Happiness is the fulfillment of people’s wishes and desires. The term happiness is complex; it encompasses moments of happiness as well as lasting bliss. It describes a happy coincidence or a life of happiness. Yet, this has little to do with material wealth. Still, most people are running on a status treadmill, as the economist Mathias Binswanger calls it. They aspire to something better, want to own, consume and earn more and, given the stress involved, are less and less able to enjoy life. Ute Scheub also points this out in the chapter on happiness in her book Beschissatlas (cheat atlas). However, business and advertising only support this pursuit of more. The good life for all, however, only results from uniting prosperity, the social fabric and a sound environment. Those who advocate a sustainable society will thus also have to address happiness and wishes as well as their less resource-intensive fulfillment.
At factory, on the other hand, we do this by using a hyphenated title. Wish-for-Happiness allows the best-known happiness philosopher Wilhelm Schmid to begin with a definition of happiness. It shows where learning resilience is essential, and it demonstrates that in a country of intensive livestock farming there are indeed still some happy pigs (only in PDF-magazine). You will also learn how good life is with kale and chocolate, why a founder’s happiness essentially works towards change and how doing without a technological device can lead to wonderful moments. A travelogue from Bhutan asks whether the growth of gross national happiness is an alternative to that of the gross national product, and psychologist Marcel Hunecke explains how post-growth increases happiness.