Abstract
The author sees the measurement of world welfare as social action because in the course of measurement our ideas of the world change, leading, hopefully, to the initiation of changes in the world itself. She is therefore interested in evolving indicators not for system states but for system processes, of which four form the core: participation (in the process of shaping the conditions of life), production (of food, goods, energy, information, and services), distribution (of all that is produced and the manner in which it is shared by the various sectors of society), and ‘nurturance’ (empathic, altruistic, caring responses that enhance human growth). There is a fifth Process, equally important (because it acts as a multiplier to other processes) but difficult to measure: the process of ‘joying’, which imports the dimension of expansiveness to all human acts.
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