Twists and turns amid the pursuit of happiness

12 April 2012

The happiness expert, Professor Lord Richard Layard, is, you might say, an advertisement for his subject. He was at the RSA this week to promote the new edition of his book on happiness, which has made him happy by selling 125,000 copies.

He has snowy white hair, an avuncular beam for critics and supporters alike and the demeanour of the Cheeryble Brothers. When I asked him whether he was happy he said: "I'm happy today, thank you."

And so he should be. He has just launched something called Action for Happiness, with Geoff Mulgan and Anthony Seldon, which has set itself the modest goal of advancing the human condition by making more people happy by doing things like performing kind acts, thanking people one is grateful to and volunteering more. Happiness, he declares, is achieved in part by advancing the happiness of others, or at least removing the reasons why they are unhappy, though I'd say that what makes us happy just now is a sunny spring with the wisteria coming on.

Happiness is an achingly fashionable subject these days. Both David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have signed up to the principle that politics is about advancing the stock of national happiness, not mere wealth.

There are umpteen new academic studies on happiness: the latest suggests you're happiest after you turn 50. And the happiness movement isn't all bunny-hugs. The one point when Professor Layard's demeanour clouds a little is when he addresses the question: "Is it fluffy?"

He's a utilitarian by philosophy but he is an economist by profession and his book is big on those studies that appear to show that societies with the lowest divide between rich and poor are also the happiest, not just for the poorest but for the richest.

That's where things start to get tricky. As Andrew Marr, chairman of the RSA discussion, shrewdly pointed out, the trouble with the happiness agenda is that politically, there's something there for everyone. Mr Cameron's principle of Gross Domestic Happiness is not going to mean higher taxation as a way of levelling income distribution.

As for the Scandinavian states that seem to show the highest levels of happiness internationally, their welfare-state contentment seems predicated on having an ethnically homogenous society. So does that mean that lower immigration makes for more happiness?

Professor Layard agreed that it was all very difficult but that was true of almost every general aspiration and anyway, scientific studies would show us the best way of achieving a secular way of being happy. Later he added that we must remember that higher immigration makes immigrants happy, which is important too. So where does that leave us, as regards immigration and GDH, gross domestic happiness? Dunno.

Of course, we've been here before: happiness has been the business of philosophers and rulers since, oh, Aristotle. He thought that happiness was about the rational exercise of virtue and that we could be trained in virtue. Professor Layard isn't quite so keen on rational happiness: if Xboxes make you happy, that's dandy by him.

Of course, it's rather lovely that we're all talking about happiness. Somehow, this feels like a good time to do it, what with Easter Sunday coming up and the wisteria coming on. It's just the specifics that get in the way.

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