Are you happy? In a recent poll, 92% of respondents agreed that they were fairly or very happy. At the same time, because fewer people claimed to be ‘very happy’ today compared to the 50s, the press has translated this to mean that more money doesn’t mean happiness. That sounds like a moral rather than scientific judgement to me. So what’s going on?
It used to be the case that a study of happiness, and even the pursuit of it, was a trivial matter, the realm of self-help and happy clapiness. Suddenly, with happiness increasingly correlated with health, social engagement and harder working, it has exploded as a serious object of study for social scientists and economists.
In the discourse of the past, happiness was the norm, a solid state, a nothing word like ‘nice’ or OK. Psychologists studied extremes of sadness, worry, anger and mania.
In the new discourse, even mild unhappiness or dissatisfaction is no longer acceptable. We have to be happy to be healthy (somewhat of a duty in the current climate), to be socially acceptable, and to be more productive. The thing is, correlation isn’t the same as causation, and the idea that we should be measuring gross national happiness as an indicator of ‘progress’ makes me shudder as it has nothing to do with individuals’ well-being and everything to do with squeezing more value out of a population and ironing out their individuality.
Think Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and imagine a relentless focus on happiness. Would we be allowed to be different? Would we have art and science? Would we be creative? I, for one, “am claiming the right to be unhappy,” what about you?
