Holistic Flourishing
24:39 Share

Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, Tavia Gilbert, and along with journalist Richard Sergei, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing.

In our Thanksgiving story two weeks ago, we explored the loneliness epidemic in America. And our guest, Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, offered an insight that I want to use as the jumping off point for this episode, because it's the perfect introduction to today's conversation. Here's what Dr. Simon-Thomas shared with us.

What the research is increasingly revealing is that my happiness depends on your happiness. Everyone's happiness matters to my happiness. And I think that's a really important point for flourishing. I can't just flourish. Even if I reach the highest status that I ever imagined, I won't be flourishing unless everyone's flourishing. And that, I feel like, really matters.

The scientist who joins us today would agree with Dr. Simon Thomas that flourishing is deeply interconnected. In fact, in today's episode, psychology researcher Dr. Timothy Lomas takes us deeper into our exploration of flourishing than we have perhaps ever gone before, not only underscoring the interdependence of flourishing for human beings, but also the

but inviting us to think far beyond preconceptions of flourishing as only relating to people. But we'll get to that later. First, let's start with how Dr. Lomas thinks about flourishing. Until the last few years, I would probably have used flourishing synonymously with well-being, and then by default would have used well-being. And then I probably would just use flourishing maybe just as a kind of stronger or the higher form of well-being.

There's so many near synonyms like well-being and thriving and happiness, and it shows the richness of our language, but also from a kind of theoretical and conceptual point of view. You want to find a distinct role for these terms? As you can tell from his careful contemplation of language, Dr. Lomas is a man on a search to deepen and clarify his own understanding of flourishing.

Dr. Lomas is a psychology research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and he's part of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.

Dr. Lomas' main research focus is exploring cross-cultural perspectives on well-being, especially concepts and practices deemed non-Western. And, among other projects, he is assisting two major studies of flourishing. One is the Global Flourishing Study, a longitudinal study of 240,000 people in 22 countries, which

The other is the Global Well-Being Initiative, a collaboration with Gallup to develop and analyze new items for their world poll that reflect non-Western views of well-being.

Why is it so important to Dr. Lomas to study the science of flourishing? Because obviously you want any knowledge, any understanding of flourishing to be based on rigorous science. There's a lot of attention, for example, recently around loneliness and then what's the impact of people being lonely or conversely having friends with this kind of cause and analysis really showing that this really does matter and it's not something...

fluffy or frivolous, but like something, for example, for policymakers really to pay attention to. If you can really show its impact on health and well-being metrics and flourishing in general, then by highlighting that, then we can hopefully help make people's lives better by just showing the necessity of attending to these kinds of dynamics. There's whole segments of professions that are about having tangible impact. Policymakers, politicians, NGOs, people working in different organisations are

And from my experience of those types of professions, those types of people, you know, they're very data driven and they want to see tangible data that they can work with. If we can provide them with really hard concrete evidence, that's something they can work with. You know, if you're a policymaker trying to appeal to a politician with a tight budget and you can show the kind of cost benefit ratio of doing X, Y or Z based on this data. You know, I mentioned loneliness or relationships. If we could really show that.

the tangible impact those factors have on outcomes that matter to us all, you know, health and wellbeing and longevity and so on, and actually provide people with really concrete, substantive data, then that's really persuasive to those people. I mean, it's not just about the data. I think hopefully part of this project is so we can get a sense of people's

like lives and narratives and experiences that does have the power to be, I think, quite impactful. Because like I say, I do think most policymakers, that's what they're about, surely, just improving people's lives. And then they need help from academics and projects like this to know how to do that, to give them a sense of where to spend their money, what to focus on. So, you know, I do think providing this kind of concrete, tangible data

can really hopefully be useful to those kind of people. There's another point of focus that impacts the ability of any life form to sustain and flourish and motivates Dr. Lomas' studies. There's obviously the environmental question. If we can find out, for example, the impact of...

certain environmental factors on well-being, you know, and let's say poor air quality as an example. If we could really show that poor air quality had a detrimental impact on health and well-being, even to the point where you could quantify that in terms of its impact on morbidity, mortality and so on.

you know, you could make it then a real strong case for then improving air quality. And it's harder to make that case. Well, you can make it in moral terms, but it's easier to make if you also have the data to show its tangible impact. The extent to which we can overcome that, you know, and, you know, mitigate the impacts of climate change, you know, is up for debate, but it's something we can and must at least try to do. I would say beyond that,

