Grand challenges/Causes of Suboptimal Life Experiences

Interested students are invited to contribute to this on-going research project to identify the Causes of Suboptimal Life Experiences. In short, this research seeks to identify the many causes of the grand challenges, and to understand how those causes are interrelated. The purpose of this research is to identify the obstacles that need to be overcome, and problems we need to solve to attain flourishing lives for all of the world’s people, now and forever.

Researchers are asked to reflect wisely on the questions:

• What kind of world do we want?
• What obstacles need to be overcome, what problems do we need to solve to attain flourishing lives for all of the world’s people, now and forever?
• What are the relationships among those problems?

This leads to a cause-effect diagram identifying causes of suboptimal life experiences—failure for everyone in the world to flourish and experience the greatest possible well-being, including all that is of value now along with ever increasing well-being and value forever.

The current diagram is presented in the outline below. Tentative solutions are shown to the ⇦ right of an arrow.

Students are invited to study the existing diagram, offer their comments in the associated talk page, and if you are confident you can improve the diagram, please contribute your improvements by editing the diagram.

Unmet Physiological Needs

• Inadequate access to clean, safe drinking water ⇦ Do good.
• Malnutrition ⇦ Do good.
• Inadequate housing and shelter ⇦ Do good.
• Poor sanitation ⇦ Do good.
• Disease ⇦ Do good.
  • Inadequate Healthcare
  • Stress
    • Stressors
  • Poverty ⇦ Basic Income.
    • Systemic debt
      • Fiat money
• Political unrest and on-going regional conflicts. ⇦ Transcend conflict.

The Sustainable Development Goals seek to address many of the issues listed in this section. Supporting those goals can help to solve many of the problems listed.

Abridged Human Rights

• Lack of attention to Human Rights. ⇦ Uphold human rights, worldwide.
• Oppressive or Ineffective government
  • Authoritarianism
  • Other forms of non-representative government
• Violence
  • Violence against humans
  • Violence against other sentient beings.
• Crime
• War ⇦ Transcend conflict.
• Disregard of human dignity. ⇦ Preserve dignity for all people.
  • Disregard of the golden rule. ⇦ Live the Golden Rule.
• Inequality

Inadequate or wrongly-directed Education

• Obstacles to accessing Education ⇦ Improve, expand, and make more use of MOOCS, including Wikiversity.
  • Poverty
• Relevance of available Education
• Unclear or Unwise Education Goals
  • Lack of focus on well-being and all that is of value
    • Inattention to what matters. ⇦ Focus on what matters.
      • Failure to contemplate and identify what is of most value
      • Lack of consensus on a global concept of “Good”
    • Lack of wisdom. ⇦ Study wisdom. ⇦ Choose to live wisely.
    • Inattention to exploring all that could be.
    • Knowledge focus rather than wisdom focus
      • Lack of wisdom inquiry
  • Lack of focus on virtues. ⇦ Embrace the moral virtues. ⇦ Study the moral virtues.
  • Failure to develop creativity
  • Failure to identify student strengths
    • Discounting multiple intelligences.
  • Failure to tackle the grand challenges. ⇦ Tackle the grand challenges. ⇦ Study the grand challenges.
    • Inattention to problem definition
    • Inattention to problem solving.
    • Inattention to limits to growth and sustainability ⇦ Do not exceed limits to growth. ⇦ Understand limits to growth.
    • Success prioritized above significance.
• Poor Education Curricula
  • Lack of accepted curricula designed for learning toward well-being.
  • Failure to integrate logical and aesthetic / intuitive perspectives.
  • Failure to integrate reductionist and holistic approaches.
  • Failure to integrate short-term and long-term perspectives
  • Lack of learning from all of nature.
  • Lack of integration of sustainability and ecology into curricula
  • Failure to integrate local and global perspectives. ⇦ Attain a global perspective.
• Ineffective Education Systems
  • Lack of focus on learning
  • Lack of focus on exploration and discovery
  • Not driven by curiosity and inquiry
  • Failure to use play as a primary learning mode.
  • Failure to emphasize experiential learning, learning by doing.
  • Lack of dialogue. ⇦ Practice dialogue.
  • Lack of integration of subjects, problems, and experiences.
  • Failure to apply learning to solving the grand challenges. ⇦ Focus on overcoming the grand challenges. ⇦ Study the grand challenges.
  • Poor fit of education methods and goals to student interest, learning style, and goals
  • Educational institutions based on ineffective theories of learning

Prevalence and persistence of misinformation and poorly founded beliefs

• Prevalence of untrue beliefs. ⇦ Seek true beliefs.
• Ignorance
  • Illiteracy
• Gullibility
  • Ineffective Theory of Knowledge. ⇦ Know how you know.
• Promoting and Sustaining Falsehoods ⇦ Intellectual Honesty.
  • Deception
    • Propaganda
  • Cultural traditions
  • Ideologies
    • Unexamined Ideologies. ⇦ Examine Ideologies
  • Theocracy ⇦ Progress beyond theism.
    • Unwise Dogma
    • Social, political, and economic power
    • Failure to think beyond theism. ⇦ Progress beyond theism.
  • Unclear thinking. ⇦ Think clearly.
• Censorship
• Inadequate and ineffective dialogue. ⇦ Practice dialogue.
• Inaccurate worldviews, misaligned with reality. ⇦ Explore worldviews.
  • Lack of Wisdom ⇦ Live wisely.

