Jay Somasundarum's [0] last piece for Webdiary was Educating our kids [0]. Thanks again, Jay, and keep them coming!

Getting Back on Track
by Jay Somasundarum

Humanity took a wrong turn about forty years ago. Until then, we equated the good life with happiness and contentment. About forty years ago, our thinking changed. We started equating the good life to wealth. Or, perhaps more accurately, we decided that increasing wealth was the path to happiness. The financial crisis is causing us to challenge the ideology that capitalism and free markets increase growth. The answer to that question, is not always, as Kevin Rudd’s third way [1] explains. Free markets don’t promote the common good in a number of circumstances, all well documented [2].

We are not, however, asking the right question: Is Growth the right goal?

Happiness has a bad name. We view it rather askance. Like Happy Hour, a marketing gimmick, a false hope. Or, the fairground evangelist, a corrupt pedlar. Or, the burn outs who couldn’t succeed in the real world, and turn to a sea change, or become missionaries, or even to drugs.

Why are we so wary of happiness? Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit we seem to believe that unhappiness is our natural lot,. To be happy is somehow sinful. Nevertheless, religion provided redemption, it has a many techniques that improve happiness, and these are systematically taught to children and adults. Camaraderie, altruism, singing, mediation, a belief that things will turn out well (even if only after death) are all techniques confirmed by science. However, we felt betrayed by religion and turned away. We realised that not only is there no God, but that religious institutions were often as venal and corrupt as secular institutions.

Perhaps the greatest harm that Adam Smith’s Invisible hand [3] did is not the ideology that free markets are always best, but the more insidious one that selfishness is good, that by being selfish, one is really helping one’s neighbour.

The health industry is not about health. It is mainly about treating illness. Psychiatry and clinical psychology were among the poorer sons. They were slow to become good at treating mental illnesses, to concern themselves with increasing the mental health of those not clinically ill. Health’s focus has been changing over the last few decades. We have conquered many of the chronic illnesses, and there is a definite increased interest in maintaining and improving good health. Mental health is now catching up. Positive psychology is coming of age.

As in physical health, there are likely to be two disciplines. At a population level, there are the public policies that engender the happiness of a population [4] or the planet [5] as a whole. At the individual [6] level, there are the actions that individual can take, to improve their own happiness.

We need a religion for the twenty-first century. This religion, cannot, however, come from leaders, for power invariably corrupts. It needs to come from ourselves. Perhaps it is Literacy or Democracy [6]. Will the twenty-first century be the age of wisdom?