We have an essay going in our weekend section tomorrow about what looks like it could be a really interesting book: "Happiness - Lessons from a New Science" by Richard Layard.
For those of us who might need such a wake-up call here's some extracts from the review by our columnist Michael Prowse.
"Politicians often talk as though life were an economic assault course. But wealth, freedom and even law are surely means rather than ultimate ends. Economic values now permeate political discourse so deeply that it often seems as though the fundamental goal of nations is to maximise wealth or prevail in a competitive struggle with others. Yet amassing ever more material goods surely cannot be the point of it all."
Promoting freedom under the law is a more promising goal. But suppose freedom made us miserable – would we then rate it as so important?
Richard Layard, a leading British economist and Labour peer, argues persuasively in his new book that the answer is “no”. The most plausible ultimate goal, he suggests, is the promotion of human happiness, where each individual’s happiness is regarded, at least in principle, as equally important. We value freedom because it is a precondition for happiness, rather than vice versa. Nothing is more basic than being happy or feeling good, because we do not need to justify this in terms of anything else."
"If we accept that happiness should be the goal, public policy appears to have failed in recent decades. Gross domestic product has streaked ahead nearly everywhere: in the US, real living standards in material terms have more than doubled in the past 50 years. But the proportion of people who describe themselves as happy has not risen."
Music to my ears, and so not such a hidden message tonight...
Let us just live our lives, be as good as we can be to the people who mean a lot to us, and never let it be said that we missed any real chance to be happy.
Snowing again today. Yet strangely not in Mesa, one would confidently surmise.... (I'm not even going to link to it tonight)
Have a pleasant weekend.
For those of us who might need such a wake-up call here's some extracts from the review by our columnist Michael Prowse.
"Politicians often talk as though life were an economic assault course. But wealth, freedom and even law are surely means rather than ultimate ends. Economic values now permeate political discourse so deeply that it often seems as though the fundamental goal of nations is to maximise wealth or prevail in a competitive struggle with others. Yet amassing ever more material goods surely cannot be the point of it all."
Promoting freedom under the law is a more promising goal. But suppose freedom made us miserable – would we then rate it as so important?
Richard Layard, a leading British economist and Labour peer, argues persuasively in his new book that the answer is “no”. The most plausible ultimate goal, he suggests, is the promotion of human happiness, where each individual’s happiness is regarded, at least in principle, as equally important. We value freedom because it is a precondition for happiness, rather than vice versa. Nothing is more basic than being happy or feeling good, because we do not need to justify this in terms of anything else."
"If we accept that happiness should be the goal, public policy appears to have failed in recent decades. Gross domestic product has streaked ahead nearly everywhere: in the US, real living standards in material terms have more than doubled in the past 50 years. But the proportion of people who describe themselves as happy has not risen."
Music to my ears, and so not such a hidden message tonight...
Let us just live our lives, be as good as we can be to the people who mean a lot to us, and never let it be said that we missed any real chance to be happy.
Snowing again today. Yet strangely not in Mesa, one would confidently surmise.... (I'm not even going to link to it tonight)
Have a pleasant weekend.
posted by Steve at 4:48 PM
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