Unwise Goals: personal, organizational, academic, national, international

• Lack of consensus on a global concept of “Good”
  • Cultural Differences
  • Ideological Differences
  • Philosophical Differences
    • Unresolved characterization of Summum bonum
    • Inattention to exploring all that could be.
  • Lack of effective research into identifying pro-social values
• Narrow focus on Survival
• Narrow focus on Success
• Narrow focus on Recreation
• Inadequate focus on Thriving
• Inadequate focus on Significance
• Inadequate focus on Transcendence
• Inadequate focus on sustainability
• Consumed by distractions and dead ends
• Lack of wise goals ⇦ Research ways to wisely create our future.
  • Unaware of what matters ⇦ Focus on what matters.
    • Lack of Wisdom ⇦Choose to live wisely.
  • Failure to seek real good. ⇦ Seek real good
  • Failure to protect human rights. ⇦ Assess and protect human rights, worldwide.
  • Complacency
• Failure to envision a wise future. ⇦ Envision a wise future. ⇦ Research ways to wisely create our future.
• Boredom

Fragmentation of People because of differing Cultures, Nations, and Ideologies

• Tribal perspective rather than global perspective.
• National Boundaries
  • Barriers to emigration
  • Barriers to immigration
  • Xenophobia
  • Statelessness
• Language Barriers
  • Lack of an accepted universal lingua franca.
• Cultural Barriers ⇦ Embrace reality as our common ground.
  • Racism
  • Religious Intolerance
  • Sexual Discrimination
• Gender roles
• Ideological boundaries ⇦ Embrace reality as our common ground.
  • Religious ideologies
  • Political ideologies
  • Economic ideologies
• Discrimination
• Class Barriers
  • Class conflict
  • Income Inequality
    • Poverty
    • Economic Policy
    • Unemployment
    • Economic Policy
  • Rankism
• Bowling Alone—the decline of social capital
• Mistrust ⇦ Earn trust.
  • Dishonesty
• Fear Mongering ⇦ Intellectual Honesty.
  • Terrorism
• Broken Families
  • Divorce
  • Child abuse
  • Spousal abuse

Human Frailty

Note that this section identifies several design constraints rather than problems to be solved.

• Cowardice
• Laziness
• Ego Involvement
  • Selfishness
  • Arrogance
  • Obstinacy
• Greed
  • Ego involvement
  • Perceived scarcity
    • Actual scarcity
• Addictions
  • Alcoholism
  • Drug Abuse
  • Tobacco Addiction
• Failure to Live Wisely. ⇦ Choose to live wisely.

Emotionally Reactive Episodes—Impulsive and Destructive Emotional Reactions

• Emotional Incompetence
  • Lack of effective instruction in emotional competence ⇦ Study emotional competency.
• Unmitigated Destructive Emotions
  • Hate ⇦ Overcome hatred
  • Anger ⇦ Resolve anger
  • Revenge ⇦ Forgiving
  • Jealousy
  • Envy
  • Shame
  • Humiliation
  • Fear ⇦ Find courage
• Mental Illness
  • Inadequate Mental Health Services

Ineffective Economic Systems

• Exclusion of externalities
• Exploitation of the commons
  • Pollution continues at no cost to polluters
• Faulty measures and Goals
  • Limitations of GDP as a measure of value
  • Undue focus on growth
    • Ignoring limits to growth.
    • Opulence prioritized over flourishing
  • Undervalued ecosystem services
• Economics (financial models) diverge from economies (exchange of goods and services).
  • Inaccurate accounting models and systems
    • Intrinsic value often not reflected in financial value.
  • Debt
    • Fiat money
    • Systemic creation of debt.
  • Debt Jubilee
• Unemployment
  • Underemployment
  • Overemployment
• Ineffective taxation
  • Failure to tax what we want less of
  • Intractable complexity of tax codes
  • Perception of unfairness
    • Unfairness
• Short-sighted Energy Policies
  • Short-term planning horizon
  • Over reliance on fossil fuels
    • Structure of energy subsidies
      • Influence of Money in Politics
• Economic power sustains the status quo
  • Crony capitalism
• Financial wealth is accepted as the pinnacle of achievement.

Misaligned Social Constructs

• Legal justice that diverges from moral justice.
• Theist worldviews. ⇦ Progress beyond theism ⇦ Seek true beliefs
• Inaccurate Financial Systems
  • Failure to account for externalities.
  • Many economic faults.
  • Systematic creation of debt.
• Sub-optimal social operating systems.
• National boundaries.
• Autocracies, oligarchies, and other non-representative forms of government.
• Private ownership or exploitation of common goods.