The Examiner tells us
There was a time when a government might see its goal as making its people more secure, or more wealthy or more equal. However David Halpern, adviser to the Tony Blair, told the BBC that within the next 10 years the government would be measured against how happy it made everybody. Conservative leader David Cameron has got in the act too, saying there is more to life than making money, and arguing that improving people's happiness is a key challenge for politicians.
In ‘The Happiness Formula’ the BBC constructed a 4-part TV series on something most of us never even knew existed – the science of happiness. We watched their campaign to ‘Make Slough Happy’, as if happiness was something that can be measured like GDP or shoe size.
Surely no-one sets out in life with the purpose of not being happy but is the pursuit of happiness what life is all about? Is it really a proper place for scientists and politicians to be trampling over? Isn’t the pursuit of our own happiness our business – not theirs? Can you really demonstrate that changes in economic or social policy will make us more or less happy? Isn’t there also a danger of the private sector make a pseudo-science of happiness as a way of selling us lots of ‘wellness’ remedies and lifestyles that we don’t really need?
Tess Peasgood is advising the Government on how happiness research can be factored into resource allocation. Dolan Cummings is not at all happy with this sort of thing.
Speakers:
Dolan Cummings is the editorial and research director at the
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4 comments:
1 in 4 adults each year suffer from from some type of mental illness. A measure of unhappiness?
Great discussion and I support a lot of what was said. Interesting though to show that (apparent) financial success does not bring happiness (Tessa's graph). Well, we all new that, didn't we really? But we have (all) got trapped in the loop (treadmill) because we need to keep earning and be financially succesful, just to keep up. And who has created that society? Our politicians. Now they want to fix it. I don't think so! There will be some measure to prove that we have become happier which will put us under yet more pressure to satisfy political statistisians with more targets. If they left us alone to get on with things in the first place we would be a happier lot anyway. So, sack the blood sucking politicians who only cares about us every four years or so, when they want our vote. Having said that, it's good to have someone blame........
Todays society encourages us to not take responsibility for our own actions : writ large in the 2 looming catastrophes of obesity and lack of sustainable living.
On thursday night We looked at hapiness from a group perspective. Clearly it is an individual thing of our own mind and heart, we are each responsible for our own happiness. Only some aspects of this can be strived for by collective action. This should be the basis of identifying group initiatives
- not starting from a top down position, and not starting with government but at any possible scale of colective action. Act now.
This is great info to know.
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