Towards True Well-Being

Towards True Well-Being

By Dr Arvind Kumar

According to Manfred Max-Neef, the Chilean ecological economist, the spectrum from penury to wealth cannot be reduced to a single dimension. The Matrix of Human Needs, as developed by Manfred, refers to some nine distinct categories of needs: Subsistence, Protection, Affection, Understanding, Participation, Leisure, Creation, Identity, and Freedom. In his view–once our Subsistence needs have been met–the satisfaction of any particular need is independent of the satisfaction of any of the others. He does not view poverty as monolithic. In view of the fact that the realization of our full humanity entails the fulfillment all of these needs, the inability to satisfy any of them constitutes its own particular kind of poverty. After the fulfillment of Subsistence needs, the satisfaction of none of these other needs is ultimately circumscribed by the extent of one’s material possessions–or by the size of one’s wealth.

Broadly speaking, there is little or no relationship between per capita income and quality of life. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in their recent book The spirit level: Why greater equality makes society stronger, have shown that, across nations, a wide variety of social dysfunction–including drug abuse, obesity and teenage births–correlate well with a society’s degree of inequality, and not–as might be supposed–with its average level of wealth or destitution. The materialistic attainments seldom make us happier and in the process lay waste to the natural capital upon which our real well-being ultimately depends.