THE HUMAN PERSON FLOURISHING IN TERMS OF SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY (PART II)

WHAT IS HUMAN FLOURISHING?

- Humans, just like all organisms, have innate abilities and characteristics that let them
sustain their function and survive in a given environment. But in the very center of
human being is an unexplainable thirst for happiness, serenity, and fulfilment.

FORGET ‘DEVELOPING’ POOR COUNTRIES, IT’S TIME TO ‘DE-DEVELOP’ RICH

COUNTRIES

1. OVERCONSUMPTION PUTS THE PLANET AT RISK

- Overconsumption worsens climate breakdown and increases air pollution. It exhausts the
planet's life support systems like the ones that provide us with fresh water, and leaves us
short of materials critical to our health and quality of life.
- At the same time we are ruthlessly competing, trying to succeed and survive at each
other's expense while we all sink into unserviceable debt.

IT WILL TAKE 100 YEARS FOR THE WORLD’S POOREST PEOPLE TO EARN
$1.25 A DAY

- Growth has been the main object of development for the past 70 years, despite the fact
that it’s not working. Since 1980, the global economy has grown by 380%, but the
number of people living in poverty on less than $5 (Php 250) a day has increased by more
than 1.1 billion. That’s 17 times the population of Britain. So much for the trickle-down
effect.
- Because even at current levels of average global consumption, we’re overshooting our
planet’s bio-capacity by more than 50% each year.
- In other words, growth isn’t an option anymore – we’ve already grown too much.
Scientists are now telling us that we’re blowing past planetary boundaries at breakneck
speed. And the hard truth is that this global crisis is due almost entirely to
overconsumption in rich countries.
- This global crisis is due to overconsumption in rich countries.

INSTEAD OF PUSHING POOR COUNTRIES TO ‘CATCH UP’ WITH RICH ONES,

WE SHOULD BE GETTING RICH COUNTRIES TO ‘CATCH DOWN’

- Right now, our planet only has enough resources for each of us to consume 1.8 “global
hectares” annually – a standardized unit that measures resource use and waste.
 - Economist Peter Edward argues that instead of pushing poorer countries to “catch up”
with rich ones, we should be thinking of ways to get rich countries to “catch down” to
more appropriate levels of development. We should look at societies where people live
long and happy lives at relatively low levels of income and consumption not as basket
cases that need to be developed towards western models, but as exemplars of efficient
living.
- In the US, life expectancy is 79 years and GDP per capita is $53,000 (Php 2.65 M). But
many countries have achieved similar life expectancy with a mere fraction of this income.
Cuba has a comparable life expectancy to the US and one of the highest literacy rates in
the world with GDP per capita of only $6,000 (Php 300k) and consumption of only 1.9
hectares – right at the threshold of ecological sustainability.
- We need to stop thinking of growth as the answer to eradicating poverty, but instead try
to encourage richer countries to tone down their excesses.

DE- DEVELOPING RICH COUNTRIES

- People place too much importance on “things". We have started to rely on buying things
and having stuff to determine our happiness. It's just stuff. They're just things. It's all just
a bunch of crap that cannot bring real, lasting happiness. We need to stop being such a
commercially centered society, and return our focus back to family, friends, community,
and religion/spirituality to bring us happiness.

THE GOOD LIFE

The best way to help the environment is to become a more conscious

consumer.
Humans are using natural resources endlessly day by day. The population explosion is causing
overexploitation of natural resources with little or no care to conserving them. To meet this massive
population, depletion of natural resources is happening. However, we need to understand that natural
resources are finite. Even renewable resources are not being given enough time to replenish. Thus,
one can even wonder what the condition of non-renewable resources might be. Therefore, this
depletion of natural resources is quite harmful to the earth and its inhabitants.

As we require minerals for almost everything from housing to business, they are being used up
rapidly. There has been a major decline in these minerals like coal, copper and more. Soon, we will
run out of them all if we do not conserve them properly.

Similarly, the oil reserves are also running out. We won’t be able to produce more oil and thus we
won’t get any petroleum. There will be inflation in prices and many economies will crumble due to
this lack of resources.