The Pursuit of Happiness - 2

By Kevin Murphy MSc.,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.

The pursuit of happiness, about which I was writing recently,* would appear to be moving up the political agenda if plans by the UK government are anything to go by. British Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans last month to measure the UK’s national mood. Put simply, he intends to measure the nation’s happiness.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), which produces data on the economy, unemployment and crime, will start measuring the quality of UK life from next April. The rationale for this move is, according to Mr Cameron, that current indicators do not show overall wellbeing.
The ONS will ask people how satisfied they are with things such as their relationships, locality and work, with the aim of producing national and regional wellbeing measures by the summer of 2012. But first it will decide what questions to ask and how much weight should be given to each.
Mr. Cameron said he remained focused on maintaining Britain’s recovery from deep recession, but just as a government can create the climate for business to thrive, it can also create a climate that is more family-friendly and more conducive to ‘the good life’, to use his own words.
It follows a trend set by the previous Labour government whose plan to flood the country with a wave of newly trained psychotherapists continues unabated. In 2007, to combat a rise in depression and so ensure its citizens remained happy, New Labour promised 10,000 new therapists, trained in a particular quick and cheerful version of the usual traditional treatment. Last year funding was upped to provide hundreds more.
The mantra appears to be – as if it wasn’t already stitched into popular western culture – happiness good, sadness bad. And to get you there as quickly as possible, they not only have the personnel but now they will have the tools to measure the attainment of objectives. If it wasn’t so serious, it might make a good comedy.

Now it is fair to say that a country, at government level, can create conditions to increase the happiness of its citizens. Full employment, lower taxes, better healthcare, better childcare, better eldery care and secure pensions would do it for most people. Anything beyond that, any attempts by government to delve into the nitty gritty of people’s happiness might leave it open to straying into George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ territory. Why would you need a ‘happiness index’ when the improvements that people need are obvious?


One, therefore, has to reasonably ask if it's for other purposes. But what could they be? Political gain…? A form of social control whereby anyone who doesn’t conform to the national mood is just not trying hard enough? Remember, a happiness index can have a grand-sounding purpose to begin with – the measure of national wellbeing. But what happens if the index, despite the best efforts of government, shows a low national mood? What government will want to publicise its own failures? Does that then leave it open to manipulation?
Equally, what if the index shows a high national mood – happiness abounding – what will that say to anyone who doesn’t feel they share that sentiment? Are we to see a new stigmatising of those whose 'mood' falls short of the accepted norm?
The dangers inherent in such a well-intentioned state policy are not hard to see. Unfortunately, like a fashion that takes hold, it is now in train and unstoppable. Last year, President Nicolas Sarkozy asked Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a former White House adviser and World Bank chief economist, to find new ways to measure economic progress in France that will also take into account social wellbeing.
The move by governments to start involving themselves in the business of people’s happiness is a regressive move for many reasons. But, perhaps, one of the most insidious effects of this will be not on happiness but, paradoxically, on sadness. In a culture where happiness is the ultimate goal and where therapies and medications are designed to deliver it in whatever way they can, there is no room for sadness. Sadness is becoming the last taboo word that contemporary individuals can utter.
And yet, within the concept of sadness we find vital clues to all the ingredients that go to make up the modern individual – identity, sexuality, ego ideals, unconscious drives, desire and repression. And in sadness we also find, to a greater or lesser extent, echoes of the major contemporary symptoms that afflict society – depression, anxiety, fear, phobia, obsessiveness, hysteria and weaknesses inherent in the human bond.
The drive to measure happiness and in doing so erect a socio-political banner around which we should all rally might seem well-intentioned. But its effect will be to further banish the concept of sadness to the realm of unacceptability. This is a trend that has long been in progress, probably since the 1950s when mood altering medicines were first produced. In the US alone, the sale of these medicines now accounts for $22 billion annually. Eradicating sadness is big business.
What this amounts to is that the very symptom that contains so much vital information as to who we are and why are we are this way, is being erased from the picture. It is no longer ok to be sad. And if this is the case, then it is a move in the wrong direction. Sadness is as much a part of human life as happiness. We can’t know one without having experienced the other. We can’t uncover any truth about ourselves unless we recognise the opening that sadness creates and follow it wherever it leads.

* See blog of 26/11/10.