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Workshop on Redefining Prosperity at the Personal Level

(Continues the discussion begun in the morning Plenary)

The Earth's delicate ecology has been strained to its limit with less than a billion of its most privileged inhabitants living a "Western" style of life. To imagine it sustaining five or ten billion living out our present definition of success and prosperity requires a capacity for optimism that would make Dr. Pangloss seem a cry-baby. A just and peaceful world - and a world in which the earth's fragile ecology is preserved - may depend most of all at this point on whether we in the industrialized nations are able to modify our own thinking and our own image of the good life. That image - currently grounded in acquisitiveness and the expectation of ever more consumer goods (and thus ever increasing use of energy and natural resources) - is, for better or worse, the one the rest of the world emulates. Unless we can show the leadership and the insight necessary to change our own ways, the prospects for a successful transition to the new era we are entering are not encouraging. The present panel will explore, from the perspectives of both activists and scholars, alternative definitions of the good life and of modes of human action in the economic sphere.

The Plenary panelists (in alphabetical order) were as follows:

• John B. Cobb, Jr., 777 Cambridge Way, Claremont, CA 91711; (909) 626-2686, Professor of Philosophy and Theology and Dean of the School of Theology at Claremont, co-author with Herman Daly of For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press). Will present a vision of modes of economic organization and activity that are at once morally sound, ecologically sustainable, and humanly satisfying.

• Thomas Greco, Jr. Tucson, Arizona: writer, editor, publisher, economist and organizer. Author of Money and Debt: A Solution to the Global Crisis. Will describe a project, the "Cooperative Community Commonwealth," embodying a new mode of economic interaction that is voluntary, designed to build cooperation and trust, and focused upon transforming people's relations with the environment and with each other.

• Vicki Robin. President, New Road Map Foundation, Seattle, WA. The foundation has been active in helping people understand what it is to truly have "enough," and to take the concrete steps needed to achieve a satisfying and independent way of life without constantly striving for more and more money. She will outline in detail a concrete, realistic program for achieving this goal.

• Paul L. Wachtel. Distinguished Professor of Psychology, City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY 10031; (212) 242-0811, (212) 473-2484; author of The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers). Will address the illusions and self deceptions in our current way of life and show both how a growth-oriented society creates frustration rather than contentment and how keener understanding of our needs and our psychological nature points us to more gratifying alternatives that are also more in tune with the needs of ecological sustainability.

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