 Yes, I'm now super excited to invite our SDSN Malaysia manager, Karen Shond, she is the manager of SDSN Malaysia, but also the director of strategy and operations for the Jeffrey Sacks Center on Sustainable Development at Sunway University, where she plans, and oversees all of the programs and activities. Karen is also actively involved in the research projects on building sustainable cities and communities. She's going to introduce us to our next session here and we will get started. Karen, would you like to turn on your video and join us. Perfect, great. Go ahead and test your audio. Yes, we can. It sounds great. And so I also have your slides queued up. So just let me know next slide and I'll advance them throughout your introduction. Thanks. Greetings from Malaysia and happy Earth Day everybody. We hope that you and your families are safe and well. During these unprecedented times, we as fellow inhabitants of the Earth can take comfort in observing a mobilization of ideas to rethink our response to the challenges facing our planet today. During what is therefore also a time of reflection, SDSN Malaysia hosted at Sunway University is humbled to be part of this global webinar on happiness and sustainability around the Earth. Before the question, what is happiness? We gathered a few experts from various disciplines, economics, human rights, psychology, health and anthropology. Allow me to briefly introduce them. Next slide please. Professor Wu Wing Tai joins us from the University of California Davis, where he is a distinguished professor of economics. Professor Wu is also the director of the Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development here in Sunway University. He's an expert on East and Southeast Asian economies, particularly China, Indonesia and Malaysia, where he also advises governments. Next, Miss Jacqueline Ann Surin is an award-winning former journalist who has also spent most of her adult life as a human rights activist. She is now a corporate trainer with web events that connect with the specialization in managing conflict at work. Next, we have associate professor Dr. Zubaida Jamil Osman. She's a clinical psychologist and she also teaches psychology at the Faculty of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Saibajaya. Next, we have Dr. Kor Sui King, the founder of the Malaysian Health Alliance, trained as a doctor of internal medicine. He went on to work with refugees in disaster relief and then to anti-corruption work for the pharmaceutical industry. And he's now furthering postgraduate studies at Oxford University while also working on health systems and health policies in Malaysia. And last but not least, we have Dr. Vilasini Somya, an anthropologist and senior lecturer with the Gender Studies program at the University of Malaya. Dr. Somya's work focuses on Indigenous persons, irregular migrants, and gender equality. I would like to especially thank my colleagues behind the scenes, Professor Wong Chin Huat for curating this entire production, and Amira Majid and Ho Yee Jen for their tireless work in putting this together. Let us now proceed to watch the pre-recorded conversation I had with the speakers recently. We would be very happy to take your questions in the chat function of this webinar. So do post your questions and please enjoy the show. Could you tell us what is happiness to you personally? I would say happiness depends on me being able to do what I like to do. That means I'm able to afford to do what I do. I am able to be with the people I love and like. So happiness would not only just be my own personal material well-being, it would involve the well-being of my family, my community, and as I get older, the importance of my country and the world at large of how well they are doing. So personally, happiness to me is being able to have a life of my own choosing on my own terms. Happiness means being able to make my own choices and having the opportunities and the resources to make those choices for the kind of life that I want. So it has to be on my terms and it has to be my choices. It means having the opportunities and resources to succeed in the kind of life that I've chosen for myself. And this is particularly important for me as a woman, right? Because women often do not have those kinds of choices because of all the stereotypical notions around what it means to be a woman. We are constantly being put under stress to conform to certain stereotypical roles. So many women don't have a choice as to whether they get married or not. Then they don't have a choice as to whether they have children or not. And after they have children and after they start a family, then they are forced to make a choice as to whether they want to maintain the family or to have a career, right? And even when women are able to make a choice for a career, they are still expected to play the stereotypical roles of managing the home. They are still expected to carry the burden of the invisible and unpaid worry work that goes into managing the home and managing the family. So for me as a woman, having choice, being able to make a choice as to the life that I want to lead, independent of all of those societal pressures, is really, really important for so long as the choices that I'm making do not harm myself and do not harm anybody else. As for me, happiness is not a destination, it's like a journey. And I think if you are in the process of achieving happiness, I think you probably might be experiencing a bit of sadness and other core emotions in individuals. So basically, coming from my background, I feel that happiness