Happy Danes and Miserable Brits?

Submitted by tonyplant on July 29, 2006 - 10:51.

A researcher has put together a map of happiness in the world. The map shows that Denmark is the No. 1 destination. Health levels, prosperity and education were the strongest determinants of happiness. Money might not guarantee happiness, but it does make a significant contribution when it is spend on healthcare and education. It probably comes as no surprise that Zimbabwe and Burundi come bottom: oddly enough, the USA is placed at 23 and UK at 41 out of 178 countries.

The researcher makes some interesting comments about why countries appear in the places that they do. He remarks that Asia showed up poorly despite the strong sense of family and collective identity. However, I would speculate that questions that emphasise subjective wellbeing are not culturally appropriate in several countries. Although there is some mention of lower levels of happiness in countries with large population, the examples cited seem to relate more to high population density than large populations (they may overlap but are not necessarily synonymous).

Of course, according to a recent item in The Guardian, happiness is over-rated. Happiness does seem to be a red-rag that precludes discussion of the benefits that it confers. Apart from novels and philosophical/religious speculations about the spiritual ennoblement that suffering gives us, where did we develop the idea that lessons in how to develop our mental and physical fortitude would reduce us to the blandly chipper, annoying others with our mindless cheer and groundless optimism? We can't eradicate sadness or adversity: they are a natural part of life's rhythms. But, for some people, it does seem as if we can do something about our ability to cope with such circumstances.

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Why The Politics Of Happiness Makes Furedi Mad

Submitted by tonyplant on May 27, 2006 - 17:30.

Somewhere or other, Frank Furedi claims that in the UK and US,

self-reliance and problem-solving through informal relationships have been gradually replaced by a therapeutic culture that, by medicalising everyday behaviour, encourages helplessness and promotes new forms of social control.

More recently, amongst various other protestations about the politicisation of happiness and the rise of the 'therapeutic state', Furedi writes:

Individuals are no longer seen as self-determining subjects capable of exercising democratic citizenship, but rather as potentially ‘damaged goods’ who need the support of professionals and Layard’s army of 10,000 counsellors to instruct them on how to be contented...The new therapeutic social contract is underwritten by the paternalistic assumption that the unhappy patient needs the management and ‘support’ of officialdom...Public policies delivered by thousands of therapists are likely to turn the public citizen into a helpless patient – and the focus on the self will likely reinforce people’s sense of atomisation...

I need to write a fuller response to Furedi's piece - amongst his other arguments is that

Rather than causing us to be unhappy, hard, purposeful work is often the means through which we cultivate our own sense of happiness.

I wouldn't disagree with him - and I doubt that the mainstream happiness researchers would either. Happiness is not solely concerned with hedonism, self-indulgence or the abdication of personal responsibility: it is not necessarily either ridiculous or politically dangerous. Authentic happiness (to use the Seligman term) encompasses the need for work and engagement in life. Happiness demands involvement, it is rarely something that can be delivered solely by external means.

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Happiness As Flexibility Of Mind and Openness?

Submitted by tonyplant on February 15, 2006 - 16:56.

There are several classic experiments that are summarised and commented on in Prof. Seligman’s Authentic Happiness. The consistent result is that positive emotion allows us to be more flexible, creative and open to new ideas.

I was thinking about this today when I read the explosion of comments on the topic of ME on the excellent NHS Blog Doc. The original article discusses the dilemma that faces Dr. Crippen when asked to provide a sick note for a patient with ME, a condition that he does not “believe in”. Take a look at the comments and the references that are provided in them. They are truly fascinating, and they seem genuinely to be contributing to a desire to learn by the GP in question. Dr. Crippen seems to be taking a real-time journey of listening and discovery that leads to him discussing a new assessment of his patients who currently have the label, ME.

I was recently lamenting that depression and anxiety statistics should not be used to comment on the prevalence of happiness. And I was exposing my thinking on various matters (such as the diagnosis or treatment of depression). I’m actually quite comfortable with holding “on the one hand this, on the other hand...” opinions. I just find it difficult when talking with people who want a definitive viewpoint.

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Learning to be mauled for my supper

Submitted by tonyplant on December 28, 2005 - 19:19.

Many vegetarians and vegans are familiar with that popular dinner-party game, Bait the vegetarian. I’ve always been omnivorous but since developing Happystance I’ve acquired a keen sense of kinship with those who are accustomed to being mauled for their supper.

The first reaction on hearing about Happystance is usually, “Tell us a joke, then!”. Now, I wish I had Monkhouse’s facility with quickfire gags. The reason Kenneth Williams and Peter Ustinov are celebrated as brilliant raconteurs is because the gift of engaging others through story-telling is so unusual. So, I usually reply that we would all enjoy ourselves more if we either had an impromptu game of football or staged our own Singing in the Rain.

A dinner table never seems to be the best setting for explaining the history and scientific research that argue that present happiness consists of three elements: the meaningful life; the engaged life; and the pleasant life. Although listening to other people tell jokes has its contribution to happiness, it is a small one in the overall scheme of our lives.

And yet, a mixed-generation family dinner table is in many ways the perfect setting for a discussion of happiness. It just seems as if pre-conceptions about the frivolous nature of happiness preclude any meaningful discussion. Why bother with tomes on the human condition and the search for happiness if it could all be summed up in an exchange of one-liners?

When asked, “What do you want out of life?”, most people reply, “I want to be happy”. Similarly, when asked what they most wish for their children, most parents say, “I want them to be happy”. Yet, we rarely if ever discuss what form that happiness would take, or what it means to be happy. If my recent experience is anything to go by, then many people are opposed to the notion that happiness is a legitimate goal to pursue. Or they state that the only thing that would make them happy is winning the lottery. Which is overwhelmingly bleak when you consider that you are fourteen times more likely to be murdered than you are to win the lottery jackpot. Does the possibility of happiness really depend on such an implausibility?

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Happiness gives greater chance of success

Submitted by tonyplant on December 20, 2005 - 19:37.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

 

Weep, and you weep alone

I have always relegated the meaningfulness of this comment with the saws of my grandmother. My grandmother constantly predicted that the consumption of gin would lead to tears. Or, in the case of children, “Laughter soon turns to tears”. Plus those old stand-bys, “Running children soon fall and are grazed”, and, “If you go out with wet hair you’ll get pneumonia/meningitis”. But it now seems as if cynical responses to the rhyming wisdom of Ella Wheeler Wilcox have been misplaced.

 

When I was studying Authentic Happiness I was accustomed to reading jolly little papers with helpful titles like, “Positive affect and health-related neurodendocrine, cardiovascular and inflammatory processes”. Now, my grandmother’s expectations and mine concerning this topic are very different. She would have believed that all that positive emotion would exhaust your bodily systems and wreak terrible pay-back for those moments of jollity and frivolity. Inflammation would be too mild a retribution. Unless, of course, it involved running pustules and a complexion more commonly found in leper colonies.

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