeing at their heart. But they cover much more than concern for the physical aspects of the subject. There is also the wellbeing of the mind, of the spirit. And I worry about the environment we inhabit, both the physical natural one, and the psychic one.

I know how worried we are about global warming and related topics like pollution. But what scares me silly is the deterioration in the nature of our civilization. That more than anything keeps me up at night.

Lately, I have been avoiding the topic because it is such a downer for me and I must worry about the feelings of those around me. Will they begin considering me the resident “dark cloud”? Dare I write about what is really, really, on my mind?

In my life I am thrilled at the way my near and dear are flourishing. I am sure many of you out there have family offshoots that make you happy and pleased at the outcome. They make up for a lot of other things that don’t turn out so well. It warms the heart and we all need some of that in our lives. It does us good to dwell on those outcomes and they add to our feelings of wellbeing. I could write a lot about that in my life but it might be interpreted as one-upmanship so I will restrain myself.

I could write about the extraordinary events in our lives that have made our world such a great place to be in. Most of us don’t appreciate how fortuitous it was that scientific advance in the study of our genes and genetic materials had arrived at a stage that when COVID broke out of its hiding place our scientists were able quickly to develop a vaccine that saved millions of lives. Five years ago it would have taken months and years instead of days and weeks. This reality has to add to our sense of wellbeing.

By now most of us have heard about the breakthrough we are experiencing in Artificial Intelligence. It is kind of scary, but the potential of it has to boggle the mind. Stuff that takes us humans hours and days, and weeks and months and years, can be accomplished in seconds, minutes and days. Just let the computer go with a problem, and with electronic speed the gizmo searches though all the sources that ever got digitized and comes up with a number of possible answers for us to choose from. We are only beginning to imagine which fields of study our electronic helpers can be directed to.

We know it is scary, and like anything we come up with, it can be turned to felonious,  as well as productive use. And we know that lots of kinds of work may no longer be necessary, along with the work of people who used to do that work. We are going to have to re-engineer some of our systems so that those people can be accommodated in some meaningful way. We have to think about their well-being too. We may have to change the way we remunerate people in these new circumstances.

These developments underline how important it is for our young people to zero in on the kind of work that will offer them futures that have a future. What does this say about the nature of our current educational systems? What do we have to do there to ensure future well-being?

I cannot divorce us from the reality that we are living in that part of the world where in large measure we have benefitted from life-styles, even philosophies of life, and resources, to which some billions of people on this planet have not had access.

Many of those billions have become aware  of how to access a little of that well-being that looks so attractive to these have-nots from a distance. For reasons of our own some of us welcome that interest. Many do not care whether we welcome them or not. They wish to escape what has been their unsatisfactory physical and economic reality.

This drive by many to find a place among us, in what we think of as ours, has implications for our wellbeing that are both positive and negative. In many of our economies, aging populations with declining birthrates, wishing continued good economic times, more hands to turn the wheels of industry are welcomed.

On the other hand, our democratic principles require that our newcomers have the right to vote. These newcomers may have an entirely different heritage. Inevitably they will be implanting some of that in their new homes. Further, they are arriving in such numbers that we indigenous may not be pleased with the impact, because of the new rules of the game the newcomers may have the numbers to impose on us. If we strongly object to this new regime, this would certainly impact our sense of well-being.

Some European countries are feeling the consequences. We are now beginning to experience the taste in North America. Look at the U.S. southern border. Look at the protest groups in the streets of our cities protesting the attempt to eliminate some murderous terrorists.

Maybe with AI we don’t need so many of those extra hands to ensure our well-being.

Sorry that the story for seeking that objective is not all sweetness and light.