is basically how much satisfaction you have with what you have and how you feel about in your daily basis and then how much you feel connected and engaged in people around you. So a bit of balance between physical health, social, as well as psychological well-being. I think happiness means very different things to very different people. To me personally, happiness means duty. If I can fulfill my duty, the duty to myself, the duty to my family, the duty to my friends, the duty to my country, a duty to, I guess, my species here, the species of homo sapiens, all of humanity as we're now talking about COVID as you're watching this, we're all in the middle of a pandemic. There is a significant amount of duty that all of us hold in this world and for every citizen, for every human being, the relationship that we have to other people is actually a combination of duties and rights. What are your obligations to others and what are other people's obligations to you? I think we focus a lot about the political conversation and social discourse on what are other people's duties to us and we often think, especially in today's world, to be happy we want other people to fulfill their duty to us. And I think that's wonderful and beautiful. What's to me makes me personally happy is if I can fulfill my own duty to other people. Well, you know, of course, I think there's the age old answer of, you know, the simple things in life, generally, you know, keeping incredibly connected with loved ones of course and appreciating things like your health and your freedom for a long time. If you were to ask me this question six months ago, I think the answer would have been a lot more different simply because of the way our lifestyles have been led. My belief for the longest time was that personal happiness had a lot to do with success. It was maybe professional success. It was a kind of success that I felt that was worth, was necessary as a 21st century woman, for example, you know, having the right amount of education and exposure and so on and so forth. But I think with time I've started to sort of uncouple these concepts of success with happiness because I don't think they naturally have to go hand in hand with each other, just because I had a little bit, a little extra in my bank account or, you know, maybe a nice opportunity on these things don't necessarily bring happiness in that sense. And also when in times when we do have pleasure or joy or jubilation of sorts is to also be able to understand that there is a difference between, I guess, happiness and content. And I find myself being very content with life but that doesn't necessarily mean that I am happy. Do you think a society can be definitely happier with higher GDP per capita? It certainly helps. It certainly helps because like the old joke, what is the secret of happiness? The answer is just have low standards. Even then you are always happy. But that is true. But think of how much happier a person would be if he could afford to give his parents the best medical care in the world so that they could live longer. He's able to afford the quality education for his children. So certainly income is important. One of the major problems with GDP, however, is that it's an average number which is a total income of the country divided by the number of people. And it means that if one person owns everything, like if one family owns all the oil fields in that country, and the rest of the people get hand out from that individual, then it's hard to say that GDP per capita is a very good indicator. The minimum we have to bring in, what is the distribution of GDP within a society, which is why the United Nations Agency, United Nations Human Development Program has developed another index of which GDP per capita is one of them. And that goes into other factors. One of them is, what is the expected life expectancy in that country? Because that clearly has a lot to do with how income is distributed. When income is concentrated in the hand of one person, you have only one long life individual and a whole bunch of short lives individual and the average will be low. So life expectancy is the average life expectancy is one. But when you think about quality of life, it is more than just having a long life. It's having a meaningful life. Life in which you are more in charge of decision making, and you are adequately informed about the world. So the third variable that the United Nations has included is what is the expected educational attainment of the population. So for the older people, you take how many years have they had, but for the younger people, it would be their expected years of schooling. So a better measure than GDP per capita would be to at least take into two other factors, life expectancy and the amount of educational opportunities that an average person in the society would have. And I'd like to show you what that does once you take into account the happiness factor. This is the 92018 ranking of the Human Development Index by the United Nations, and the Human Development Index takes into account life expectancy, the years of schooling, and the GDP per capita, as I've said. As you can see, these are the top 20 highest ranked countries. And I want to bring your attention to Lichtenstein, which is ranked number 18 in terms of HD of the Human Development Index, because in terms of GDP per capita, it would be ranked number two. But if you look at the life expectancy in Lichtenstein, you look at the years of schooling, you'll see that they are not particularly better than countries that are much richer or poorer than them. Look