In this final chapter, the aim is to draw together the threads of all those preceding to tackle a most urgent question: what political and practical steps can governments, communities, and individuals best take now to move our shared lives toward a society based on wellbeing? And in contemplating this question, it seems to me that the wellbeing society is just this; a society working with understanding and intent to cultivate the conditions in which human wellbeing can be realised. In this work, there is no sense in which the process could or should culminate in a utopian finished product. The understanding and conditions needed for wellbeing will always have to be made and remade anew. Wellbeing itself is not an idealised state to be reached but an ongoing process embedded in ways of living.

To see things this way is also to realise that, despite our present problems, the wellbeing society is something we can start to work on right now. It is to recognise opportunities for change in the many ways individuals, communities, and some governments are trying to work for wellbeing. A great potential for positive change lies in these efforts, which can only be strengthened by a clearer, shared understanding of wellbeing. In thinking through the social and political challenge of making wellbeing societies it seems that, while it is essential to recognise, resist and change the conditions that do harm, the prospect of success also depends on having a clear, practicable, and positive picture of the conditions one is aiming to create.

Furthermore, in contemplating the question of ‘what to do’ to move societies towards those conditions, it would be easy to launch into a conventional mode of political discourse by listing actions for governments to take; to invest here, to regulate there, to provide more services or programs to remedy this or that social problem. After all, people do this all the time for a variety of reasons and, yes, governments have a crucial role to play. However, my strong conviction is that the whole process of creating a wellbeing society must of necessity cut deeper and reach wider than piecemeal actions by governments alone.