(no subject)

[lillibet]

Happiness has been in the news a lot lately. Experts in various fields seem to think they've got a better handle on the concept and how to measure it among individuals and populations. Governments are discussing it as a policy objective. Lots of smart people are thinking about it and it's popping up everywhere (for a sampling, here are links for related stories from TED, Slate, The Economist and the BBC). Below are a few questions nicked from one of the more interesting polls on the subject--I'm curious to see how you'll answer and how you compare to the data they got from 1001 Brits.

[Poll #896948]

Comments

[skreeky]

I misread the question on #3 so you can disregard that answer.

Also, as usual on multiple guess, the question is often not that simple. I don't think either happiness OR wealth is the purpose of government. Their job is to protect the people from each other and outsiders, and get the hell out of the way.

And on the last question, are you talking about antidepressants? Or are you talking about a theoretical drug that raises your "happiness" to an unnatural level? Because if you're talking about antidepressants that just raise your level of "happiness" to what it logically ought to be, thus correcting a chemical imbalance that caused your "happiness" to be artificially low, that's one thing. But if you're talking about a drug used to make you happier when you probably ought to be miserable given the situation you're in, that's another. Unhappiness has a purpose. It's called motivation. And when people don't have any way to fix their unhappiness despite wanting to, or just give up, that's exactly when such drug abuse starts, dispite the fact that non-theoretical drugs do generally have ill side effects. So there you are. I think such a theoretical drug would be widely abused so that unhappy people didn't ever have to actually do anything to fix reality.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Unhappiness has a purpose. It's called motivation. And when people don't have any way to fix their unhappiness despite wanting to, or just give up, that's exactly when such drug abuse starts, dispite the fact that non-theoretical drugs do generally have ill side effects. So there you are. I think such a theoretical drug would be widely abused so that unhappy people didn't ever have to actually do anything to fix reality.

*breaks into spontaneous applause*

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

I don't think either happiness OR wealth is the purpose of government. Their job is to protect the people from each other and outsiders, and get the hell out of the way.

That's a socialist view of minimal government interference, but not very practical in the United States today. On a federal level, for instance, there is a cabinet office responsible for health, education, and welfare. State and local governments fund homeless shelters and tobacco relief programs, and provide grants to schools for anti-drug campaigns or subsidized lunches. In your perspective, skreeky, don't you agree these programs imply the government provides happiness to its citizens and that this job should continue?

[skreeky]

don't you agree these programs imply the government provides happiness to its citizens

Don't you agree that this equates happiness with financial wellbeing, and thus muddles the original question even more than I just did?

As for the health department, a great deal of what it does consists of protecting people from each other.

[hill-the-khore.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think you answered the question. It's a given that no one can directly provide happiness. However, do you think that these programs raise the level of happiness of those they affect? In my opinion, when any one facet of my life improves, I do get happier, regardless of whether someone was trying to make me happier or not. Thus, I would say it doesn't muddle the question at all.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

My answers are a little random. I am sometimes fairly happy (I have a lot of things to be happy about) and sometimes fairly unhappy (depression still not totally beat) and would probably have chosen "neither happy nor unhappy" if it had been an option.

I also wonder about the first question. The second is easy to answer (I don't care *too* much about where I live, if everything else is cool). But the first? I feel like the life aspect that has the most potential to make me happy (probably partner/spouse, at a guess) is NOT necessarily the thing that's absence has the most potential to make me unhappy -- i.e. being in a good relationship helps makes me happy, but if all my friends and family were killed in some kind of accident, that'd be worse than just being single, in terms of my total happiness/unhappiness. It's like trying to pick which number is most important in a complex equation -- you pretty much need them all to make it work.

Also, clinical depression all by itself can negate just about anything happy, which would imply that I ought to have put "health" first. I don't know.

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

I find the "least important" question and results fascinating. The thing for me is, while spirituality is a defining trait of my self-concept, since I don't have to exert to maintain it, and it doesn't cost me anything to keep it, and my results are assured given my faith of choice, it's easiest to say it's least important, because nothing is riding on it day to day. My faith doesn't feed, clothe, or shelter me, in a tactile visceral way.

That said, I wouldn't be on the planet today without it, so in that sense it was critically vital when it needed to be there, and I would have no well-being without it. So, that makes my answer to that question somewhat fuzzy. Would that I could hear others' reasoning for citing spirituality as least important to their happiness. -H...

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Would that I could hear others' reasoning for citing spirituality as least important to their happiness.

Well, you can hear mine. :-} Simply put, I am neither religious nor especially spiritual. Religion/spirituality is not at all a defining trait of my own self, it does not inform my daily life, it does not sustain me in dark times, and I have no desire nor need to change that. Occasionally I am curious to know what it might be like to have that kind of faith, and I can think of one time in my life when I had a glimpse of understanding of why someone might rely on faith to survive a difficult period, but that experience did not bring me to a religious or spiritual epiphany.

If there is a gene that is related to religious feeling, I think it must be unexpressed in me, because I just don't feel it.

[billmarrs.livejournal.com]

The last 2 questions implied a sinister conclusion: The government putting all its focus on happy pills; producing them, improving them, and forcing every citizen to take them -- while the people's real, objective quality of life disintegrates.


It does raise a good question, though... what is a government's prime objective? I answered "don't know" to that question because I didn't think wealth or happiness was the right answer.


There was also New Yorker article(book review) about happiness in the last year.