at Sweden. Sweden, the income is only 68,000 per person compared to 99,000 per person in Lichtenstein. Largely because of the gross inequality in income distribution. Another worthy example is looking at Singapore, number nine. Singapore is ranked number nine, but in terms of income, it is ranked number three in the world. So, again, it has to do with the distribution of income in Singapore that is pulling it down. The average GDP per capita overstate the quality of life of the average person. And of course, we got to know about what does Malaysia say. Well, the HDR, the Human Development Index is ranked 189 countries. And Malaysia is in the top 10. Well, we should be very proud. We are number 61. We are possibly among the big Asian countries. We do very well compared to Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia. But on the whole, there is quite close correlation between the GDP per capita and the Human Development Index. They are not identical, but they are quite closely related. So that would be the first adjustment I would make to GDP per capita as a measure of welfare. Professor, are there other limitations of GDP accounting as a measure of human well-being? I think that is this idea of why do you measure by indirect measures. Like, you see how long the person live, how much education, why don't you ask the person directly. If you ask, this is exactly done by the SDSN. SDSN puts up a report every year called World Happiness Report. Gallup poll and large number of survey organizations conduct this survey in a very golden country and get an assessment of how people rank their happiness. The numbers are quite interesting and have some unexpected parts to them. So ranking of happiness. The happiest is Finland. And then, as you can see, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, they are... When you ask these people, they say they are happy. Look at the bottom. The United States is number 11 in terms of GDP per capita. But in terms of the human development index, it was 15. That's what we saw. But in terms of happiness, the US has fallen to number 99. It is very interesting that Singapore, which is ranked number nine on the human development index, number three on the GDP index, is ranked 34. And if you go on, Japan is ranked number 58 and who is ranked above Japan, Thailand. And Malaysia, which is ranked number 61 in the human development index, now is number 80. And the Philippines, which is ranked in 106 in the human development index, is now 69. So here we have a case of, I may be poorer than you, but I'm happier than you. And the only consistent part we see is the absolutely poorest countries in sub-Saharan African are also the unhappiest countries. So we have got the interesting finding that the correlation of human development index of GDP per capita is quite close. But the measure of happiness at GDP per capita is not as close. With some exceptions. And I presume the part that really gets to me is there are no East Asian countries in the top 20 happy countries. In fact, most of the East Asian countries, countries like Korea, Japan, Hong Kong are in the middle. Hong Kong, which is ranked number five on the human development index, number nine in the income is ranked number 76. Perhaps it shows that life in East Asia is very stressful. We may be earning high income, but we are very stressed while earning the high income. We may have lots of years of education, but we are very stressed in the competitive education system that we are in. So I think if that is one thing is we shouldn't make so much fun of the data bar attitude. This brings us great psychological comfort. However, now if you talk about other limitations of GDP per capita as a measure of happiness. I like to mention that what are we logically engineered to do? It is built in us to care about the future generation. And the GDP per capita, the measurement of the HDI index do not take into account how much we care about the happiness of the welfare of our future generations. So if you think of it this way, GNP accounting gives you the value of how much we produce. But if most of our value comes from taking petrol from underneath the ground, one day the petrol runs up and we'll have zero income. So what we need to do is to have some concept of sustainability. And the concept of sustainability is closely related to our love for our descendants or more broadly for the survival of the human species. So on that, there should be a measure of sustainability built into a measure of welfare because it reflects our biological hard software within us to care about our descendants. So the most simple type of accounting that builds in sustainability is to take into account the loss of the natural environment and the exhaustion of natural resources. So we should adjust the GNP numbers, taking out the part that comes from destroying part of nature because that's not sustainable. That measure called green accounting of GDP sounds very sensible, except it misses a very important part is that sustainability of my descendants and of the human species in general is a group concept. If I am as green as one could be, but if my neighbor is not green, that will affect the sustainability of my descendants, of the welfare of the people I love that will come in the future. So if you want to talk about welfare, you cannot just talk about individual country welfare. You got to talk about is the whole world sustainable because there is no such thing as will you be sustainable because it depends on what is happening outside. So green accounting should also take into account what is the