94 ENGAGING THE IDEA OF SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING THROUGH THE IDEA OF RELATIONAL WELL-BEING Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy, University of Abuja ABSTRACT The hypothesis that the work defends is that given the differences (biological, psychological, etc.) between individuals, the idea of well-being involves tensions and crisis among individuals on one hand, individuals and the social group, and between two social groups. The work then sets out to illustrate how this is the case and articulate how this problem can be resolved. It proposes the idea of relational wellbeing defined as the ability to initiate and sustain a valid relationship with others broadly conceived as a social group, other persons or institutions, etc, as a plausible option to add this problem. The method applied is textual review and intuitive deductions. Keywords: Sustainable well-being, relational well-being, personality theories, psychological traits, personal conflicts. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this work is to locate tensions that the idea of well-being and which affects sustainable interactional engagement at personal and social levels and attempts to resolve them. By this is meant the tension between the personal well-being and social wellbeing. The work holds that given the differences (biological, psychological, etc) between individuals, the idea of well-being involves tensions and crisis among individuals on one hand and individuals and the social group on the other and that these notions of well-being has enormous force and potential to affect quality sustainable social advancement and development. For this reason, a scholarly effort is required to demonstrate this tension, resolve the conflict implicated and harmonise the idea of well-being. The work addresses the following question: How can the idea of well-being be advanced to resolve the tensions and problems that are implicated in the idea of individual well-being and social well-being? To do this, the work will take on the ideas of personal well-being and social well-being and discuss the goals of the idea and how the goals lead to some tensions, many of which make the idea of personal well-being challenging. Thereafter, it will propose and apply the concept of relational well-being to resolve the tension identified and demonstrate how and why the idea of relational well-being should constitute a desirable discourse on the subject of well-being. By relational well-being, I mean the notion of well-being that looks at well-being in terms of its ability to maintain a desired emotional and physical equilibrium between the individual and the social group and provides the necessary virtues, values and habits that induce a quality of peace, understanding and harmony in the relationship between the individual and the social group as a basis for well-being. Relational well-being implies that well-being as a principle must emphasise and incorporate the capability and ability of the individual to relate with others irrespective of the circumstances in which the individual operates or the variable through which the idea of subjective well-being could be established. Such a relationship may include Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 5 Issue 1, April 2025. ISSN: 2786-9792 95 tolerating and managing differences, minimising tensions in human relationships, cooperating with others, or communing with them as the situation demands. The argument that the work will propose and defend is that it is in being able to initiate and sustain a valid relationship with others broadly conceived as either a social group, other persons or institutions that well-being can be held to have served a worthy purpose for both the individual and for the group. For this reason, the idea of well-being must be anchored on the ability to sustain and maintain relationships. I will make use of textual analysis from philosophy, psychology and sociology to achieve the objective of the paper. I will apply critical methods of philosophical reasoning to explain the values and principles that the idea of well-being defends and the different demands of achieving well-being. I then apply theories of personality to explain the role of temperaments or attitudes in determining the terms of self-fulfilment and well-being. The effort to locate the theories of personality and the terms through which these personalities could achieve well-being would highlight the challenges of personal well-being. I then look at social wellbeing and by highlighting the notion of social wellbeing. I proceed to map out the challenges implied in the idea of social wellbeing. By looking at the two aspects of wellbeing I locate certain variables that are inherent in the idea of personal well-being that are capable of affecting social well- being negatively and vice versa. Thereafter, I will defend the claim that a desirable notion of well-being must be able to serve the interest of both the individual and the social-group by formulating an idea of relational well-being that accommodates the two. ARTICULATING THE IDEA OF WELL-BEING In recent times, the subject of well-being has assumed an important place in scholarship. This attention is motivated by a number of reasons, one of which is the gradual shift from locating the development of a group from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH) and the location of Happiness in terms of Well-Being. The gradual shift from measuring the wealth of nations in terms of GDP to measuring it in terms of happiness has been called Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), which