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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

happiness as a bad idea « Previous | |Next »
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.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:59 AM | | Comments (3)
Comments

Comments

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

Gary, I cant find the link, but it was in the Washington Post. It was an article on ebay sellers who do it full time. Most had given up higher salaried work to go out on their own and sell items on ebay full time. The drop was quite substantial in many cases interviewed, but the folks doing it much preferred their lifestyle.

IIRC one comment from a seller was that they enjoyed the freedom of waking up in the morning and wondering what they will sell today.

John,
In this article it is written that:

"The entire world is now nearly out of control with egoic motives. Mankind, indoctrinated by materialistic philosophies, ego-serving technologies, and gross political idealisms, is possessed by the mechanical and emotionally negative efforts of self-indulgence (and anxious release-seeking efforts of all kinds), and chronically depressed by the frustration of the Spiritual and Divine impulses that are the inherent characteristics of the heart of every living being."

'Out of control' is not quite right. These egositic drives and desires are expressed through the market mechanism, which is a social institution that embodies specific liberal values (eg. freedom) and has a specific system logic (co-ordination).