responsibility one is doing to prevent climate change in the world. So it's like how what's the CO2 emission. So that shows the responsibility you are undertaking and every country should have that particular element into its measure of happiness because it also measures how much of a sense of responsibility they are taking. To bring about happiness for the people they love. Sometimes when making choices for ourselves, we may not know the outcomes. In your opinion, can people be happy without the freedom to make mistakes. No, people cannot be happy if they don't have the freedom to make mistakes. Now why do I say that I say that because as a species, we evolve from making mistakes. So if we don't make mistakes, we're not learning we're not growing and then when we don't have the ability to evolve. A lot of my ideas around this come from the notion of anti fragility that was written about by the Lebanese American scholar. Naseem Nicholas Talib. So it is book anti fragile. Talib describes all the different situations in which when you put a system, whether that system is an individual or an organization or a government under stress, how that system responds to that stress is really, really critical for making that system anti fragile. So an example of anti fragility is vaccinations. So what do you do with vaccinations, you introduce a certain amount of pathogens into the human body and the human body then will adjust and will do the necessary corrections so that it becomes stronger. It becomes inoculated from that particular pathogen. Yeah, so vaccinations is an example of anti fragile behavior, you want to stress the system just enough so that it becomes stronger, better, because of that stress. Yeah, and vaccinations right now are really relevant in the time of another example of anti fragility is a Mexican proverb. It goes like this. They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds. I have used this proverb as an activist. Every time I need to go and demonstrate a protest. And even if I'm afraid that the state will crack down on us or arrest us. This proverb is what keeps me going as an activist that I will got stronger that civil society will become even stronger. Despite all of the oppression that a state tries to put on us when I'm training so when I'm doing my corporate training, I tell my participants that it is really important for them to welcome making mistakes to celebrate making mistakes, because it's in the making of that mistake that their system is put under stress. And so within this notion of anti fragility, you need to be making mistakes. If you don't make mistakes, you're not going to be learning from those mistakes and if we don't learn as a species, we're not evolving. Yeah, so if we don't make mistakes, it's not possible for us to be happy because we wouldn't be evolving as a species. There is a caveat for that though. So the caveat is that the level of the mistake that's being made needs to be below the level that might cause loss of life or devastating financial losses or climate collapse. So if we were to think about vaccinations, for example, if you're going to vaccinate somebody against Ebola, you need to make sure that the level that you vaccinate with is low enough that it doesn't kill the person, but just enough so that the system is able to respond to that stress to become even stronger than it was before. Yeah, so in short, it's not possible for me that humans can be happy if they don't make mistakes. I think what's really important is to think about how as individuals, as a society, as an organization, as a business or even as government, what can we do, what conditions can we create so that we become learning organizations so that when mistakes happen, we actually learn from it, we become better at it. We grow from it. What's fatal is when mistakes are made and there is no change in the system. So that suggests that there is no ability to learn from it to grow from it to become better and stronger as a result of the mistake. Yeah, so that would be fatal. How important is autonomy and freedom to make personal and collective decisions to the meaning of human life? So I don't see that the human race is capable of evolving and becoming better versions of what it is today if people didn't have the autonomy and freedom to make those kinds of choices. And again, I go back to the caveat that for so long as those choices are not self-harming or harmful to other people, then I think it's critical to have that kind of autonomy and freedom to make those choices. Whether you take it from a feminist point of view or you take it from an ecological point of view, if we can't make those choices, then it becomes quite impossible to sustain any kind of action. So if, for example, it's a top-down kind of power relationship, then that's a lot of energy being spent on forcing people to act in a particular way. That cannot be sustainable. So if you think about what they did in Wuhan in terms of just confining the spread of the virus in the short term, that's possible. But if they tried to do that for a year, two years, three years, is that going to be sustainable? No, it's not going to be sustainable. It's going to require too much energy of the system to try and make that sustainable. And if you want to talk about people's happiness, are they going to be happy that they don't have the choice to make decisions for how they will live their lives, how they will make decisions about how they will live throughout this pandemic? It's not going to create a very high level of happiness either, right, in that kind of situation. So I think the