invokes the concept of well-being because GDP has been discovered to function as a “myth” that does not tell us about the health of an economy, let alone its sustainability and overall impact on human welfare (Fioramonti, 2018, p. 742). Thus, emphasis was shifted to well-being as a more realistic measurable way of locating the quality growth of a people that translates into a worthier life. This movement could be glimpsed through a number of works, such as Cummins (1997), Veenhoven (1996), Layard (2009) and Krueger (2009), and is motivated by the desire to find a better form that the world development agenda should take in order to serve a worthier purpose for mankind. The claim here is that while there is the belief that growth in the volume of the economy and in the physical structures of the society could provide a measurement of the development of a people, it is the final human dividend of this—how this has translated to a better quality of life—that the idea of development should be held to serve its purpose. This is what the focus on well-being is all about. But the idea of well-being itself is an amorphous and wide concept. An ordinary engagement with the idea or what we may call surface thinking about the idea of well-being may abstract from the two concepts that form the words to say that well-being amounts to being well. But being well is a concept that is applied to human beings, whereas well-being is a wider concept Lawrence Ogbo Engaging the Idea of Sustainable well-being through the Idea… 96 that needs a broad interpretation and categorisation to explain it sufficiently. Well-being connotes a variety of meanings, such as the objective well-being of a group, subjective well- being of an individual, and intersubjective well-being between the individual and the groupand may further be interpreted to imply mental and physical health, pleasure, engagement and meaning. It may also include those values that reflect the broad fundamental properties of the human entity—the physical, spiritual, social and personal demands of the human being. Wellbeing embodies harbouring all these items to function well and being in a good or optimal state and in good health. White (2010, p. 159) supports this view with an elaboration that for some, well-being “is about personal success or happiness, but for others it goes much further, posing questions not only about what is good for individuals and communities, but also the nature of the “good society.” White goes further to suggest three categories of well-being: material well-being, social well-being and human and material well-being: material well-being includes wealth and income and the satisfaction that comes from these, social well-being includes relations such as social stability, and human well-being includes human capabilities. From White’s categorization, which is a considerably elaborate illustration of the notion of wellbeing, we can map out two broad dimensions of well-being, namely social well-being and personal well-being. Social well-being demands social stability and the provision of those items that enhance the functioning of the society or environment in such a manner that it is preserved and allowed to promote social good. It demands the functioning of social organs or structures in such a manner that they can serve the interest of her members in favour of the future. Social well-being involves and wellbeing of all aspects of life that connect man within a group and ensure that the social process is well and healthy. Another dimension of well-being that can be abstracted from the table above is personal well-being-that is wellbeing as it involved human inner needs and capabilities and attitudes. Personal well-being involves achieving the inner health of those qualities that make one an individual, and enabling the attainment of the bigger and deeper demands of the human entity, such as meaning in life, and happiness, spiritual stability and physical stability (interpreted to mean a certain balance in the spiritual and physical components of man), and the absence of lack, worry or disease, such as will make a human being have the quality of wellness. Personal well-being has other peculiar dimensions emanating from the nature of the human person. For this reason, the need arises to make a distinction between two kinds of personal well-being: the individual and the subjective. Subjective well-being serves the interest of the person as the subject of well-being. It is about the person as seen and known by the other. It is about the person as a certain subject that demands and deserves certain rights, privileges, respect, autonomy, etc. that can lead to meaningful life and happiness. Individual well-being addresses the peculiar demands of an individual as a unique entity with some demands that may include (but not exclude the demands of subjective well-being). It is as a result of this that a certain tension arises from the idea of being a certain kind of person ( an individual with a certain uniqueness, temperament, dispositions and attitude that can affect the wellness of the person is realised). Personal wellbeing is widely emphasised in the human and social sciences. Four renown psychologists and experts on happiness—Ed Diener (1984, 2000), Seligman (2002) and Kahneman and Krueger (2006)—emphasise “well-being” as an index of happiness. The wellbeing implicated in the works of these scholars is personal wellbeing. Before them, Aristotle, in his theory of happiness, had applied several concepts to designate happiness, namely virtue, prudence, wisdom and pleasure. For him, each of these concepts has