Happiness and satisfaction

I read, today, on the BBC news website, that happiness is in decline in the UK. According to the report, compared with fifty years ago, significantly fewer people in the UK are very happy. Over the same time period, wealth in the UK has increased three-fold. A question was implied: being so much better off now, why are people in the UK less happy? A second, more explicit, question was asked: should government focus either on creating happiness or on creating wealth?

I feel uncertain about several points: what is happiness? is happiness made up from component parts, such as contentment, satisfaction and joy? does happiness exist other than as a generalised concept? how can blunt, ticky-box social surveys hope to understand the delicacy how each individual makes sense of their ever-changing human emotions? how can anyone imagine that it should be the business of government to attend to, and respond to, how people feel?

According to the BBC news website, it has long been recognised that it was many years ago that the US population ceased getting happier with increasing wealth. Whilst I understand what is intended by this statement, I also have many doubts about it. For example, apart from not knowing what happiness is, and what exactly was being measured, I have no knowledge of which social, demographic and geographical factors were correlated; nor of how much account was taken of wealth differentials (compared with wealth in the US and the UK, wealth in Scandanavia is more evenly distributed across the population). Were it the case that wealthy people get happier, poorer people become less happy, and wealth differentials have increased, then maybe there is nothing suprising to be discussed.

It has become a commonplace in the UK that winning millions of pounds (GBP) from the national lottery is more likely to result in a reduction in happiness. Yet the hope and belief of many people is that to become wealthy, or at least significantly wealthier, is sufficiently desirable that, for every child, woman and man in the UK, 75 GBP each year is handed over to Camelot (the company that runs the UK lottery). Accordingly to a Camelot press release from March 2005, weekly takings are between GBP 85,000,000 and GBP 90,000,000.

What is not a commonplace is that, over the past fifty years, the expectations of people in the UK have skyrocketed. Most people in the UK expect to be able to travel with ease at speed around the UK, probably in our own car; many people expect to be able to travel cheaply by air to tourist destinations throughout western Europe; it has become imaginable and feasible for many people to travel around the world. By contrast, the UK of Brief Encounter, shows a very different world. Regarding food, entertainment and recreation, expectations have changed out of all recognition. Regarding health, we have come to expect specialised medication (regardless of how expensive) as our right, and have become impatient for new techniques and cures. Regarding technology, we are so sophisticated that a cellphone without texting capability, a television incapable of receiving digital pictures, a laptop computer without wi-fi, would feel like a medieval throw-back. Regarding communication, we expect to be able to sit on a beach in Margate, Marbella or Miami, and call home, text our friends, maybe send a e-photograph or e-video; to find a means to post a weblog of our travels; to have booked our holiday on-line; to have e-mailed our pillow preferences to the hotel; and to have checked out the websites of cafes / bars / restaurants that serve food suitable for vegans or vegetarians, or food that is kosher or wheat-free or nut-free.

Were it the case that our expectations were being met faster than our expectations were being raised, life would feel more satisfying and we would become happier. However, the dual-fuel engine for the satisfactio of our expectations is powered by money and further-elevated expectations. Paradoxically, therefore, in a market-driven capitalist society the more we seek to have our expectations satisfied, the further out in front of satisfaction our expectations will streak. In western society, it is only by reining-in, or even reducing, expectations could satisfaction increase. In the later 1950s, a British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, famously told the British electorate that they had "never had it so good", reminding them of post-war shortages, rationing and inflation. However, the purpose of his message was for people to rein in their expectations about rising wages (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/newsid_3728000/3728225.stm). Successive UK governments have attempted to deliver a message of wage restraint, and suffered for their pains at subsequent elections. Living in a globalised world, in which people in Connecticut, Chad and China are able to converse together in a chat-room, it would be barely possible for a country to attempt, unliaterally, to reduce the life expectations of its people - to my understanding, the Taliban regime attempted this in Afghanistan.

I am likely to feel happier when the bad things that have been going on in my life are being relegated to the past. This is about transition. Ironically, I may feel happier while recovering from a serious illness than when I am ordinarily healthy; when my bank balance is nearing solvency after a period of debt than when I have been sitting on comfortable financial cushion for some time; when the sun breaks through after a week of perpetual drizzle than when yet another day dawns with a clear blue sky.

Talking with a colleague, Jo, reminded me that when I have a self-imposed goal, the attainment of which would give me satisfaction, I tend to feel a contented anticipation. Simple examples of this include planning a holiday abroad; learning sufficient tourist language to get by in a non-anglophone country; re-organising and redecorating a room; and slimming.

How happy I feel may also concern the absence of bad things going on in my life. When I am healthy, feel safe at home, feel financially secure in my job, and feel supported by family and friends, I am less likely to feel unhappy. However, I may be bored and doubt where I am going in life, and consequently not feel happy.

I recognise different qualities of happiness. For example, I recall something of the overwhelming excitement and joy I experienced when I first attended a Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London; when I first piloted a Piper Tomahawk; and when I stepped out onto the observation deck of the Empire State Building in Manhattan. I recall something of the serene joy I felt when crossing by jetfoil from Vancouver to Victoria, on sighting a pod of orca whales. I recall something of the awe I felt, surrounded by the Canadian Rockies, witnessing the Perseid meteor shower (13 August 1993); and surrounded by darkness on the hard shoulder of a French motorway witnessing the totality of a solar eclipse (11 August 2000). I recall something of my intensely moving joy when my daughter was born.

To be continued ...