Stay Out of My Happiness!
There is trouble in jolly ol' England, that only government intervention can solve... Or maybe not.
"The global financial crisis has sparked a wave of debate about whether economic growth or inner well-being should be the top priority for ministers."
David Cameron introduced a new "happiness index" for the UK as an alternative to GDP and the first results, published in July, showed the average adult rated 7.4 out of ten for life satisfaction.
But critics have condemned the £2m-a-year cost of the well-being survey, which will be sent to 200,000 households per year until 2015 and was designed with help from Lord Layard, the economist.
New findings by a team of psychologists led by Dr Brock Bastian at the University of Queensland in Australia suggest that a constant emphasis on looking for positive emotions tends to make people more miserable.
"There is plenty of work showing that pursuing happiness as a goal is counter-productive because when we fail to achieve our goals we feel disappointed and this serves to push the goal further away," said Dr Bastian.
"In short, when people perceive that others think they should feel happy, and not sad, this leads them to feel sad more frequently and intensely. Government campaigns focusing on happiness need to acknowledge that true happiness is actually found in a mixture of positive and negative emotion."
And finally...
Phillip Hodson, a fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said the research highlighted the important truth that "although you cannot just talk people out of depression you can instantly make them feel worse by criticising their despair."
He said it is possible to teach "the skills of happiness" but added: "Happiness requires contrasts - it doesn't exist except as a comparison. So in order to be joyful you must sometimes be sad."
I reject the idea that the government should be involved in my happiness. I can't think of anything that would make me less happy than the government trying to make me happy. Now are there things the government can indirectly do to increase the well being of its citizens? Yes. Parts of the following video have some merit.
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Jun '10
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
But our Governmentors are always trying to make up happy. They give us stuff like this:
Doesn't that confident smile just make you happy?
Or at least make you want to make him happy.
"You are going to be so happy doing what I want you to do!"
Edited on September 24, 2012 at 1:40amRe: Stay Out of My Happiness!
Eeyore:
"You are going to be sohappy doing what I want you to do!"· 1 minute ago
Edited 0 minutes ago
I just went fetal.
Dec '10
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
Okay, I sidled into here to check the Happiness discussion, and then I thought that video was going to be a scene with Nick Offerman.
My bad. It looked like him. And he seems to play characters that have an uncomplicated sense of happiness. My bad.
Jul '10
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
"Happiness requires contrasts - it doesn't exist except as a comparison."
Yes... for some (er... maybe most).
"So in order to be joyful you must sometimes be sad."
No. Libs believe that in order to be joyful, someone else should be sad.
It is not the "have and have-nots," but the "wills and will-nots." And the "will-nots" are never happy until the "wills" take it in the shorts in some form or fashion. So, as long as the "wills" are taking it in the shorts, the "will-nots" are joyful. When the "wills" are winning, the "will-nots" are "sad."
May '10
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
Inevitable are mass demonstrations of phony and contrived joy. Attendance compulsory.
Mar '11
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
Happiness is the product of a life well spent. Nothing is more depressing than wasting time and energy meeting stupid government requirements and paying taxes.
May '10
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
This is a Govt. that makes placing their 13 steps posters on how to wash your hands mandatory in business washrooms. They send Govt. employees to audit households on their suitability to have kids there. They have the largest public and private sector bureaucracy in Europe to control Health & Safety (with not great results). They sincerely feel the right and moral obligation to oversee any factor of their citizen's lives they feel requires supervision.
What could be more natural in this culture than to attempt to control happiness.
I have often said that a Brit from 1900, awakening today in the UK would not recognize & could not relate to the culture.
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
When the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, its members endorsed the notion that it is the task of government to protect us in our exercise of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; it refrained from defining for us in what happiness consists; and it left it to us to sort out that question for ourselves. For it to try to attempt to pursue happiness on our behalf would be to deny us the right to conduct our own pursuit -- and that would be tyrannical.
Jan '11
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
Back around the turn of the century I used to read Wired magazine. Every time I hear or read about another government initiative to improve our lives by helping to run them I think of a snippet the magazine had back then about a contest for the submission of dissertations on good government. The winning entry:
Good Government
Good Government
Sit. Stay.
Oct '10
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
While I agree that looking to the Government for happiness is foolish, it is no more foolish than relying upon it for GDP growth or changes in median family income or unemployment. Government activity can influence all of these things. Trying to use the Government to influence them leads, over the medium term, to a loss of freedom - as we have seen. In the end the only effective measurement of Government it's its tendency to preserve the conditions for human flourishing. I leave the construction of an index for that to the reader, but suggest it revolves around what Government doesn't do.
Jun '12
Re: Stay Out of My Happiness!
Doctor Who actually did an episode called "The Happiness Patrol" where people who aren't sufficiently happy are subject to summary execution.
Once again, reality is taking its cues from fiction.