something to do with the idea of happiness, which he captured in full in his theory of eudaimonia, which Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 5 Issue 1, April 2025. ISSN: 2786-9792 97 can be interpreted to mean personal well-being (Aristotle, 1966, 1098a2–19, 1099b25–28), …the best aspect of the soul […] when the soul is at its best” (1098a15–20). Because values and virtues, such as happiness and meaning, are significant to the notion of well-being, the affective component of the human person becomes a decisive factor in personal well-being and the discourse on personal well-being leads to the discussion on psychological well-being. Psychological wellbeing constitutes important aspects of personal wellbeing because it embodies human feelings, human emotions and all the inner factors and forces that foreground human thought and action. To highlight the relevance of psychological wellbeing, I shall next provide some views on psychological wellbeing in a separate section of the work. PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING AND ITS WIDER DEMANDS ON PERSONAL WELLBEING The emphasis on well-being in terms of personal well-being and the underlying emphasis on psychological well-being arises from the underlying psychological component of the human person. According to the APA guides (American Psychological Association, 2017), all individuals differ in patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving (Hicks and Mehta, 2018, p. 50) and this explains the unique demands of psychological wellbeing. A particular way of locating this is to locate the variations in the psychological make-up of human beings. To do this let me begin with the theory of temperaments. According to the theory of temperaments, there are four identifiable types of individuals: the choleric, the sanguine, the melancholic and the phlegmatic. These different temperaments affect psychological wellbeing in different ways. A closer study of the temperament theory of personalities shows that achieving individual well-being for the four personalities identified would depend on the extent to which temperamental traits are addressed. This is because well-being depends largely on inner well-being and how social and human variables fit into these personalities. To establish this claim, let us imagine a scenario where a sanguine personality (described above as highly talkative, enthusiastic, active, and social) functions among a social group that is repressive or among a religious community that is suppressive. Chances are that the well-being of this individual will be affected tragically, and despite the availability of the social or economic variables that might lead to personal well- being, the option for the individual would be either to (i) engage the social group to ensure that it fits into the temperamental demands of the agent or (2) to change herself to fit into the needs of the social group. But either of these is a huge challenge because temperaments are hugely biological (Hans Eysenck (1916–1997) or at least have some connections with the neurotic make-up of the individual. Thus, it makes sense to suggest that the individual has very strong psychological challenges with underlying biological traits that will affect the well-being of the personality involved. For another illustration, (2) let us examine the case of a person whose temperament is choleric. The choleric are usually held to be good leaders and to have personality traits that make for leadership. For this reason, the well-being of this individual will depend on the quality of leadership available in the society where the individual functions. Thus, this poses a number of challenges, especially in a society with bad leadership or one where leadership is a major problem. The psychological well-being of this personality would depend on how much they Lawrence Ogbo Engaging the Idea of Sustainable well-being through the Idea… 98 show leadership or challenge bad leadership. If the individual is not recognised and allowed to exhibit this inner leadership trait, the individual would be forced to challenge bad leadership wherever they are and would end up much more as an activist or as a prisoner of conscience. Thus, because of the temperament trait of the choleric, the individual would desire to reconfigure the personality to fit societal standards, that is, accommodate the society that produces the leadership (whether it is good or bad) or to adjust the meaning of leadership to a fresh standard that would accommodate the personality trait harboured. The challenge of well- being for a choleric may well be this: how do I live with leadership (good or bad) or compromise the visions and leadership traits that seek for expression in me? This prompting of the temperament would usually lead to a life of risks and which influences the notion of well-being. If this is the case, it may well mean that individual or personal well-being in relation to the choleric will depend on societies where the traits are valued and respected. Another way to look at well-being in relation to personality traits is to (3) look at the challenges that could affect the quest for individual well-being by the melancholic individuals who tend to be analytical and detail-oriented. Those who possess this personality trait would often function more in a society that respects scientific disposition to issues than one that arbitrarily assigns truth and meanings to issues without due consideration to the merits and demerits of this option. This kind of personality would function better in a society that respects people with great skills for organising facts