Too many people, too much crap. That’s the quick, easy and realistic (pessimistic?) way of describing our society. We live in a world of luxuries and consumptions. The underlining mind talk goes something like this, “if I get this or that, I will be whole, better, something or someone!”.
In Western culture, we have a fixation on standard of living:
“A minimum of necessities, comforts, or luxuries considered essential to maintaining a person or group in customary or proper status or circumstances” source.
The problem with that metric is there is no way that maintaining our standard is sustainable. Furthermore, a higher standard of living doesn’t mean happiness.
We have a better measure of our society, Quality of life:
“Those aspects of the economic, social and physical environment that make a community a desirable place in which to live.” source
After spending two months traveling through South East Asia, I’ve made a few observations. 
- Being poor doesn’t equal being unhappy. While I’m sure most citizens of Cambodia would love to have more money, they live happy lives. A life surrounded by community, family and laughter.
- Having everything doesn’t mean happy. I voted yesterday, the guy behind me was unhappy about the amount of time he was “wasting” in line to vote. He has everything in the eyes of standard of living, but lacks a level of appreciation for simple honors such as democracy.
If our world is going to take a serious approach to poverty we need to look at our excesses and be willing to focus on others more than ourselves. In business the saying goes, “What gets measured, get’s done.” Lets stop measuring standard and focus on quality.
Blog action day is just one way that you can get involved. My man EngageJoe has a host of other ideas.
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