Desperately seeking happiness

I don't want to come across as cynical or grumpy. In fact, I am for the most part a happy person and have nothing against other happy people. After all, most human enterprises, be it work, pleasure or leisure, are geared toward increasing the happiness quotient in our life's ledger book. Civilizing efforts through the ages - family, community, religion, philosophy, scientific and technological advances, medicine and government were organized and operated around the notion that we should employ these entities to identify what is "good" for us and what make us happy.

In recent years, the concept of happiness has spilled over from the confines of philosophy, literature, religion and the psychologist's office - from the merely personal to a collective concept. I first wrote about the broader definition of happiness when I introduced here a very interesting book by Anthony and Charles Kenny a few years ago. Government agencies too are now concerning themselves with happiness, going beyond economic indicators such as the GDP or the magic of the free market. Cut and dried number crunching is giving way to assessing the more nebulous Well Being Indices.  Leading the way in diagnosing national cheer was the tiny country of Bhutan. I wrote about it here and the New York Times had a four page article on Bhutan's attempt at redefining prosperity based not merely on wealth but also the happiness co-efficient and coining the new political phrase Gross National Happiness.  

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

It is not surprising that Bhutan, a Buddhist country, is astute enough to appreciate that happiness  goes beyond personal material wealth. Now French president Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking the help of three Nobel winning economists to educate his own country on what constitutes a healthy and happy society.

So far so good. But what about the quest for individual happiness? Americans have for long relentlessly pursued personal fulfillment (gratification?) as defined by religious leaders, inspirational speakers, media personalities, financial institutions and peddlers of products and services. Do happiness seeking individuals add up to a happier society overall?  Not necessarily, says an article in Newsweek. Paradoxically, the obsessive pursuit of personal happiness may in the end, prove to be an obstacle to the very state of over all bliss people seek, say some observers of social trends. The anxiety to be happy (Oprah style) may in fact make us somewhat self obsessed and detract from collective contentment. The article makes some good points but I am afraid that in comparing Americans to Europeans or other "happy" people, there may be some risk of conflating complacency with good spirits.  I am copying Julie Baird's article in its entirety below the fold because Newsweek items have a tendency to "disappear" after a while. The most cogent point about happiness appears at the very end. It is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, a remarkable woman, who obsessed very little about her own happiness and made improving the happiness index of others her life's mission. She is said to have observed that happiness "is not a goal, it's a byproduct."

Positively Downbeat

Sometimes happiness isn't everything.

Is this endless pursuit of happiness just making us all miserable? We've said our affirmations, drunk coffee out of cheesy mugs with nonsensical motivational quotes ("CLIMB AS HIGH AS YOU CAN DREAM!!"), and bought millions of tomes on getting rich quick while thinking positive thoughts. According to Psychology Today, last year 4,000 books were published on happiness, up from 50 in 2000. From Norman Vincent Peale in 1952 (The Power of Positive Thinking) to Rhonda Byrne in 2007 (The Secret), Oprah's America has panted, chanted, and visualized while trying to be really, really cheerful: "I am beautiful, wealthy, and successful."

Even when we're really not. Most of us have been getting poorer for some time—and that was before the recession hit. That's the funny thing about the obsession with smiley-faced happiness: the more overtly we have studied and pursued it, the less happy we have become. And the more confusing it gets.

According to a study from the General Social Survey by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of Wharton, despite three decades of economic growth in America, men and women are no happier. This fact has been lost in the hubbub over the finding that while women were happier than men in 1972, they are not now. Conservative commentators rapidly blamed the women's movement, inferring that perhaps, as Rush Limbaugh has said, feminism really was just a misguided way to "allow unattractive women into the mainstream." This is astounding logic—why not take the vote away for a few years and see if we perk up?

The broader point remains—while Europeans are growing happier, especially Italians, Americans are not. This is fascinating because it is in this country that a relentless focus on "positive thinking," from prosperity theology to corporate coaching, has emerged over the past few decades—and it is this country that is now more gloomy.

In her new book, Bright-Sided: How Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America,  Barbara Ehrenreich calls positive thinking a "mass delusion." She argues that an unrelenting drive to train our brains to overlook problems and blame ourselves for failures has blinded us to inequality, incompetence, and stupidity.

The philosophy of positive thinking, she argues, developed both as a reaction to the negativity of Calvinism and a salve for the sick and anxious, but has, over time, been turned into a kind of blind optimism. At the heart of positive thinking is a belief that you can will anything you like into happening: recovering from cancer, getting a promotion, becoming a millionaire. Often, the worse things are, the more vehemently people are encouraged to be sunny. The more companies downsized and restructured in the '80s and '90s, the more popular affirmation-chanting, team-building consultants became. And all the while, as the country's wealth shot up, the gap between rich and poor ballooned.

Ehrenreich argues that positive thought has at times made us deaf to the pleas of those who warn of potential dangers—the Iraqi resistance, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, and the Wall Street implosion. Urging positivity is not just beside the point when our circumstances are rotten, it's also dangerously distracting.

This is why Ehrenreich dedicates her book to "complainers everywhere," inciting them to "turn up the volume." But surely there's a middle way between clueless cheerleaders and grumpy prophets. The Dalai Lama shows you can strive to be content and remain angry about injustice.

