Why did we stop making beautiful things?

The Flourishing Journal / CountLife Institute The Psychology of Beauty in Everyday Design We know what beauty costs. We have become less certain how to value what it gives us. By Victor Counted · Culture & Society I swiped through nineteen slides on instagram, nodding at each one. A gilded mirror beside a black rectangle. A brass umbrella stand beside a perforated tube. A carved door handle beside a steel bar. The post wanted to know why we stopped making beautiful things, and I found myself agreeing with it. I have spent years studying how the places we inhabit shape our capacity to flourish. Yet these images made me pause…

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The Kindness That Keeps Us Small

The Kindness That Keeps Us Small | The Flourishing Journal The Kindness That Keeps Us Small When we care for someone, we often want to spare them difficulty. Sometimes the greater gift is to help them meet a challenge they can grow through. VCVictor Counted, PhDThe Flourishing Journal A recent Economist article argues that university for all harms poor students the most. Its headline raises a question that reaches well beyond higher education, and that is: What happens when an institution promises opportunity but does not give people what they need to develop their capacities? That question is one that we should extend to our homes, workplaces, churches, and communities.…

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The Life Beyond Achievement

The Empty Self A decades-old critique of American psychology helps explain why focusing on just the self never seem to be enough. By Victor Counted • The Flourishing Journal • 9 min read You finally buy the thing you have wanted for months. For a few days, perhaps a few weeks, it works. Something inside you settles. There is usually a rush of excitement. You feel more confident about your purchase. Then the feeling fades, and another object takes its place in your imagination. We usually explain this pattern as materialism or poor self-control. If you are a Marshmellow Test's fan, you perhaps might say that it is a lack…

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The Colors of Organizational Flourishing

The Colours of Organizational Flourishing | The Flourishing Journal Organizational Flourishing The Colours of Organizational Flourishing Every organization has a temperament. It shapes what gets rewarded, what gets avoided, and what people feel when they walk in on Monday. An idea first sketched in ancient medicine can help leaders name it. VC Victor Counted, PhD The Flourishing Journal  ·  8 min read  ·  July 2026 The meeting had been running for forty minutes before I realized I could have written the minutes in advance. I knew which proposal would be praised, which would be starved of oxygen, and which objection would be raised in the exact tone it was raised…

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America at 250: The Psychology of What America Means to Us

America at 250: Safe Haven, Secure Base, and the Attachment We Owe Each Other | The Flourishing Journal The Flourishing Journal★Est. 1776 · Celebrating 250 Place & Belonging The Psychology of What America Means to Us On the 250th anniversary, place attachment theory offers a way to see two kinds of Americans clearly, and the debt one owes the other. VC Victor Counted, Ph.D. THE FLOURISHING JOURNAL Two hundred and fifty years is long enough for a nation to become invisible to the people who live inside it. We stop seeing the walls because we have never known a world without them. We stop appreciating the place because we have…

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Wellbeing, Thriving, Flourishing — The Difference a Word Makes

Wellbeing, Thriving, Flourishing: Three Words We Keep Using as if They Mean the Same Thing? | The Flourishing Journal Flourishing Science Wellbeing, Thriving, Flourishing: Three Words We Keep Using as if They Mean the Same Thing? On wellbeing, flourishing, and thriving, and why mixing them up changes how we research, counsel, and help people. VC Victor Counted, Ph.D. Professor · Author · Psychologist · June 2026 · 7 min read A friend of mine treats the word ‘thriving’ the way most people treat the word ‘fine.’ It comes up every time we connect, unplanned, almost a running joke between us by now. He has a point. Three words show up…

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Three Mental Health Crises in Our World Today

Three Crises in Our World Today — The Flourishing Journal The Flourishing Journal Three Crises in Our World Today Identity, loneliness, and meaning look like three problems. I want to tell you why I think they are a problem of belonging. VC Victor Counted, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology, Regent University · Faculty Affiliate, Harvard Human Flourishing Program I have spent most of my adult life studying what makes people flourish. I have also spent most of my adult life trying to flourish. Some seasons it was easier. Some seasons it was not. What I can tell you is this. Something is hurting people in our day that was not…

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The Manosphere as Attachment Protest

When Belonging Turns to Rage | The Flourishing Journal The Flourishing Journal Psychology & Culture When Belonging Turns to Rage The rise of incel culture and online misogyny is not simply a backlash against women's equality. In this article, I argue that it is the predictable consequence of men receiving the message that their longing for connection is itself a form of harm. Victor Counted, PhD  ·  The Flourishing Journal Something has gone badly wrong in the formation of young men. Across the English-speaking world and well beyond it, a generation of males has retreated into online communities defined not by aspiration or brotherhood, but by resentment, grievance, and a…

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It’s Summer Again. We Should Stop Calling Them Mission Trips.

It's Summer Again: The Quiet Parochialism of the American Mission Trip — The Flourishing Journal Opinion · Faith and Society The American Mission Trip Has a Parochialism Problem My students asked me a question in class this week, and I hedged. Here is the answer I should have given. Victor Counted The Flourishing Journal May 2026 We were working through the experimental psychology literature on parochial altruism — the well-replicated finding that humans, and especially people of faith, cooperate generously with their in-group while showing markedly less concern, and sometimes outright hostility, toward outsiders. The data are uncomfortable. They suggest that much of what we call moral behavior is calibrated…

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The City Promised Them Everything. The Data Say It Is Delivering Almost Nothing.

The City Promised Them Everything. The Data Say It Is Delivering Almost Nothing. | The Flourishing Journal The Flourishing Journal Youth & Place Global Flourishing Study  ·  City Satisfaction & Age The City Promised Them Everything. The Data Say It Is Delivering Almost Nothing. Young adults aged 18 to 24 are among the least city-satisfied groups on earth — in the very cities designed, marketed, and culturally narrated for them. Global Flourishing Study data across 22 countries ask why — and the answer implicates nearly everything about how contemporary cities are built. Victor Counted The Flourishing Journal What the city promised Opportunity. The place where careers are made, networks built,…

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