Jennifer Kavanagh is the author of a number of non-fiction and fiction title challenging mainstream ideas about success.

In this article for Innerself.com she writes, "The word “worldly” suggests adherence to material satisfactions. We live in a consumer-driven society, in which all of us – even students, patients and passengers – are considered “customers”. Progress is marked by increases in material wealth. The push from advertising, the media, and our peers is towards bigger and more; the market thrives only by stirring us to a state of dissatisfaction. Success in the economy is defined only by growth.

These attitudes are ingrained, copied by developing countries, and largely unquestioned until the recent world recession has driven many to reconsider these social concepts, some of which in their heart of hearts, perhaps, they have always felt to be false – and to reassess their life’s priorities.

How did the definition of a nation’s health become so tied to its economic state? Increasingly the measure of “wellbeing” in a wider qualitative, rather than quantitative, sense is establishing its place. As work by Richard Layard and others has revealed, an increase in material wealth does not lead to increased happiness."

Read the entire piece here - http://www.innerself.com/content/personal/happiness-and-self-help/12334-worldliness-vs-well-being-and-simplicity.html

Categories:

0 comments on this article

This thread has been closed from taking new comments.