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?
