Book contents

Preface:
Riding the Tandem of Personal Wellbeing
and Environmental Sustainability

1 Line Drawing: A Sketch of the Contemporary Landscape
First Perspective: Our Culture of Consumption
Second Perspective: Heating up and Eating up the Earth
Third Perspective: Illbeing in Britain Today
Fourth Perspective: Reconstructing Economics
Reasons for Hope

2 Investigating Happily Modest Consumers
The Road Here
Introducing the Modest Consumers Study

3 Lives That Tell Stories of Happy Modest Consumption
Lifelong Material Modesty
Forging New Ways of Living

4 No Wonder They Were Living Happily!
What is Wellbeing?
Foundations of Wellbeing
How Happy were the Modest Consumers?
What Gave the Modest Consumers Satisfaction?
Materialism and Wellbeing
Grapplers

5 Happiness, Status, Money and Time
Why Happy People are Better for the Planet
Meanings and Uses of Consumption
Conclusion: Time for Radical Change

6 The Significance of Experience
The Way We’re Born?
What about Experience?
The Many Facets of Environment
And the Soul?
Personality Traits
Conclusion: The Power of Experience to Carry us Towards a Better Future

7 The Vital Role of Values
What are Values?
Environmental Concern and Social Justice as Drivers
The Religious Imperative
Global Inequality
Personal Responsibility
Crossing Thresholds
Conclusion: The Cultivation of Intrinsic Values – a New Priority

8 The Place of Spirituality
Some Contemporary Perspectives on Spirituality
Conclusion: The Importance of Spiritual Values

9 Creativity – A Human Need
A Means of Communication and the Essence of Generation
Creativity for Health and Wellbeing
Imagination
Living Creatively
Conclusion: Cultivating Creativity is Crucial

10 Nurturing Playfulness
The Importance for Imagination of Real Experience
The Screen and Play
The Whole of Life
Conclusion: Playfulness Prepares us for the Future

11 Bonding with Nature
Nature – The Missing Element in the Matrix of Wellbeing
The Natural World and Proper Functioning in Children
Ecological Literacy
The Origins of a Holistic Relationship with Nature
Conclusion: We Need to Regain a Sense of our Place in Nature

12 Personal Qualities and Capacities for Building a Better Future
Optimising the Capability to Experience Wellbeing
Personal Capital
Wellbeing and the Climate
Resilience
Attachment, a Fundamental Factor
A New Culture from Birth
Transforming Culture, De-gilding the Lily
Conclusion: Humanity Needs to Take a New Direction

Sample of words and phrases in the index
Affluence, appearance, arts, aspiration, Attachment Theory, attention, autonomy, belonging, biodiversity, biophilia, brain, capitalism, carbon emissions, children, comfort, consumerism, culture, debt, ecological literacy, eco-psychologist, education, empathy, family, feedback loop, fulfilment, gratitude, handbag, Happy Planet Index, Human Genome Project, imagination, instinct, justice, library, luxury, memories, mindfulness, music, “non-shared environment”, old age, parenting, “peak oil”, permaculture, personality trait, “planetary boundaries”, pleasure, politics, pollution, poverty, preference, relationships, religion, silence, stress, temperament, time, Transition Town, travel, waste, weather.