There's other remedies and changes that are much more, perhaps more readily within reach that we can and should pay attention to. Societal inequality, for example, matters massively for human flourishing. And, you know, compared to trying to fix climate change, it's more easily addressed, perhaps by just more progressive taxation, for example. I think any efforts towards lifting up the most vulnerable and marginalised would go a long, long way.

just to improving quality of life overall. So I think political efforts towards more equal societies would make a huge difference. So there are things we can do. You know, it takes the willpower to do them. And maybe that's what studies like this, if we can show the tangible impact of, say, equality or inequality on health and well-being, to make a persuasive case,

to do that. So there's reasons for hope and optimism in terms of there's things we can really concretely do to improve people's flourishing. So we just need the will and the energy and the motivation to do that. With such deep immersion in the data around health, well-being and happiness, how has Dr. Lomas' understanding of flourishing expanded? What have he and his colleagues come to understand about how to articulate exactly what flourishing is or where it's found?

So if you could imagine a Venn diagram, this is the latest way we've been trying to capture it. One circle would be health and well-being, and then overlapping with that would be flourishing. So health and well-being apply to living agents, living entities. Flourishing can really apply to any system. Then there's an overlap in the middle, which we call human flourishing, in which the human being is doing well and their contexts are doing well. So we feel this really captures

an ideal in which it's not just about a person having health and well-being, but also their context doing well. Because we do note that it's possible for a human to be healthy and to have well-being even in spite of their circumstances. Humans are remarkably resilient creatures and can do well even if their surrounding context, surrounding situation is not doing so well. And then for us, that's a remarkable testament to the spirit in human beings. But we would say to truly be flourishing

You would want the context to be doing well. And that puts the onus on also attending to the context when we're thinking about flourishing. We're not flourishing if we're living in such a way

that's at odds with nature or to its detriment. Even if we might personally feel well, feel healthy, like in the long run, we need to be living in balance and harmony with nature. So that would be an aspect of flourishing. Similarly, I don't think we could be truly flourishing, you know, if our neighbours are doing poorly or if there's people really suffering in our communities. So for us, flourishing is just the bigger picture in terms of what we'd want to pay attention to.

Dr. Lomas has always had a strong interest in the contextual approach or the systemic approach to flourishing, and he's always been a seeker on what he calls the meandering journey of his professional life, which began when he was 19 years old, teaching English in China and visiting Taoist and Buddhist monasteries. That was when he first became captivated by Eastern traditions and by the general idea of human flourishing,

and that fascination has stayed with him throughout his career, including time as a musician, a psychiatric nursing assistant, a PhD student exploring the impact of meditation on men's mental health, and as a psychology lecturer at the University of East London. Even when earlier in his career, he might have been satisfied with a more narrow definition of flourishing as synonymous with well-being or happiness,

His intention has long been to try to expand beyond the individual, to look at the importance of the bigger picture. Having come to the Human Flourishing Program, it seemed like a really natural fit then to use flourishing for this bigger picture, for this more expansive notion. So well-being being encompassed, nestled within flourishing and flourishing being about the person and their context and systems. I found that really useful in terms of

Getting beyond the individualist perspective that can sometimes be bad, not with the notion of well-being. He also knew he needed to look beyond the Western perspective that often drives the conversation about flourishing. When it's come to well-being scholarship over the decades, it's had a very Western-centric bias.

not just in terms of the population studies, but also the people doing the studying, the ideas and concepts we use to study them with, you know, with English being the dominant language, for example. A lot of well-being scholarship is very Western-centric, just like academia more generally. You know, it's really shaped by particularly the values of the US with a lot of its research being done with US populations, particularly US college students. And then there's this sort of

well-established critique that it being Western centric and it doesn't really capture the diversity of ideas and beliefs and values and et cetera across the globe. So you can make a case that it's overlooked values and ideas that perhaps are

are downplayed in the West and given more attention elsewhere. So we were keen to see whether there's ideas and perspectives and values relating to well-being that have been particularly accentuated in Eastern cultures, and particularly Japan. And this has centred on the recognition of the importance of balance and harmony, and also low arousal states like peace and calmness. I have to be really careful with my language because I don't want to call these Eastern concepts because, you know, there's some traditions of them being valued in the West and

Indeed, what we're finding, the results are fascinating, that these principles and outcomes, they seem to matter globally. People value them globally, people experience them globally. But, you know, it's still fair to say they've been given greater attention in the East historically. But we are, you know, us and others are showing that they matter globally. So to make our study of well-being and flourishing possible,

more globally inclusive, more cross-cultural in terms of not just populations, like I say, but ideas and the very concepts we use to think about well-being and flourishing. Because it's kind of new territory in a way, exploring these principles on a global scale. And like I said, some of the results are really intriguing, including the fact that balance and harmony really seem to be core principles that matter globally and are valued across cultures.