What we do need to be cautious of is leaping on the nascent science of positive psychology before we are certain that we are asking the right questions. The most recent findings, for example, are that wealth makes you happy but children do not.

So … more money and fewer kids. Can this really be the weight of our accumulated wisdom? Do we all want daisies-in-the-meadow happiness, or a less chirpy, quieter contentment? Or do we want to suck greedily on life's marrow, like Jack Kerouac, to "burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars"? The most inspiring people are those least obsessed with their own happiness, especially those who stride confidently across the globe to create, evoke change, or wrest from life what they will. Eleanor Roosevelt believed happiness "is not a goal, it's a byproduct." I think she might be right.

Comments

[Dean C. Rowan]

Although I've wearied of books whose subtitles begin, "How [such-and-such occurred]"--itself a symptom of the positive thinking, "doesn't it just make sense" BS that pervades American popular (and professional) culture--I'm a fan of Ehrenreich and I probably ought to read it. But we were waylaid by happiness long before Norman Vincent Peale. We have those miserable forefathers to thank for the pursuit of happiness ploy. The operative word is not "happiness"; it's "pursuit," as in "You can look but you can't touch." Talk about passive aggressive!

Pitting anger against happiness, though, seems like the wrong approach, too. Some of us are happiest when we're most (or very) angry. The Dalai Lama may be content despite his anger about injustice; I'm often elated because of it. Sometimes the only reason to get up in the morning is the promise of something new to piss me off...or, better yet, the assurance of the same old crap.

Eleanor may be right, but people "who stride confidently across the globe to create, evoke change, or wrest from life what they will" are the least inspiring, in my book. Just leave it alone, I say! Quit striding, stay put. If you break it, you pay for it. Emily Dickinson was no globetrotter, nor was she obsessed with her own happiness, I warrant. But she was obsessed with something, and I'm glad she suffered to keep a record of it.

[Sujatha]

To me, happiness isn't an end in itself. What does it mean to say that we have achieved it, whether or not we actively pursued it? From what I see of life, there can be moments of happiness, great or small, but no 'constant state of happiness'.

[banerjee]

On "Bhutan's attempt at redefining prosperity based not merely on wealth but also the happiness co-efficient and coining the new political phrase Gross National Happiness".

Bhutan has made refugees out of its Nepalese (Hindu) minority. Dissent against the king is suppressed in that country.

This talk about happiness by the king of Bhutan masks the fact that he has been unsuccessful in making the country modern, which is what most Bhutanese want. As one of my refugee Bhutanese/Nepalese friends says "One cannot eat happiness when one is hungry nor wear happiness when one is cold."

[Soni]

Happiness... and the pursuit of it in the western style you spoke is a set up. It is a way of constantly seeking something so elusive and designed to make one change the very nature of happiness. One friend once told me, which I will never forget... we just must be in a constant state of agreement with existence (as opposed to a constant state of happiness). We have to be creative to maintain in every moment of it. if we don't we are in denial of the very existence of any moment. Existence simply is. Living in the US, though, can be hard not to succumb to all messages around to "BE HAPPY."

[Namit]

Katha Pollitt in The Nation.

Am I happy? What a stupid question. Do you mean happy as in content? Joyful? Hopeful? Relieved? Counting my blessings? Intent on absorbing work? Depending on your definition--and when you ask me, and who you are--I could give a dozen different answers. If you really want to know how I feel about my life, you would have to get to know me and ask me a whole lot of particular questions, which could not necessarily be boiled down to a single answer, and could certainly not be used to compare my happiness with someone else's--because how can anyone know if what I mean by happiness is what that other person means? Keats was happy when he wrote "Ode to a Nightingale," Eichmann was happy when he met his daily quota of murdered Jews, and I am happy to be living this year in Berlin. Only a pollster (or an economist) would conflate these things. In fact, only a pollster would think that people tell pollsters the truth.

[Ruchira]

And then there is this page on Huffington Post which I found because for some reason, my post above is listed there. Check out the different aspects of life that could be tweaked to boost your happiness index. Just trying to do all those things right, is going to make us pretty miserable.

The whole concept of generalized, poll driven individual happiness is not just flawed it is also a bit dangerous. Not all of us are going to feel the same emotions in a given situation and there isn't an one-size-fits-all formula for happiness. To be told that there is, can cause unnecessary anxiety for some. I find it much easier to appreciate Charles and Anthony Kenny's idea of a civic minded economic and political order contributing to our "social" happiness. Although I agree with Katha Pollitt on most things, I do feel that economists have a role to play here, as long as they don't try too hard to be psychologists or philosophers. As for personal contentment, I would rather figure out what makes me happy by my lonesome self.

Also, if we are always happy, can we then know that we are happy? Don't we need a frame of reference, the darker, contrasting moods of desperation, fear, anxiety, loss, failure etc. in the background to sharpen the feelings of elation, cheer, contentment, triumph, gratitude and fulfillment? A tapestry woven in thread of just one color is flat and bland.

Some things are best left uncounted and untabulated. Take for example this article in the Guardian. Now, I didn't read it too carefully but a quick glance told me there isn't anything earthshaking there. May be I missed it but does "happiness" figure aywhere among the 237 reasons listed?