idea is like, what are the things that government can do or businesses can do to, what's the word for it, to nudge? Yeah, so what kind of high quality information can you put into the picture into the equation so that of their own accord, individuals can say this is the right behavior for me to do. This is the right thing for me to do. So staying at home, for example, during COVID-19 becomes a choice that I make because I know that it's the right behavior for me. Rather than I'm doing this so that I won't get caught and arrested and thrown into jail. Yeah, so having the freedom and autonomy, but with the right information with high quality information with the right social nudges from the state from authorities is really, really critical for that to happen. Some argue that as individuals, we may have more information to make decisions than if compared to some by the collective such as by governments or by professionals or even by artificial intelligence for that matter. Some argue that they are in a better position to make better decisions that minimize harm. Would you agree with this? Not necessarily. I wouldn't agree with that. Primarily because I don't think it's about the source of the information or knowledge per se. I think it's more like the quality of information and knowledge per se. So if we want to talk about sustainability, for example, the world is headed towards climate collapse, imminent climate collapse, I might add. What are governments doing about it? I mean, if we believe that governments know better than individuals, governments have been so slow to respond in an adequate fashion to this threat of this climate crisis that we're facing. If we left it to governments, the likelihood is that we would die within the next two generations. That's what scientists are already predicting, right? So would I trust governments to know better than individuals or than communities? No, I wouldn't. Another more recent example would be the example of our women, family and community development ministry making a set of ads around COVID-19 and women's role in preventing the spread of COVID-19. By suggesting that women should mimic the voice of Doraemon when telling their husband to share in the responsibility of managing their shared space. You know, there is such a huge disconnect between women's lived experiences and what the government is saying for a variety of reasons, right? So that's another example of where governments don't know any better than the individual. So I really think it's about the quality of information that we're dealing with. Are governments capable of having high quality information? Yes, they are. They are if they rely on scientists, they rely on evidence-based research. If they rely on representations from diverse stakeholders. So for example, committees that are not just made up of men, but committees that have both men and women and say different racial representations. So yes, they are capable of generating high quality information. I think the important question to ask is what kind of information, what kind of knowledge, how can we garner that kind of knowledge and information? So that we're making decisions that will ensure greater happiness for a greater number of people and better sustainability, not just for the individual, but better sustainability for the planet in the long term. Where does your activism fit in with advancing happiness and sustainability? My activism is about making sure that as citizens in a democracy, we have choice. And that choice is a fair choice. So what do I mean by that? So for the longest time, I was involved in all of the birthday rallies, not just as a journalist, but also as a citizen. And what was important for me was that in the current system, electoral system, one vote, my vote does not equal one vote when we actually vote, right? Because of the gerrymandering and the malapportionment that happens, right? So a lot of my activism with regard to electoral reform is about ensuring that when we vote, that choice that we make has equal weightage across the different constituencies. Because that ensures that whatever result we get, if there was equal weightage, then whatever result we get at the elections, I would be happy with that election result because it was fair. Society in general may be doing alright, but there are certain segments that are still mired in situations of poverty. How can they feel happy? If it's absolute poverty we're talking about, I mean, how can you be happy when you're hungry and not having a place to leave, you know, safety and shelter is not there. So realistically, I think in poverty, people who are poor or in poverty, they probably have some challenges in having this kind of, you know, in experiencing this happiness. Happiness is not a destination, it's a journey. So in the process of this happiness, you know, you do have some kind of, sometime when you feel a bit of, you know, down sadness of anger or dissatisfaction and that's actually part of it. So you cannot be like absolutely happy all the time because I think our life, you know, it's like the process of life is quite dynamic. It depends on what you are experiencing. I probably give this example of people in the war, for example, they don't have food and shelter. But with the connection with the people around them, they still still have this sense of happiness. Is it realistic to ask individuals not to compare themselves with others and to be contented with what they have, assuming of course that their basic necessities are met? No, if you're comparing yourself to others, okay, and if your purpose is