Dr. Lomas not only studies global flourishing, but he aims to identify and eliminate bias in the studies themselves. We'll be doing some work just looking at how we carve up the world in these ways and the extent to which labels like East, West, North, South...

develop, developing. These common labels that we use, they're problematic in various ways, so we're trying to develop other ways of how we think about different regions and different peoples. Or at the very least, emphasizing how complex the nuance is and getting away from the generalizations we all tend to habitually use. Rigor in the language around flourishing and the way it is studied has expanded the scholarship of flourishing.

Where we're at, the wave that's currently unfurling, that's currently emerging, is much more about global scholarship. I mentioned before, I think scholarship previously has tended to be Western-centric, and I think

What we're now seeing is real efforts to address that, including kind of scientists in Western cultures paying more attention to other cultures, but also giving voice and space and amplifying the voices of people in other cultures who are then also obviously doing their own scholarship and then together creating a more globalized picture and effort towards well-being scholarship. Dr. Lomas is eager to see the field of study expand even further. Even this globalized wave of scholarship is still human-centric. So part of what I'm really interested in is

a way beyond that that also includes non-human forms of well-being. And I think lots of people are recognizing the value of that in terms of the environment, you know, so looking after the well-being of the environment,

partly from a perspective of enlightened self-interest, like existentially we need the environment to be doing okay for us to be doing okay, but also kind of morally in terms of the living beings, other living beings themselves. But then even other more interesting developments like AI and whether those systems can be conscious. I mean, there's lots of interesting debates to be had, but I do think where the field is and also needs to be going is also considering the welfare of non-human forms of life. So I think that's kind of a trend for future development.

I'm fascinated by Dr. Lomas' respectful inclusion of non-humans and can't recall anyone else before having brought them into the conversation in this way. Why is he willing to include machines in his concept of what systems are capable of or deserving of flourishing?

I think AI systems count, you know, because if and when they become conscious, then that brings up a lot of moral questions in terms of how we treat them, what rights and responsibilities we have towards, you know, caring for their welfare. I don't want to get off topic, but I'm fascinated by the concept of non-human intelligences in reference to unidentified aerial phenomena and UFOs. I mean, that might be an interesting area of debate going forward, if and whether these other entities do exist.

How we engage with them. What's the nature of our relationship with them? So there's just, I think, just a lot of questions in terms of what it means to be well, and then not just applying that to human beings, but to the other kinds of entities that we might share this universe with.

When we're thinking about well-being and flourishing, it's not just about us humans. I mean, it will still be about us humans. It's not about forgetting us or neglecting us, but also putting us into the large context of other forms of life and other systems. So that's what I like flourishing. It's just the word for the big picture within which we're all situated.

But if we remain for now in the sphere of human beings, what do Dr. Lomas' studies show are the elements necessary for humans and human systems to flourish? Humans flourish when everyone flourishes. It depends on how granular you'd like to get. I mean, there are some obvious ones, you know, health, community, relationships,

you know, a degree of material security and stability. People probably are familiar with Maslow's Pyramid. I think that captures a lot of the basic terrain. You know, we need housing, we need to be safe and secure, we need nutrition, we need decent health, we need to be respected, we need friendship, we need opportunities to make the most of our capabilities, to, you know, strive towards authenticity and development.

But then you can obviously become much more granular, like community. There's so many aspects to community. I read one study that broke down the impact of community into 120 aspects.

different micro factors, you know, down to the level of like, how friendly were the bus drivers? And, you know, was there graffiti? You know, there's so many different factors that could be kind of embedded within a notion of community. Dr. Lomas has been working to map out the factors of flourishing. This principle, I've called it scalable granularity, where you can zoom in and zoom out like Google Maps. So you can zoom in to any given aspect of the map or any given factor or element of flourishing.

to really pay attention to all its nuances. And then, you know, obviously the more detailed and the more comprehensive one's focus, the more boxes you can tick, so to speak, I think the greater the chances of helping people flourish. Flourishing also requires sustainability, says Dr. Lomas. To really flourish, it involves, I guess you'd say, striving for the best in a sustainable way. And when I say sustainable, I mean across different elements of oneself and also oneself throughout time.

