These developments are detailed in Critical Perspectives in Happiness Research: The Birth of Modern Happiness by the Slovenian scholar Luka Zevnik, a book that contains much of interest, albeit carefully concealed behind the cant of critical theory. Among the theorising, he makes the nice point that most Indo-European words for “happy” (including the English) derive from words meaning good luck. It seems our ancestors associated happiness with a momentary gift of fortune. The absurd belief that it might instead be a near-permanent state achievable by all, Zevnik shows to be a unique quirk of contemporary western culture.
The folly of this belief is reflected in the statistics: as all these books point out, we have been getting steadily richer for a long time but our happiness gauge has refused to budge since around 1950. Although we have more stuff than our grandparents, we are no jollier for it. Which suggests that previous generations knew as much about the good life as we do. The test for the new “science of happiness”, therefore, is whether it reveals anything that might have caused your grandmother to raise an eyebrow.
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Not all happiness self-help literature falls into this trap. For example, the psychologist Rick Hanson’s recent book Hardwiring Happiness is full of good sense. He has the modesty to admit that his advice is not new but drawn from a century of scholarship in humanistic psychology and a much longer tradition of Buddhist practice.
Hanson’s central claim is that we have evolved to focus on and remember negative events more than positive ones – which has historically aided our survival but now leaves us nervous wrecks. Contrary to our instincts, then, we should make an effort to focus on what is good. Citing the brain’s plasticity, he argues that we will thereby “hard-wire” ourselves to be happier. Although his thesis, when stripped of neuro-jargon, would be unlikely to surprise your grandmother, Hanson draws on his experience as a teacher and therapist to give advice that is lucid and practical.
More surprising to your grandmother would be the advice of the technology writer John Havens in his book Hacking Happiness. The statistics show that all our digital gadgets have failed to make us any more contented, and authors such as Dolan suggest we ought to be spending less time distracted by them. But Havens, in contrast, believes they are the key to a wellbeing revolution.
Most of us, he points out, are surrounded by sophisticated computing power most of the time, even if only the phone in your pocket. We could be using these devices to collect detailed data about ourselves: our moods, our reactions to particular events, progress towards our goals, etc. The apps for this could even bypass our own faulty judgment of our feelings and directly measure physiological markers such as our pulse, pupil dilation or stress hormones. Armed with this information, we would know better than anyone in history exactly when we are merry and why.
Tellingly, the best advice in the entire book, or indeed any of these three how-to-be-happy books, was given to Havens by his mother:
“There’s always someone worse off than you. Find them, help them, and you’ll feel better.”
The folly of this belief is reflected in the statistics: as all these books point out, we have been getting steadily richer for a long time but our happiness gauge has refused to budge since around 1950. Although we have more stuff than our grandparents, we are no jollier for it. Which suggests that previous generations knew as much about the good life as we do. The test for the new “science of happiness”, therefore, is whether it reveals anything that might have caused your grandmother to raise an eyebrow.
[---]
Not all happiness self-help literature falls into this trap. For example, the psychologist Rick Hanson’s recent book Hardwiring Happiness is full of good sense. He has the modesty to admit that his advice is not new but drawn from a century of scholarship in humanistic psychology and a much longer tradition of Buddhist practice.
Hanson’s central claim is that we have evolved to focus on and remember negative events more than positive ones – which has historically aided our survival but now leaves us nervous wrecks. Contrary to our instincts, then, we should make an effort to focus on what is good. Citing the brain’s plasticity, he argues that we will thereby “hard-wire” ourselves to be happier. Although his thesis, when stripped of neuro-jargon, would be unlikely to surprise your grandmother, Hanson draws on his experience as a teacher and therapist to give advice that is lucid and practical.
More surprising to your grandmother would be the advice of the technology writer John Havens in his book Hacking Happiness. The statistics show that all our digital gadgets have failed to make us any more contented, and authors such as Dolan suggest we ought to be spending less time distracted by them. But Havens, in contrast, believes they are the key to a wellbeing revolution.
Most of us, he points out, are surrounded by sophisticated computing power most of the time, even if only the phone in your pocket. We could be using these devices to collect detailed data about ourselves: our moods, our reactions to particular events, progress towards our goals, etc. The apps for this could even bypass our own faulty judgment of our feelings and directly measure physiological markers such as our pulse, pupil dilation or stress hormones. Armed with this information, we would know better than anyone in history exactly when we are merry and why.
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Tellingly, the best advice in the entire book, or indeed any of these three how-to-be-happy books, was given to Havens by his mother:
“There’s always someone worse off than you. Find them, help them, and you’ll feel better.”
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