actually to get things done in a better way, right? Or you think that there's a possibility for you to actually achieve or do things in a better way or, you know, like wanting to improve not only yourself but others. I think it's realistic to actually, you know, trying to push for what you really want to have. Studies have shown that relative deprivation has kind of led people to join some social movements in getting what they think they have the rights to have and been denied all these resources. What is probably not very healthy is the fact that when people started to compare and, you know, like feel so entitled to many things. You know, like, this is not fair. I've got to do this. People are having this. I'm not having, you know, I'm not having what other people have. So it can be affecting you psychologically because there's a feeling of constant dissatisfaction and these probably will affect your definition of happiness in life. Dr. Zubaira, when we talk about positive thinking, do you think there is an objective limit to positive thinking? I personally think that's a limit to it. I think when you're trying to be positive in all, if you're trying to be positive in everything, that you're trying to make things okay when you're not okay. You know, you have this positive thinking to the extent that you're not acknowledging or be aware of your own sufferings or needs, you know. I think this is when positive thinking can become a trap. Okay. I feel that you should be having helpful thinking. I would like to use the word helpful thinking where it helps you to actually move forward and not so trapped in difficulties in life. But when you ought to be able to be aware and acknowledge some difficulties or sufferings that you have, so be rational and realistic in your positive thinking and not just blindly telling people that you have to have positive all the time, you know. So can we be happy when knowing that our neighbor is sick? Karen, this is a question that requires us to start with some biology. The biology of human beings going back to 300,000 years ago, we've evolved what some people have described to be a selfish gene. Selfishness is a fact of life. It's a fact of life because it's helped us survive through today. We've gotten an advantage throughout 300,000 years of evolution because we've taken care of ourselves. So, Karen, this pandemic today that we're going through right now, COVID-19 and this will not be the last because we'll have more pandemics in the future. It forces us to revisit the question, can we really be healthy and can we really be happy? We're only taking care of ourselves or the small narrow nuclear family that we have. Even if you put up barriers and Malaysia shuts out every foreigner in every country in the world, we will still not be safe. We need to start thinking of the world as one species to remove what has been a useful, until today, a useful trait of survival of the fittest. We need to remove all that so that we think more selflessly about other people because it is in our own selfish interests to think about the selfless needs of other people. Why is that, you may ask Karen? If we don't think about the health of our neighbors, either next door to us or in the next city or in the next state or in the next country or in the next continent, we are failing to see that we're also interconnected in today's world. There's something that happens in New York or Paris or Moscow or Buenos Aires or Tokyo or Sydney or Beijing can very quickly come to Malaysia. We have to think about the health of our neighbors equals to the health of ourselves equals to their happiness equals to our happiness. Therefore, the controversial element over here is that the survival of the fittest that we have taken ourselves to today cannot be fit for purpose anymore. And therefore, Karen and everybody else listening in, we have to consider that selflessness in order to protect ourselves is a new way that we must interact, especially if more pandemics are coming up. How do you think COVID-19 is affecting happiness? It's affecting happiness in very large ways, Karen, in very direct and indirect large ways. COVID-19 has caused unhappiness, fear, panic, uncertainty, xenophobia, racism, nationalism, and all that are very powerful, very primitive emotions. Under normal circumstances when human beings are healthy and they don't have this movement control orders or quarantines or travel restrictions in place, we're free to move and that freedom is essential for our happiness and well-being. What COVID has also done is to restrict our social interactions. Human beings are very social creatures. We are friends, we are family. We want to go out and socialize. We want to see people. We want to see, feel, hear, and touch people. And all those things are now constrained as a result of COVID because we're in a fight for, in a sense, our own survival. We want to make sure that we can beat another species. So COVID has a very significant impact on happiness in at least these two different ways. The psychological stresses, shall we say, that come from having your movements restricted and also having your social interactions restricted. And on top of that, like I've mentioned earlier, some of the emotions that are in play during this pandemic for the whole world right now are not very positive emotions. And when you have emotions like fear or anger at the government or anything of that sort, it doesn't lend itself well to happiness. But you know, you know, Karen, when you reflect about happiness and in the time of pandemic, you also think about how there is maybe not