I hope the reader now has a reasonably clear picture of what wellbeing is, how it works and how it is shaped by the conditions in which people live. We are now in a position to apply this new perspective and expand the view, to look at contemporary human societies in more depth; to see how existing conditions of living affect wellbeing and to discern the kinds of changes required to really put wellbeing at the centre of social values and practices. As the recent World Health Organization Geneva Charter for Well-being stated, this is the urgent challenge of creating ‘well-being societies’ (World Health Organization, 2022a, p 1).

This chapter begins the process of developing a social, ethical, and political view of wellbeing by examining social conditions as they are now and seeing how they do harm to individual and population wellbeing. As will be seen, despite grandiose opinion from some about how wonderful modern societies are, their current performance on psychological wellbeing is in fact disturbingly poor and has the potential to get even worse. However, before beginning to examine the specific ways in which societies harm wellbeing, it is important to hold in mind that the picture is certainly not all bad.

As mentioned in Chapter 1, organisational features of some contemporary societies such as modern medicine, public education and a safe food supply are broadly favourable to wellbeing. Similarly, within any contemporary society one will likely find a range of everyday cultural beliefs and social practices that already provide for wellbeing to some extent and have potential to do so even more effectively or equitably, such as in the ways we care for children and family members, value and support our friends, engage in education, and take pleasure and solace in art, music, or natural beauty. Thus, while most people would not maintain a fully formed understanding of wellbeing as described in this book and might not think about their lives in these terms, nevertheless there are many ways in which people already value and practice wellbeing abilities to some extent.

Furthermore, as one looks across the many different nations and cultures of the world it is possible to see that some do relatively well in creating social and economic conditions favourable to wellbeing for all, while others are performing badly.