My interest in setting up these positive impact measures is fairly personal. First, I never want to use income as a measure for my own success (I'm not a cheater). Second, I don't do faith very well, so I want data that tells me whether or not I'm being successful (I wouldn't expect a lefty to write right-handed, so I'm not going to expect an empirically-oriented person to use faith). Finally, I'm a proud procrastinator, so rather than charging headlong into being successful, of course I'm first going to dilly-dally with this "How can I measure success?" question. In short, it's in my nature to quantify, so quantify I will. Fish gotta swim and all that.
So, now that I've fully rationalized my decision to embark on this quest for world-impact measures, where to start? The obvious answer to that question is research. And off to the interwebs we go, whereby the simplest search--measure your impact--tells me that my most likely impact on this world is either negative (a la the carbon footprint) or, if I'm lucky and exceedingly diligent, neutral (a la No Impact Man). Which indicates to me that the pop environmental movement has a lot of rethinking to do in terms of messaging, at least. Can human existence even be a net positive for this planet? If the environmentalist's answer to that question is, indeed, no, then...well...we're going to have a hard time convincing more humans to get on board with the idea of protecting, preserving, and improving our environmental conditions. Unless environmentalists really are pinning all our hopes on winning over the suicidal demographic, that is.
...But I digress...
What I've learned so far from my interwebs research is that this problem (as basic as it appears to me) does not have an easy answer. Either that or I am not a good researcher. Or possibly both. I'm wondering how well Foreign Policy's city ranking system would work for a project like this. After all, while it does seem to take into account factors beyond the economic, it doesn't seem to address the question of whether or not a city's impact is either positive or negative. Or, if it does, it assumes economic impact to be inherently positive. In contrast, this Positive Impact Woman project, by addressing outright the issue of positive v. negative in our world-impact measures, would, to some extent, be forsaking the aura of objectivity that is currently undeservedly conferred upon other--more popular--measures of success by the less sentient among us. Which would help explain why any previous projects of this sort haven't gone mainstream enough to be found in my cursory research thus far. Damn! This is hard (for me, at least)! Any suggestions?
4 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here):
Well, first, I'm not sure it's an "American" trait to like to measure things. More of an empiricist thing. And Germans and Japanese (for example) are probably fairly empiricist. ;)
--GG
Continued...
I agree with your reluctance to measure it in terms of money.
But the question is: to what realm does your "world impact" relate? Off the top of my head: economic, environmental (nature-type), social environment (although probably too broad), creative contributions, physical health, mental health, emotional health, habitability...
Some of these work counter to each other a lot of times -- so you'd also have to weight their relative importance (e.g., writing a novel = good; turning all those trees to paper = bad? /// working towards a cure for cancer = good; torturing all those white mice = bad). And find some common metric with which to measure (which is probably why Economists tend to convert everything to money...).
IMO, if you're contributing to the world thru making people healthier, happier, smarter, kinder... or adding creative content (books, music, groovy t-shirts)... or decreasing things that make the world a **worse** place (pollution, racism, poverty...), then you're in the positive end of the scale.
Without quantifying it, I think you can probably just assess whether you're a pleasant/unpleasant person who is good/bad to be around, and who helps people/harms people, and on the whole contributes to/takes from the world.
Personally, I'd say you're pretty firmly on the positive side: you generate creative output, are pleasant to be around, and volunteer at schools and stuff. And you try to minimize your negative impacts (e.g. thru bicycling, and the Environmobile). :)
You also seem to treat your MFP well -- which presumably makes him happy -- so THAT'S a net positive, as well.
If you consolidate your thoughts a bit, this topic would actually make a good nonfiction book.
--GG
GG: You're amazing!
I'm with you so far on all these points, especially the one about how a positive impact in one area might be a negative in another. The concern of tradeoffs comes to mind (as it always does), and, to some extent, I think that's why we tend to judge so many things through economic factors alone. We quantify those factors through a tangible product called money and when we see that tangible product diminish, we know something's wrong. But we don't quantify a lot of the other impacts we have on the world, so we don't always see when something's wrong.
In other words, I'm not sure that assessments without quantifications make that much of a difference in our behaviors. As an individual, I can easily look at all the supposed good things I do and ignore all the supposed bad things I do and call myself a success. Or vice versa. But there's no there there. It's all anecdotal. And I can't say to myself with much certainty, "If I do more of x, y, or z and less of p, q, or r, I'll be n times more successful in s years." I can guesstimate it, but even then, I'm just changing the parameters I'm using at the moment and it would be a huge challenge to measure improvement over time with any accuracy. So, yeah, it's that common metric I'm looking for.
Also, you and MFP think alike as he said the same thing about the book topic. But I'm sure this topic has been done before. Still researching. I'm currently reading a book called The Value of Nothing that elaborates on the problem of economic measures. It's a nice overview of how empty our current standards (for pretty much everything) are. It's written by Raj Patel, who was deified by Stephen Colbert.
PS Sorry your comments languished in moderation for so long. I'm fixing my blogger email settings again. I hope it works this time!
Also, I should say that, in my assessment, you make a net positive aspect as well. I'll get back to you on whether or not my assessment is accurate :).
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