Bill Schubart, a retired businessman, is a regular columnist for VTDigger.
A patient presents in an urgent care facility with symptoms of depression. The attending doctor checks their vitals: pulse, temperature, and blood pressure, declares them healthy and sends them home.
This is similar to the way we assess the well-being of our citizenry. The “vital signs” of our society are mostly economic: per capita income, gross domestic product per capita (GDP), consumer price index (CPI), consumer debt, etc. – none of which address the deep malaise plaguing Americans, as well as those in other countries, a malaise that has sparked social disconnection, demonstrations, and a bloom of suicides at all age levels.
The World Happiness Report tries to take a deeper look at the well-being of citizens by country. It’s a work in progress, but by all measures worth considering as a more comprehensive diagnostic tool for measuring how people are faring in their home countries. We assume money is intrinsic to happiness, as if just body temperature were a measurement of mental health. If that were so, suicides wouldn’t span the entire spectrum of wealth.
And here in Vermont, we’re beginning to look beyond the economic metrics we like to tout as measures of our wellness: taxes, affordability, etc.
Vermont Public Radio and Vermont PBS have co-ventured a project called “This Land: The Changing Story of Rural Vermont” to look deeper at how rural Vermonters are feeling about their lives here. Though limited to rural Vermonters, it’s an admirable effort and begins to address the underlying issues that make up quality of life beyond monetary measurements. Make no mistake, financial security is a key underlying issue as it relates to food and shelter security and access to education, child care and health care. But the more intangible factors are equally important and more difficult to measure. How do Vermonters feel about their political leaders, their churches, their communities, their environment, their family relationships, and opportunities for advancement in their career?
Throughout history, citizens have made light of their political leaders to varying degrees. It’s part of the popular culture – “Mountpeculiar.” But the politician’s job of deriving and acting on consensus is a difficult one. We must open and expand the dialogue about what Vermonters care about or need and how their three branches of government might deliver it. Media and especially public broadcast must continue to shed light on and disseminate this dialogue.
Churches form a vital and cohesive element in many communities, even as some atone for their own sins of venality and sexual abuse. Vermonters have the lowest church participation rates in the country and yet the small white churches dotting our landscape continue to serve the underserved in their communities and provide a place for people to come together, talk, sing, laugh, eat, and share their thoughts about the greater good and, for those who believe in something beyond themselves, worship a greater being. Libraries serve a similar purpose.
Work satisfaction is about earning capacity but also about work culture, fairness, accomplishment, satisfaction, and participation – all intangibles that go beyond the paycheck. Many Vermonters will spend a third of their lives in a workplace.
How do we Vermonters feel about the dizzying social changes in gender politics, immigration, privilege, and diversity?
How do we feel about the serious deterioration of our waterways from overflowing municipal sewage systems? Should we further regulate industrial pollutants? How do we reconcile Vermont’s sacred cow and our prime agricultural soils being poisoned by weed killers like glyphosate, neonicotinoids, plastic mulch and chemical fertilizers – all necessary to support the conventional monocropping of corn and soy in dairy farming, as well as in the emerging production of hops, hemp, and barley? Regardless of the harvest, monocropping defies the diversity of a natural landscape requiring soil additives. Can we look ahead to regenerative agricultural practices that enhance our soils and waterways instead of poisoning them?
And yes, we must confront the polarity of wealth. Those with more most work harder not only to help those who have less but also to change the system to ensure more opportunity. I’m among the many Vermonters who are secure in my retirement, but I know many who aren’t. I have other friends who are secure financially but for varying reasons their lives are a shambles. Economic metrics are but a fingerprint in the larger story of how Vermonters view their lives. Story, dialogue, arts, humanities, and journalism are all important tools in how we define, express, and achieve satisfaction in our lives.
During the evening news, instead of just hearing the stock market report which reflects mostly the well-being of those with savings and retirement portfolios, imagine if other wellness indices were developed and posted, such as the health of our waters, soils, and air quality, an addiction-obesity quotient, average screen time which is closely associated with sleep loss and depression, divorce rate, suicide rates, etc. We must explore and understand, beyond wealth, the intangibles that enhance or deteriorate our quality of life and be more consistent in reporting them.
