In January 2020,  as a new decade dawned, things looked great. The stock market was booming, the economy was humming, and unemployment was down.
Then, Covid-19 struck. Rocked out of our complacency, we now face the most significant uncertainty since WWII. History will treat 2020 as a turning point, a time the past collided with the future. Today, we need to decide what sort of future we want. Do we continue with the failed policies of the past or reach out to our shared humanity to achieve a spiritual and economic revival – in effect, to rediscover the values that actually made great countries, like the US, truly great?
We sit on a razor’s edge. The choices we make today will live with us for generations.

The Covid-19 pandemic  is undoubtedly one of the greatest issues of our time. It started, so we think, as a health issue in far off Wuhan but rapidly grew into a massive global governance and economic issue. It has now become an even bigger geopolitical issue. While COVID might have sent shockwaves through the world, we were already in the throes of a series of unwelcome seismic shifts. Polarization, disillusionment, inequality, and lack of meaningful political participation cast a dark shadow over the post-World-War II world. To make matters worse Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine has taken things to a new level, with some people saying World War III either has or is about to start. Perhaps 2022 will be the real turning point?

Our present and future  are now clouded with uncertainty, danger, and doubt. The COVID firestorm will be controlled. Our best scientists, rather than our politicians, will see to that. However, the systemic structural and moral problems that bedevil the West will not. A fundamental reassessment is needed. The “business as usual” option has gone. We must change – either for the good – reimagining and rebuilding democracy, or bad – by perpetuating lack of civility, partisanship, polarization, growing inequality, and greed, and entrenching those in power.

Some years ago,  New Zealand decided that the concept wellbeing is really important. We demonstrated that by pulling together as a team of 5 million, despite differences of opinion, we could not just flatten the curve and keep deaths to a minimum but eliminate the virus for over 100 days – the first country in the world to do so. The country’s wellbeing philosophy puts life and people first. We were the OECD country with the lowest death rate for the first two years of the pandemic. While today, in a world reshaped by the Delta and Omicron variants, and no doubt more variants to come, the whole idea of elimination of the virus seems rather quaint, it is still a great example of a country working together on the basis of community, consensus building and of course science. It is a powerful lesson to the rest of the world regarding what can be achieved.

Arguably, for the US,  the prognosis is less positive. Latterly described as a failed state, COVID – 19 and other recent events have to some extent questioned the notion of American exceptionalism. Many, indeed, most Americans know that something needs to be done – but what? Before 2000 while the US was in the middle of an economic recovery, it was more divided and factionalized than it has been in decades. The United Kingdom is also experiencing its crisis following Brexit. Now the challenge of recovering from the virus has only opened the wound wider. Significant issues such as partisanship, science-denial, underfunded public health services, and growing inequality and mistrust, means countries like America, more than ever, need to learn to work together rather than just shout at each other.

New Zealand is itself going  through a process of honest self-appraisal. In measuring the nation’s progress, Aotearoa has replaced GDP with wellness and sustainability – often described as “General Wellbeing” or “GWB.” We are the first country to put GWB at the center of our economic policy and a formal part of our budgetary process. The government’s annual budget allocation is now based on environmental responsibility, economic efficiency, and social cohesion. If we can pull it off this will be a game changer.

The Power of Wellbeing is about reassessing our institutions, systems, and values and re-purposing them in an uncertain post 2020 world. It is about being– “for the people” where most of the population can thrive and prosper while maintaining the core values of equality, trust, and empathy. I hope to show how a shift in perspective that has blossomed in our small island nation might be the catalyst for far more sweeping change. I hope that it will help awaken the world to the fragility of our shared humanity at what may well prove to be a unique time in history.

In the post-pandemic 2020s,  to survive, the free world must remain robust and viable as a political and economic model. Equally importantly, we have to maintain our democratic institutions to protect and foster progressive values, the rule of law, and civil society. The Power of Wellbeing explores how we can do this by putting people first and relying on a can-do attitude, positive psychology, empathy, and common sense.