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Sustainable flourishing through leadership of emergence at the example of tourism and leisure

Robert Schuman, principal architect of the European Union

A tangible proof of the meaning and scope of human flourishing that can change not only organizations but also entire societies, is given by Robert Schuman, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs who launched the Schuman Declaration (1950) that gave birth to the EU. His leitmotiv was to be a faithful instrument in the hands of God in whichever circumstances. A strong personal relationship with God characterized his entire personal and professional life and implied the heroic practice of virtues. He strove for peace on the continent and therefore for reconciliation between France and Germany - countries that had been archenemies since the Treaty of Verdun (843). He previewed a peace project on coal and steel, former instruments of war. Schuman pursued a policy of reconciliation from the moment he became a member of the French Parliament (1919) and even during his captivity during the Second World War. His coherence of life was acknowledged by friend and foe and recognized also professionally. His profound Catholic faith brought human flourishing that changed not only French-German relationships, not only Europe, but the entire world. Schuman’s Europe would strive towards political unification through economic cooperation – as a means! – at the service of man and his transcendence so that man could flourish. These days man seems to be an instrument of the economy and politics instead of the other way round. A good moment to revive the person and thoughts of the Father of Europe.

Rethinking Age in HCI Through Anti-Ageist Playful Interactions

Abundant HCI research exists on the many assistive technologies that provide help with everyday physical and cognitive tasks. However, while a purely assistive approach often casts aging people in passive roles, recent studies suggest that adults may be ‘flourishing’ way into advanced age, even though implicit ageist prejudices are difficult to eradicate. Negative age-related stereotypes are the hidden and yet urgent issue we address in this study. There is a clear opportunity for an anti-ageist perspective in HCI, an approach that we propose as complementary to assistive technologies: in addition to providing solutions for the aging population, we urgently call for designs about aging, to spark a conversation on age, raise awareness and ultimately contrast ageist stereotypes. We point at empathy as a key element to reconceptualize, at least in part, HCI’s contribution to research on aging. We present a design critique of two interactive pieces that, although not without flaws, suggest how future empathy-raising artifacts might be. Our analysis combines pragmatist aesthetics, interaction criticism and ludology, and yields four design tactics (recurring configurations of significant elements) that are generative in bringing about broader design implications towards a different, empathy-based concept of aging in HCI.

Capturing the well-being exposome in poly-environmental scores.

In this study we use aggregated weighted scores of environmental effects to study environmental influences on well-being and happiness. To this end, we split a sample of Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) participants into a training (N =4857) and test (N =2077) sample. In the training sample, we use elastic net regression to estimate effect sizes for associations between life satisfaction and two sets of environmental variables: one based on self- report socioenvironmental data, and one based on objective physical environmental data. Based on these effect sizes, we create two poly-environmental scores (PES-S and PES-O, for self-reports and objective data respectively). In the test sample, we perform association analyses between different measures of well-being and the two PESs. We find that the PES-S explains ~36% of the variance in well-being, while the PES-O does not significantly contribute to the model. Variance in other well-being measures (i.e., different life satisfaction domains, subjective happiness, quality of life, flourishing, psychological well-being, self-rated health, depressive problems, and loneliness) are explained to varying extents by the PESs, ranging from 6.36% (self-rated health) to 36.66% (loneliness). These predictive values did not change during the COVID-19 pandemic (N =3214). Validating the PES-S in the UK biobank (N =40,614), we find that the UK biobank PES-S explains about ~12% of the variance in happiness. Lastly, we examine if there is any indication for gene-environment correlation (rGE), the phenomenon where one’s genetic predisposition influences exposure to the environment, by associating the PESs with polygenic scores (PGS) in a sample of Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) and UK Biobank participants. While the PES and PGS were not correlated in the NTR sample, they were correlated in the larger UK biobank sample, indicating the potential presence of rGE. We discuss several limitations pertaining to our dataset, such as a potential influence of common method bias, and reflect on how PESs might be used in future research.

Rationalising irrationality: examining barriers and excuses for sustainable behaviour

There is mounting evidence that efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of human activity on climate and biodiversity have so far been unsuccessful. Explanations for this failure point to a number of factors discussed in this article. While acknowledging cognitive dissonance as a significant contributing factor to continuing unsustainable practices, this article seeks to explore hegemonic rationality of industrial expansion and economic growth and resulting politics of denial. These politics promote the economic rationale for exploitation of the environment, with pursuit of material wealth seen as the most rational goal. Framed this way, this rationality is presented by political and corporate decision-makers as common sense and continuous environmentally destructive behavior is justified under the guise of consumer choices, hampering meaningful action for sustainable change. This article underlines forms of alternative rationality, namely, non-utilitarian and non-hierarchical worldview of environmental and human flourishing, that can advance sustainability. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/

Scenes of Independence

After the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, a flourishing cultural scene was established in Croatia’s capital Zagreb. The scene calls itself: independent culture. In this book, Sepp Eckenhaussen explores the history of Zagreb’s independent culture through three questions: How were independent cultures born? To whom do they belong? And what is the independence in independent culture? The result is a genealogy, a personal travel log, a mapping of cores of criticality, a search for futurologies, and a theory of the scene.Once again, it turns out that localist perspectives have become urgent to culture. The untranslatability of the local term ‘independent culture’ makes it hard for the outsider to get a thorough understanding of it. But it also makes the term into a crystal of significance and a catalyst of meaning-making towards a theory of independent culture.