so much happiness, but the idea of fulfillment or the idea of peace or the idea of solidarity. And these concepts of strength and resilience and community and helping other people are not so much happiness, but they are, shall we say, also powerful emotions that are on display. We see people in Malaysia and I'm sure in many other countries as well, thanking the frontliners, the doctors, the nurses, the paramedics, and that sense of gratitude is a very important component of happiness. When you're helping people in the community, when you're helping your friends or your family or somebody who's poor and you're very concerned about the orang-uslies or the native indigenous people in Malaysia or people in marginalized communities, when you put all these things together and you're caring for them, that may not be necessarily happiness, pure and simple, but it lends itself to happiness because you feel useful, you feel helpful, you feel powerful, rather than useless, helpless or powerless, which are very negative emotions as well. During this particular outbreak, not only do we see some negative emotions, but we also see some beautiful messages of strength and resilience from human beings. And these messages of strength and resilience from human beings during World Earth Day here in the middle of April this year is particularly poignant. It's poignant because these are basic fundamental building blocks for what happiness truly is. Dr. Kor, as you look to the future in a post-COVID-19 world, is public health care a necessary condition for happiness? Certainly, yes. A very unequivocal, clear and firm answer that public health or public health care or just health in general is a precondition for happiness. We look at the old adage, the old probe of health is wealth and we can definitely consider that health is also happiness. In a very structural way, as I think through health systems and health policies, the COVID pandemic will cause a lot of national governments and societies to demand more and better investment in health, not to spend endlessly in health care. And when I say health, there is a difference between health and health care. Health care means doctors and medicines and surgeries and doctors. All that is great and beautiful. But health is more than just health care. Health requires you to consider livelihoods, education levels, gender empowerment, social equality, clean air, clean environments, freedoms for people to move around, good working environments in the office, great working hours that you don't feel stressed. Instead of 40 hours a week, maybe 30 hours a week, a clean park that you can go and exercising with your family members so that you can deepen the relationship with them. Good food, clean water, all these things are determinants for health and therefore happiness. But health care, very narrowly in the sense of doctors and medicines and nurses and hospitals and clinics is only one tool to achieve the much broader objective of health. If we want to be happy, we have to be healthy. So Karen, that's a bit of an elaboration of my thought and a short answer. Is health a prerequisite for happiness? It most certainly is. Dr. Koh, a lot of those elements that you say should be part of the health makeup. It seems like a lot of it is beyond the control of individuals alone and that there has to be some form of government or policy makers responsibility in this. What is your view on that? Health in all policies should be the mantra for every government agency and every government ministry. I look forward to the day when we don't have a ministry of health, but we have ministries for health. Because we need the Ministry of Education and Finance and Women's Development, Community Development, Urban Government, Rural Development, Transport Trade. All the ministries in Malaysia play a role in health and certainly all the ministries in every country as well. So to leave the responsibility for health to just the Ministry of Health is, well, if I may say it, frankly criminal. It's criminal because if you rely on doctors to save you at the hospital level, it's too late. Because you have to save the health of your citizens by policies of say breakfast and nutrition for children going to school so that they can study better and become fitter and stronger. And that has an impact on their cognitive abilities and also their physical strengths and abilities all going forward in the next 20 to 30 years. So you're very right, Karen. It's not enough that we have the ministries of health being responsible for health. We need health in all government policies. Do you then think that we would be happier if we stay out of this global race to be modern and advanced? I think the answer to that is no. Simply because I think the world needs a sort of a level of competitiveness in order to thrive. Right. I think if we don't have that level of competitiveness that we don't challenge ourselves to create fantastic things around the world. You know, tech is sort of built on that idea of that race, the idea of massive productions and whatnot. I don't think we necessarily become happier, but I think it's necessary for us to sort of continue with the kind of progress that is required for humanity. But to put all our eggs into that one particular basket is also very dangerous because then what we're saying is that momentum of progress is so important for us in order to feel better about ourselves, to view ourselves in a better light, to give ourselves a level of happiness that there is a responsibility for us, I think as humanity to be involved in the creation of these new