October 18, 2005
A quote from Richard Layard
But when all is said, a happy life is about a lot more than money can buy and, besides adequate income, happiness research points to six main factors affecting happiness: mental health, satisfying and secure work, a secure and loving private life, a secure community, freedom, and moral values.
A happier society is not just about economic growth. We citizens know that. And yet economic growth is the goal of policy makers not the well being of the population.
Don't you find it strange that economic or market liberals find it necessary to defend capitaliism from this line of reasoning, which has its roots in our every day lives? How is such a view constructed as an enemy that needs to be beaten into the ground?
The happiness position is bundled into a mentality called a pessimistic world view that says humanity and the environment are going to hell in a handbasket. So we then have the defence of global capitaliism by market liberals in the enlightenment tradition that says, despite reports to the contrary, we are wealthier and healthier than ever before.
Well we are. Who wants to go back to feudalism? But that is only the first step in the defence.
The argument then goes like this. The pessimistic mind-set--- of marxists, socialists, environmentalists and happiness advocates--- are bad ideas. These bad ideas will disappear as the proof of the benefits of good ideas --market liberalism---become evident. However, because human history suggests we don't learn so easily from our mistakes; so these bad ideas will hang around, change their skin and linger on despite overwhelming rational evidence against them.
Miranda Devine then spells the rationality bit out:
....people who have spent a lifetime defending bad ideas lose the capacity for logical thought and become irrational. When the weight of evidence against their bad idea reaches critical mass, rather than say, "We were wrong", their tactic is to say, "Oh, that debate is over", and to adapt their language so as to appear to have rejected the bad idea, while clinging to it secretly.
Hence we have the duality of reason versus unreason. Neat huh?
What then is being defended by market liberals such as Johan Norberg? The equation of wealth creation and econoimic growth with increasing happiness. Pretty crude huh? It flies in the face of the daily experience of Australian citizens about the lived contradictions between of the demands of work, family life and happiness. Saying that such daily lived experiences are irrational according to economic rationality leads to economic rationality being placed under question. What sort of rationality is this we ask? What sort of rationality would trash our lived experiences because they do not accord with the way it categorizes the social world.
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Gary, The first part of this essay sums up the happiness pinciple ---or rather the profound lack of it in our usual dreadful "sanity".
1. www.dabase.net/coop+tol.htm
Plus 2. www.dabase.net/dualsens.htm
John