Here is a book and a movement about building a future that guarantees human rights and a happy future for all. Nineteen hundred and forty-eight was the year of creation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, led by Eleanor Roosevelt. Many countries adopted these rights, but there was never an enforcement mechanism, so dictators and governments have not honored these pledges and as we know, human rights are abused all around the world. This movement aims to educate citizens about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and about local and international enforcement that might turn promise into reality. Understanding the size of the challenge, they have set 2048 as they start working to achieve this. This effort is consistent with changing what we measure to these core values that make life happy for everyone. Thanks to Robert Fullman in Schenectady, NY for bringing this book and movement to my attention.

2048 is the story of the most important international social movement in the 21st century: the drafting and implementation of an International Bill of Rights that will be enforceable in the courts of every country on Earth.

In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but its provisions are not enforceable so its promise remains unfulfilled. It’s time to take the next step. 2048 shows how we can create an agreement that will truly guarantee global human rights and the rule of law and have it in place by the 100th anniversary of the Universal Declaration—a visionary, audacious, but eminently achievable goal. J. Kirk Boyd outlines the freedoms this new document would protect and describes successful international agreements already in place that can serve as models.

But the 2048 Project needs you. “What you do with what you read,” Boyd writes, “is as important as what this book says.” He explains how people in all countries can help shape the document through the 2048 Project website (2048.berkeley.edu)—hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law—and offers practical advice for reaching out and building support step by step so that the International Bill of Rights will become the foundation of an irresistible grassroots movement.

Read Excepts from AlterNet

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Tom Barefoot

In a NY Times OP-ED, Economist Paul Krugman warns that rising commodity prices reflect the underlying reality that these resources are limited and as demand increases from the developing world (not the U.S.) prices are rising. We will need to manage our utilization of these limited resources as we move forward and the drop in these prices we have seen over the last two years of global recession turns around with growth in developing countries. Read OP-ED.

Here is a short video on a project that is catching on around the world. I won’t say more.
Watch the video. Warning, watching this video may induce feelings of happiness.

Want more? Link to more similar videos around the world. More

This Christmas video shows just how wild people can get when stimulated with over-the-top commercialism. Imagine the hormones cranking.
Check out my Christmas message to America – you’ll laugh, you’ll cry…Bill Maher
View Bill Maher’s Christmas Video

Video of a Flashmob performance in a mall in Connecticut. Watch the smiling faces of the crowd and listen to the comments from the crowd at the end.
Watch the Flashmob video

ALTERNATIVE INDICATORS OF WELL-BEING FOR MELANESIA
Changing the way progress is measured in the South Pacific

Jamie Tanquay from New Hampshire, who did graduate work in Happiness Economics at Johns Hopkins and an internship in Bhutan helping them develop GNH based tools for policy analysis, has followed his happiness to Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific. Not surprisingly, the islanders score in the bottom 50 countries in GDP measures and amongst the top in measures of well-being and happiness. Jamie is helping develop and test measures that take into account unique cultural and environmental aspects of life in Melanesia and working to implement real well-being measures for development and self-evaluation and for policy evaluation. Read Jamie’s short report on his work to see how GNH ideas can be implemented. Jamie was also a presenter at the 5th International Gross National Happiness Research Conference held in Brazil in 2009.

Read or download the PDF.

As part of a Key National Indicators System for the United States being developed by The State of the USA in partnership with the National Academy of Sciences, CPS has proposed a new set of Social Wealth indicators–ensuring that the value of care work and the status of women and children are included as key measures of quality of life and economic success for all. Here is more evidence that ideas about new measures of our well-being and happiness are springing up everywhere.

Social Wealth indicators help us to look forward, so we are not just measuring through the rear-view mirror.  ~  Christopher Hoenig, The State of the USA

http://www.partnershipway.org/get-connected/social-wealth-a-new-national-framework-for-caring-economics-and-human-infrastructure

Daniel Pink has been researching motivation in the new world of more creative work and assembles new views of motivation that have been well-studied, but not well-accepted. Seems we like to believe what we believe, rather than accept the science. One thing Pink has written about is that often creative types are strongly motivated by making progress, so perhaps this is another place where GNH ideas on using indicators to provide employees or one’s self (self-assessment) with progress reports may be motivating for some individuals or groups. By the way, Daniel Pinks last job — a speechwriter for Al Gore.

Watch Daniel Pink’s TED TALK

It’s been two years since 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death by a frenzied crowd of Black Friday shoppers at a Long Island Walmart. The stampede is a twisted symbol of what’s become of the American Dream: We’ll apparently stop at nothing in the quest for more stuff.

But that wasn’t the holy grail that James Truslow Adams had in mind when he first coined the phrase “American Dream” in his 1931 book, The Epic of America. Instead he believed in “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone … It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Read full article.

Alternet–By Tara Lohan

What’s Wrong with Being No. 2?

Japan may be the first nation to opt for a no growth, steady state economy.  Read Full Article.

Confronted with slow growth and diminishing resources, Japan may be in a position to lead the experiments as we find balance in sustainable economies.

ADBusters #93