than those that would not value such facts. The conflict that can arise from this scenario is such that a certain level of meaning and well-being would be truncated by the daily occurrence when such personalities function in a society that does not function for other personalities. These examples illustrate the challenges of personality traits in relation to psychological well-being especially how they affect the theory of temperaments. Other theories have been advanced to explain the human personality. They include the theory of the big five and the two-type theory of personality. The ‘Big Five’ theory is based on McCrae and Costa’s (2003) articulation of the five components of personality: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. This effort has been collaborated by John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999), who has suggested that the core set of dispositional traits within the big five are the most prominent aspects of personality. Another theory is the two-type theory of personality. This theory suggests that human beings can be located in terms of disposition to “perfectionism, honesty, and sensation seeking” Hicks and Mehta (ibid) and Type B personality who are “relaxed and easy going” (Kazmi, Amjad, & Khan, 2008).All these differences in personalities have different consequences for psychological wellbeing. The claim being made here is that a deeper study of the different human personalities in relation to the notion of well-being would show that the realisation of well-being differs and that the well-being of individuals cannot be realised in the same degree but according to different variations in their personalities. Considering the theories outlined and other theories that have emerged to explain the human personality, such as those of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, etc., it can be held that human beings function with some personality traits, many of which are favoured or disfavoured by the environment, and the personalities and individual traits of others within the society and that these are influential to the outcome of personal well-being. To this effect, it becomes important to interrogate the notion of well-being that can accommodate this challenge through a constructive engagement with different notions of well-being. Before I do that, I discuss the idea of social well-being. Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 5 Issue 1, April 2025. ISSN: 2786-9792 99 WELL-BEING AS SOCIAL WELL-BEING AND THE CHALLENGES IMPLIED By social well-being is implied the well-being of the individual as a member of the social group and the wellbeing of the social group as an entity. By this is meant well-being that is in a position to harmonise the society and lead to a certain level of what we may call corporative cohesion. This quality of well-being (i) makes the social group to function to the advantage of the members; (ii) enables the individuals to function for the benefit of the social group; and (iii) enables the social group to harmonise the demands of inter-subjective well-being. White (2010, p. 161) locates social well-being as an aspect of relational well-being and characterises it as “the social: social relations and access to public goods; and the human: capabilities, attitudes to life, and personal relationships.” But the characterisation of relational well-being as an aspect of social well-being is not appropriate because social well-being in my conception also presupposes the well-being of the group as a corporate entity; that is how the structures and organs of the group function to maintain a certain form of social stability that can be viewed outside the context of a relationship. My claim is that relational well-being is larger than social well-being. In another part of same work, White provides a more agreeable notion of social well-being with the view that: The social dimension of wellbeing comprises the classic “social capital” components of social networks, along with access to public goods—policing and the law, social and welfare services, the quality of the physical environment, and access to amenities. It also concerns social divisions and inequalities, and the forms of entitlement and domination codified in identities by class, caste, gender, religion, race, ethnicity, age, disability, or ritual responsibility. It considers whether people are subject to violence or other forms of social conflict and (in) security; and the political arena: the mechanisms and scope that people have for collective action on matters that concern them. White (2010, p. 163) Indeed the author suggests that the social dimension of well-being may have subjective and objective dimensions, and this agrees substantially with the position of this work (as earlier stated)—that social well-being has both interpersonal and pan-objective dimensions encompassing both individual to individual and individual to the group. Social well-being demands that the broader dimensions of social goods and services translate to private gains in terms of enabling an individual to realise the personality of the individual as a social being. We can further capture the concept of social well-being by looking at two theories that explain the social demands of human existence. The first is what we may call reverse life margin. The second is the capability approach to human development as articulated by the American philosopher Marta Nussbaum. The concept of reverse life margin is an abstraction from the concept of life margin—the view that there are variables that lead to or could lead to social exclusion. According to this view variables