So if I did something today that may be very hedonistic but could be detrimental to me tomorrow, that in the long run is not about flourishing. You want to be well, you know, have health and well-being today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and so on. But also sustainable in the sense of it's no good if I do something that's to the detriment of my family or friends or neighbours. So ideally you kind of embed a thought of how it's going to impact upon other people, then also on the context more generally in the environment.

So all that is to say, I think thinking in that way, in a sustainable way, thinking about extending one's consideration across these contexts, across different elements of oneself, throughout time, across other people, across contexts,

That's inevitably kind of intrinsically moral, I think. Because I think that's part of what it means to act morally and ethically, is to take these considerations. To think of others and not just oneself, and to think of one's future self and not just one's present self, and to think of the environment and not just human beings and so on. So I think there's an inevitable morality and an ethic to acting in a way that's going to promote flourishing. And there's an inevitability to character virtues being key to flourishing as well.

We know that qualities like gratitude are hugely beneficial for well-being. You know, you could take two people in virtually identical circumstances and just by virtue of their mindset, their attitude, how they approach it, they could be almost living completely different lives, even in the very same situations. People bring their own qualities to the situation and that really makes a difference too.

So qualities like gratitude and hope and forgiveness and optimism, I think these can all be hugely beneficial. And also what's encouraging, these aren't just fixed, stable traits, but I think they are things people can work on. So I think that's important to bear in mind, you know, people themselves, they have a certain amount of power and ability to change how they see and interact with their own situation. So I think character strengths are really important in that respect.

As Dr. Lomas continues the study of flourishing, whether human, animal, plant, system, machine, what do he and his colleagues think they'll discover? He returns to the enthusiasm for turning limiting beliefs inside out. Well, my baseline assumption is that there'll be surprises all over the place. The general trend with all this research has been surprise, which has been interesting because

I think we go into these studies and in fact we operate generally with all these assumptions about East and West and even those labels are problematic. There's such complex, heterogeneous, diverse regions so pretty much any generalisation is going to be problematic and inaccurate. We have these biases and assumptions around what different regions are like, what different peoples are like.

But a lot of that is based on just, well, who knows? Historical precedent, tradition, prejudice, supposition. But when you actually get the data for the first time in some of these instances, it's full of surprise. So it's almost hard to have hypotheses, other than the general one, that I expect to be intrigued and surprised by the data we get back.

Richard and I want to take a moment to celebrate the life of another scientist who followed his curiosity and passion over a lifetime of research and surprising outcomes. In July 2022, we brought you one of our favorite episodes about the restoration of the American chestnut tree. This tree species, which had been so vital to the establishment and flourishing of the United States, had been long assumed to be extinct before

But the work of one pioneer, Dr. William Powell, changed that story. Through the efforts of Dr. Powell, his colleagues, and countless citizen volunteers, the American chestnut tree has a future. We are sad to share that Dr. Powell passed away from cancer at the age of 67, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving.

We want to acknowledge our respect and gratitude for this cutting-edge scientist, this gentleman, who inspired generations of scientists and the Stories of Impact community. In our last episode of the year, in two weeks, we'll replay the American Chestnut episode, though you don't have to wait. We'll link to the episode in the show notes, so if you like, you can listen now.

Here's Richard. On my journey of understanding science and technology, Bill Powell is one of those extraordinary researchers who brings together a pure love of academic science, but also pure research that is aimed at helping the world. His mission was to understand science

the demise of one of the icons of American history, the American chestnut tree, which was wiped out very early in the 20th century. And this amazing thought of, can we bring it back to life? And he dedicated decades of research and work to genetically engineering a new American chestnut tree that would be blight-resistant.

Now, we all admit there is controversy around genetic engineering, but to Bill's point, which you will hear in the story that unfolds, this is a very specific use of genetic engineering to bring back an American icon and would not endanger the world in any way, would contribute to conservation, and would contribute to America's history.

We've lost an enormous mind in Bill Powell. He was very gracious with his time with us and we'll miss him. We'll be back in two weeks with the American Chestnut Tree episode before we take a holiday break.

In the meantime, if you enjoy the stories we share with you on the podcast, please follow us and rate and review us. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and at storiesofimpact.org. And be sure to sign up for the TWCF newsletter at templetonworldcharity.org.

This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with Richard Sergei and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by TalkBox Productions and Tavia Gilbert. Senior producer Katie Flood. Assistant producer Oscar Falk. Music by Alexander Filipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michelle Cobb. The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.