Flourishing

A Journey into What Gives Humans Life

What This Journey Is About

Flourishing is learning how to live well together.

Not only as individuals, but in our families, communities, societies, and within the limits of the world we share.

In the ancient world, flourishing was rare.

Most people lived under empire—systems organized around domination, extraction, hierarchy, expansion, and control. Prosperity flowed upward to a small elite—often just 3–15% of the population—while the many lived at the edge of survival.

One people stood apart.

A small tribal community, who would become the Nation of Israel, was shaped by a singular God who offered a radically different way of life—one ordered toward shalom: wholeness, justice, shared rest, right relationships, and care for the vulnerable. Flourishing was not reserved for the powerful, but intended for all.

Modernity

In the modern world, flourishing is often reduced to individual success or happiness—perhaps because many now live in conditions that appear to be flourishing. Since World War II, global and national systems have contributed to historically low levels of poverty and unprecedented material prosperity. Yet lives—and systems—can still look successful while quietly diminishing people, communities, or the world itself.

This journey asks:

What kind of shared life are we forming—through the ways we live, organize, systematize, and care for one another and the world we inhabit?

Why this matters

We live in a world of unprecedented capability and choice, yet growing fragmentation:

rising anxiety and loneliness
fractured families and communities
economic systems that reward extraction more than care
religious and political identities that promise certainty but deliver division

Flourishing is not an escape from these realities.

It is a way of seeing clearly, telling the truth, and learning to live differently within them.

Here, flourishing is explored not as an ideal to achieve, but as a practice of shared life—one that attends to limits, memory, justice, and responsibility.

Why am I exploring flourishing

I didn’t arrive at this question because life worked especially well.

I arrived here because many of the stories I inherited about success, faith, family, politics, and responsibility produced outcomes I could no longer ignore. Some led to growth. Others led to harm, distance, or the quiet erosion of what mattered most.

For a long time, I was drawn to frameworks that promised clarity, strength, or certainty. Often, they worked—until they didn’t. Especially when applied to relationships, complex systems, and real human limits.

This work has been shaped by decades of study and practice across economics, public life and faith—and by the moments when those frameworks failed real people I care about – including myself.

This journey grows out of lived experience and long study, guided by a simple conviction: good intentions are not the same as good outcomes.

I’m not offering answers to carry.

I’m offering a path to walk.

What this is — and what it is not

This is not:

This is not about quick fixes or personal success metrics.
A political or religious manifesto asking for your agreement
A set of answers you’re expected to adopt or defend
Theory disconnected from lived consequence

This is:

An inquiry into what actually supports shared human well-being
A way of thinking across personal life, relationships, institutions, and the world we share
A place to slow down, ask better questions, and learn in public
An unfinished project—tested against reality rather than slogans

Choose a place to begin

You don’t have to start in the same place as anyone else.

Begin where the question feels closest.

Background

My Story ->

Understand how these questions emerged from lived experience — and how they might shape yours.

The Approach →

Learn the lenses that make flourishing understandable without reducing it – what metrics are important

From Big Ideas to Lived Outcomes

These sections define, help to assesses, and then provides analyses for flourishing across human domains, using real-world examples to examine what different beliefs and systems actually produce in human lives.

Domains of Flourishing ->

See where flourishing shows up—and where it breaks down—in real life.