such as discrimination, marginalisation, and stigma in relation to social integration (Benbow, Forchuk, & Ray, 2011, pp. 689–690) could lead to forms of social exclusion. These forms of social exclusion places “life on the margins.” As Lötter (2008, pp. 11, 17) notes, it makes the victims to become marginalised, experience poor health, become vulnerable to preventable deaths, and have poor mental and physical growth. It also deprives them of opportunities for personal growth and development. Reverse life margin then, is the view that a society should be inclusive enough to redress this problem. To achieve this state then social well-being is a desired principle and it amounts to a state that leads to a provision that leads to a reversal of the “societal process that … holds back certain groups … Lawrence Ogbo Engaging the Idea of Sustainable well-being through the Idea… 100 from meeting their full potential in society” (Benbow, Rudwick, Forchuk, Edward, 2014, p. 1048). It is a social process that can enable all to achieve the fullest of the human possibility by providing or promoting a condition that can promote or encourage any member to aspire to their fullest potential. The second way to locate the concept of social well-being is that which enables the central capabilities of the human person as a social being. These capabilities are what should bring out the best and most useful talent in the individual and enables affiliation to different groups that are relevant to the optimal function of the person as a social being. The social thinker and philosopher Marta Nussbaum outlines these affiliations as: Affiliation (in the form of1) a. Friendship … b. Respect …; Other Species …; Play …; Control over one’s environment (in the form of) a. Political … b. Material …. (Nussbaum, 2002, pp. 129–130) Nussbaum’s view, which I believe could be applied to explain the idea of social well-being, is that a social and political process must aim at achieving central capabilities for its members as social citizens or as political members. Thus, the promotion of values and items that can lead to the realisation of these is what is expected of a social process that promotes well-being. After a study of the idea of social well-being, it is important to emphasise that personal well- being must function alongside social well-being for the optimal realisation of the gains inherent in well-being. If personal well-being or what we might call the private aspects of well-being functions in conflict with the social or what we might call public aspects of well-being, there is bound to be a conflict. Thus, the need arises to articulate the possible areas of conflict that can arise between personal well-being and social well-being. To achieve these objectives, I will locate certain variables that are inherent in the idea of personal well-being and are capable of affecting social well-being negatively. Thereafter, I will locate the certain variables that are inherent in the idea of social well-being and affect the quality of individual well-being negatively. I will then propose the idea of relational well-being, defined as well-being that harmonises personal well-being and social wellbeing. TENSION BETWEEN PERSONAL AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING AND THE IDEA OF RELATIONAL WELL-BEING In the earlier part of the work, I have outlined certain tensions that exist within the idea of personal well-being. I explained them in terms of a conflict between the subject and the individual, the tensions that arise within the individual and the conflict that arise when one person is interacting with another. In this part of the work, I discuss the tension that exists between personal well-being and social well-being and then proceed to map out a possible solution through the idea of relational well-being. Personal well-being and social well-being could generate a number of tensions such that given the differences (biological, psychological, etc.) between individuals, the idea of well-being cannot be realised without understanding and addressing these tensions. For instance, the various talents, skills and capabilities human beings have amount to self-fulfilment relative to the individual to which they are ascribed, it follows that the desire for wellbeing and inner peace may be influenced by these. Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 5 Issue 1, April 2025. ISSN: 2786-9792 101 To explain the conflict inherent between personal well-being and social well-being, I invoke the notion of well-being implicated in the notion of development postulated by the Indian economist Armataya Sen. Sen articulates the idea of development as freedom characterised by a number of indices, such as the following: 1. The importance of real freedoms in the assessment of a person’s advantage; 2. Individual differences in the ability to transform resources into valuable activities; 3. The multi-variety nature of activities giving rise to happiness; 4. A balance of materialistic and nonmaterialistic factors in evaluating human welfare; 5. Concern for the distribution of opportunities within society. A close study of these measures that define development shows that they border on those values that enable a person to function without economic or social inhibitions while allowing the other person to function differently to realise the same: one that respects the uniqueness and differences in the capacity of individuals, respecting the principle of equity and ensuring that these differences are respected and valued in their positive forms and gains. They emphasise the different dimensions of needs and