innovations. But I think we also have to be rooted in something a lot more, how do I say, human, that there are levels of traditional values, for example, for some communities or culture, just as it is. And I think, you know, finding the right balance between the two is incredibly important for humanity to sort of understand that. Yeah, you know, this is what makes us, I'm happy or important or, you know, able to find joy in times where it is important. Dr. Somya, you work very closely with Indigenous communities here in Malaysia. What do you think are the lessons in minimalism or self-sufficiency that we may learn from some of these Indigenous communities? You know, I'm reminded by an experience that I had when I was in the field many years ago, when I was trying to complete my PhD. And I was invited to the wedding of a participant in one of the villages in Sandakan and Sabah. And when I went there, I went to congratulate the father of the bride, and I said, you know, congratulations, you must be very happy. And his response, I think, is something that I sort of reflect upon a lot, even till today. And he tells me, yeah, I suppose this is the time to be happy. And of course, I then ask him and I said, well, you know, shouldn't we be happy all the time? And he says to me, no, you shouldn't. Then you forget your place in life. Because essentially what he was trying to tell me, and in that conversation I learned was that for many Indigenous people in Malaysia, whether you're talking about the Orang Asaul in Sabah, in Sarawa, or you're talking about the Orang Astisiya in the Peninsula, is that, you know, they understand their position as a marginalized group. They know that they are very far away from the senses of power. And of course, these are things that we've, I think, scholars and activists and members of non-governmental organizations have been fighting for, right? You know, that they need, there needs to be a sense of inclusivity when it comes to these national dialogues about progress and sustainability, of course. But the truth is, they're not. They've been sort of sidelined, and for the longest time. And while we do have these avenues to talk about things on the internet to say, you know, give them, you know, let's get their rights back to them, give them their agency, I think a lot of them have internalized this idea that living in the fringes, you have to sort of make do with a lot of things. That conversation I had about happiness was that there's a temporal factor to it. And I think this is the major takeaway, that happiness is sweeter when you don't have it all the time. And it's okay if you don't, right? And for me, that was very, very deep. That was a very deep discussion about happiness that, you know, in a setting in which we were celebrating somebody's wedding. And because of this temporal element, because of the way they understand the peaks and the spikes of happiness, and the acceptance of, you know, being content or the light thereof at the times when you're not happy, is essentially a way of life, right? I think this also goes back to essentially the way they inherit a lot of indigenous knowledge, because if you're working with spaces, whether it's, you know, the forest or the mountains or the sea, is that these terrains possess a kind of mood. There's a relationship and no relationship is constantly happy all the time. That would be really frightening if you only had that degree of happiness over and over and over again. Happiness then becomes dull, it becomes painful even. But because of the kind of relationships that they have with nature, they have with, you know, their traditional values, the indigenous knowledges that they've passed down from one generation to another. The idea that they have about happiness, I think, is perhaps one of the most realistic that I've come to learn about, and I've come to understand that with time, you find ways to, or you find a time to be happy. And when you're in that moment of happiness, you feel it, you're supposed to celebrate it. You have every right to possess happiness at that time, and then you let it go because that's life. And I think, you know, that these sort of approaches to minimalism and self-sufficiency is very tight intertwined with that. If we're able to sort of take away from these major teachings, or what we're able to take away from these major teachings is that when we're chasing success down every corner at every single time, we're not going to be happy at every single time. And the truth is, it's really okay to not be happy all the time because happiness is a momentous. And when it comes, you're supposed to, I suppose, capture it with your whole body and soul, right? And really, these are one of the, I suppose, finer details that come with being Indigenous, I think. Finer details that come... I hope you enjoyed that. I really wish to thank all our speakers. And to conclude, we see that happiness is in fact multi-dimensional. But what is clear is that in periods of crisis, when health, when livelihoods are negatively affected, it is also a time when openness to new ideas and new innovations are extremely important. In other words, an openness to change for the well-being of the many and the well-being of planet Earth. We received many questions and we will post the answers in the summary blog that will be sent to all participants after this webinar. From SDSN Malaysia, we wish to thank you all and we wish you health and happiness. And it now gives me great pleasure to hand over to Cheyenne to introduce the next segment by my colleagues at SDSN Southeast Asia. Thank you.