World Flourishing and Peace Initiative

Working Notes

(This foundation is based upon philosophical principles on this page: https://thelayman.blog/2026/05/31/my-life-philosophy/ )

Goal of the foundation:

  • Reduce human-caused suffering: increase peace, reduce conflict of all sorts
  • Increase human happiness and flourishing

Approach:

  • Transform public behavior to be more empathetic, kind.
  • Promote self-awareness as a tool to improve our own happiness and contentment

Some of the actions which we will undertake to implement this approach:

  • Politics
    • Publish principled stance on topics of world interest (which are critical for peace and are creating conflicts) that promotes benefit for all and are created with deep analysis
    • These views hopefully gain more weight as people realize the depth of understanding and the impartial goal of world flourishing
  • Social policies
    • Make social service mandatory of all medium to large companies
    • put social policy changes in the ballot and convince people to vote.
    • Improve domestic worker policies in India and elsewhere to improve their rights and reduce exploitation
  • Share broadly (i.e. educate) philosophical principles that increase happiness from within and how kind and empathetic connections create a happier world (basically the philosophical framework – https://thelayman.blog/2026/05/31/my-life-philosophy/ )
    • Media of communication
      • Social media : Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok etc
      • Publishing well researched articles
      • TV Ads
      • Long form: TV series / movies
      • books
      • Physical: Hoardings, pamphlets
    • Special educational workshops for critical decision makers that impart these principles (political leaders, etc)
      • Get congress to make it mandatory for strong principles based workshops mandatory for all the congressman.
    • Leverage research in this area of how to do this
      • UPenn Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics
      • Greater Good science center in Berkeley — they have educational materials etc.
      • Human Flourishing center in Harvard
        • Partner with these programs and leverage their learnings (courses, practices) — and measurement techniques
      • Victor Counted – professor – has also research on flourishing and community transformation: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/profile/victor_counted
    • Influence Children education curriculums across the world to inculcate these ideas. Check existing SEL (Social Emotional Learning) curriculums (CASEL, Harvard, UNICEF, Emory SEE, etc) — curate a new one from these and incorporate values of the initiative — like peaceful ways of resolving conflicts, sameness of human beings etc. Measure outcomes. Target areas with the most need — after a pilot in India.
  • Reduce wars (yes big, impossible goal; but we will try to make a dent in this)
    • Publish articles / educate / engage media on how to resolve conflicts that are causing wars, make them deeply researched, data driven, create scenario simulations to prove they may work etc
    • Work with UN or otherwise to try to create a goal for countries to think about global wins than just their own, now that the world is not in a state where there needs to be a fight for resources. We have enough resources and technologies to make sure the entire human population leads a happy life.
    • Educate general people to spread the view that there should be a global proposerity view in countries’ decisions
    • Engage with governments to resolve conflicts (very difficult)
    • convince public peace is in the best interest of the region – forgetting the past, looking towards the future and ask them to push their leaders to find peaceful solutions.
    • put ads that push for peace in popular channels in the regions affected.
  • Community / chapters (“Leave the world a better place” community)
    • Create a badge that people can adopt and share on their social media
      • The badge will be a pledge on something like this — “I pledge to leave the world a better place for everyone” – and will have a link to the foundation website’s pledge page. The pledge page will share a brief message about what it means (that — I will look after my own affairs, but will also strive to make the world a better place for everyone )
    • Publish acts of kindness and social change brought about by pledgers
    • Community get-togethers where people Meditate, take activities to serve the society (community service etc)
    • The community folks will
    • Share playlist of songs that increase happiness (meditative, calming, soothing music – including devotional music) — as music can play a very important role in feeling happy and emotional regulation with causing side effects like alcohol/drugs)
  • Solve local/regional problems that are human-caused (leaving other types of problems to other non-profit organizations)