interests that need to be addressed differently—a holistic notion of the individual that does not emphasise one aspect of the person at the expense of the other—and the equitable distribution of opportunities and resources. The realisation of all these suggests various measures that can be conflictual between personal well-being and social well- being. It would mean that providing the variety of activities that can lead to happiness might mean that some social standards may be compromised to allow as many people as possible to experience happiness. But when standards are compromised and adjusted, there are reasons to expect that social values and the institutions that administer them would also suffer some loss in terms of quality and standard, which could affect their well-being. The conflict that can affect well-being can be seen through what may be called psycho-social conflict and psycho-rational conflict. Psycho-social conflict can be conceived as conflict of the person with their social environments. It is also psycho-rational conflict given that reason is advanced and validated through a course of action, but such reason seems to be in conflict with the inner demands and qualities of the individual. Psycho-social and psycho-rational conflicts between the personal well-being and social well-being can function through a false sense of the self—what is broadly characterised as schizophrenia, such as the instrumentalisation of society for individual ends through grafts, the looting of the state and prebendal politics. Here, we witness a case of where well-being is desired through social unwellness or at an inverse proportion to the well-being of the society. If someone, for instance, were to opt to be a politician when in essence the desire is purely to amass wealth from the society or from those that power will be exercised upon, it is because wealth is seen to be desirable and power is seen as an avenue to this. But while wealth is desirable, the exercise of political power should not be seen as an avenue to generate wealth. So here, we see the instance of reason functioning rightly seeking wealth, and wrongly by exploiting the public to serve the psychology of the individual. A second way to explain the conflict that can arise between personal well-being and social well-being is through social egoism. Here, the social process is a way to defend its status and standard imposed on another social process that presides over a different kind of individual and Lawrence Ogbo Engaging the Idea of Sustainable well-being through the Idea… 102 by doing this imposes values and ideals that are at conflict with the individual’s own ideals. Here, a society expresses formal unwillingness to respect social and personal differences between itself and another society and the individuals within that society. Thus, we witness oppression and suppression as a formal way of relating with the other. A good illustration of this was the colonial experience in Africa. Colonialism was out to recreate Africa in the image and likeness of Europe, and this was predicated on a wrong assumption of cultural superiority. This wrong assumption, which led to contempt for the African personality, can be illustrated by the French version of colonialism, which was anchored on the policy of assimilation. This policy, which meant the cultural absorption of Africans living in French colonial territories, implied that Africans of the Francophone world should be transformed into French people. This phenomenon demonstrates that colonialism was an invasion of African humanity and the denial of the cultural heritage of African people and its displacement with wrong or faulty principles and policies. And these all go to demonstrate that this phenomenon is dangerous to the well-being of Africans and the ruination of social wellbeing at its worst. The deficiency of this social and political process is aptly captured in the words of Olusegun Oladipo, who believes that: Colonialism, by making Africa an appendage in a world centred on Europe, denies Africans that autonomy which they required of making self-conscious choices in different areas of human life—economic, politics, religion, education and culture. Also by causing Africans to lose pride in themselves as worthy human beings inferior to none, colonialism obstructed the very confidence necessary for national restoration and development. (Oladipo, 1998) This form of unhealthy relationship illustrates the crisis of wellbeing. It explains the multidimensional crisis that defines the quest for wellbeing, first within the person(s) involved in the quest for wellbeing, secondly between the persons involved in the quest for wellbeing, thirdly between the person and the social structure or process that provides wellbeing and fourthly between two social groups that interact when one social group seeks for the wellbeing of her members such as the instance of colonialism illustrated above. These make it urgent that a form of well-being should be invoked and developed to address this challenge. I call this relational well-being. I turn to the next part of the work to highlight this idea of well-being. THE IDEA OF RELATIONAL WELLBEING By relational well-being, I mean the notion of well-being that looks at well-being in terms of its ability to maintain a desired emotional and physical equilibrium between the individual and the social group and between one group and another and provides the necessary virtues, values and habits that induces a quality of peace, justice, understanding and harmony in the relationship between the individual and the social group as a basis for well-being. Relational well-being holds that well-being as a principle must emphasise and incorporate the capability and ability of the individual to relate with others irrespective of the circumstances in which the individual operates or the variable through which the idea of subjective well-being is established. Such relationship may include tolerating differences, managing differences, minimising tensions in human relationships, cooperating with others, or communing with them, etc., as the situation demands. Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol 5 Issue 1, April 2025. ISSN: 2786-9792 103 The principle of relational well-being is the ability to initiate and sustain a valid relationship with others broadly conceived as either a social group, other persons or institutions, etc., that well-being can be held to have served a worthy purpose both for the individual and for the group. For this reason, the idea of well-being must be anchored on the ability to sustain and maintain relationships. This position holds that there is the need for personal well-being and social well-being to aspire to serve the interest of collective well-being with the understanding that collective well-being brings both personal and social well-being together by serving the interest of the moral, social and political institutions that maintain the group. Collective well- being in this instance is one that will be capable of harmonising and maintaining the delicate but desirable balance between individual and the social group. Given that there are various degrees to which different personalities can achieve self-fulfilment, assuming that opportunities and resources are evenly distributed, there is the inner challenge that confronts the effort to achieve well-being and how to manage such a challenge. These challenges include anger, threats, and personality clashes, such as when people work in an environment in which they find it difficult to accommodate the personality traits they carry. Such oppressed personality needs to adjust to or confront the demand for well-being through the idea of relational well-being. Relational well-being therefore further demands resolving the inner challenges that shape life, such as the challenge of choice and freedom and the challenge of locating the best terms in which the will and desire for well-being could be harmonised. For this reason, relational well-being invokes the need for what I call “an inner technical balance” in the notion of well-being. Inner technical balance demands a determined interest and attention to four principles in the effort to realise well-being. These are the Relationship between various organs of the society in addressing the desire for well-being; Interest in the measure and worth of any approved items that are desired for well-being and weighing them according to their cogency and worth; Proper attention to the question of difference among different persons, institutions and organs in the quest for well-being; Negotiation of meaning and constructive engagement with the other in the desire for well- being. These items constitute the demands of inner technical balance. They demand that well-being should emphasise acquisition and application of five different kinds of intelligences: three which relates to harmonising social well-being, namely: (i) social intelligence, (ii) corporate intelligence and (iii) managerial intelligence and two which relates to harmonising personal wellbeing namely, (iv)interpersonal intelligence and (v) intrapersonal intelligence.. While social intelligence enables the individual to fit into the group, corporate intelligence enables the agent to function within a given institution and to apply an institution to change itself. Finally, managerial intelligence enables the individual to coordinate others and the environment—however it is—to serve the interest of one’s well-being. It enables the use of two other forms of intelligence: interpersonal intelligence, which enables one to understand others and interact with them effectively, and intrapersonal intelligence, which illustrates one’s capacity to understand oneself and one’s thoughts and feelings. The claim of the work is that the application of these forms of intelligence can enable the inner technical balance that can promote relational well-being. Lawrence Ogbo Engaging the Idea of Sustainable well-being through the Idea… 104 CONCLUSION This work has tried to locate tensions that the idea of well-being generates and has also attempted to resolve them. By this is meant the tension between the well-being of a group and the well-being of an individual. The hypothesis that the work defends is that given the differences (biological, psychological, etc.) between individuals, the idea of well-being involves tensions and crisis among individuals on one hand, individuals and the social group, and between two social groups. The work has tried to locate these challenges with the claim that they emanate majorly between the inner difference among human beings and the resultant effect on human institutions, which are themselves different. The work has proposed the idea of relational well-being, which it explains in terms of well-being that is in a position to harmonise the tensions that well-being generates. It is hoped that this effort could lead to a more critical look into the policies that promote well-being. Every policy is built on some assumptions. However, when issues that relate to the desired outcome of the policy are explained in a wider domain, it becomes possible to experience a shift in policy direction. 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