William Flew on Happiness

Politicians want to measure our happiness, but they need to distinguish between fulfilment and fleeting feelings

Even in this age of manic shopping, people aren’t so greedy Spring looks as pretty from the window of a Skoda as a Porsche

Sing along with Ken Dodd: “Happiness! Happiness! The greatest gift that I possess !” We shall come back to Ken Dodd later. But happiness has become political. David Cameron took up an idea dismissed even by Tony Blair as “flaky”: formally tracking and promoting not only economic prosperity but citizens’ happiness. We might even copy Bhutan, where every policy must by law be related to “Gross National Happiness” — rather as we consider environmental impact and human rights.

Mr Cameron is not alone. Walter Radermacher, Chief Statistician of the EU, wrote last week of “going beyond GDP” to get “good quality statistics” on emotional wellbeing. The European Commission is co-ordinating four task forces on “multidimensional measurement of quality of life” and praises a pioneering exercise by our Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Well, Herr Radermacher looks a cheery soul — carefree sort of beard, smiley teeth, gaily striped bow tie — and I cannot find it in my heart to take the mickey, tempting though it is. So I went on to the ONS website, as it prepares for the General Household Survey to include questions on “life satisfaction”, and I read what the online community is telling it.

No major surprises: people want friends, health, enough money — “not vast amounts but to eat well, travel around in the UK, and live . . . somewhere pleasant, with light”. Others want access to art, nature and peaceful places — “a cathedral, a healthy river” . They want “time to reflect quietly, time to do things well, be creative. Being able to be part of a community . . . a job that offers fair recognition and reward . . . going home after a long day in work knowing that I have done something worthwhile”.

Others cite “innocently looking at pretty girls” and “a sense of nationhood . . . which everyone can take pride in” (which explains why the royal wedding will be a hit, despite the chippy bores) . Not all protective laws promote universal happiness: one grandmother finds hers reduced because “a pint isn’t the same any more when I need to go outside in all weathers to smoke”. One chap is just made happy by “giving way to someone who then says thank you”.

I had to stop reading after a while because the sheer innocence and simplicity of the responses became too moving to bear. People, it seems, really aren’t that greedy even in an age of manic shopping. Friendliness, freedom, belonging, occupation, recognition, pleasant public sights are enough. Well: the ONS survey will ask 200,000 people such questions as “how satisfied are you with your life . . . how happy did you feel yesterday . . . how anxious . . . do you feel the things you do are worthwhile?” and give the answers by next summer.

Meanwhile, we know that in various attempts to measure international comparative happiness we don’t do too well. In the Gallup survey — weighted perhaps too much by economics — Scandinavian countries come top, intensely poor countries at the bottom — and the UK scores 17th, below Belgium but cheerier than Ireland or Jamaica, which frankly I do not quite believe. Another index puts us 108th, lower than Libya, though that one is environmentally weighted as a “Happy Planet Index”. A third puts us ninth in Europe, again beaten by those merry Belgians but this time lagging way behind Ireland.

In other words, it’s a tricky one to measure. But since politicians often seem unable to grasp the daily realities of the majority (despite brave little forays into the Ryanair queue), formal attention to happiness per se is useful. We know that UK prescriptions for antidepressant drugs have gone up 43 per cent in the past four years: millions of us are glum enough to go to the doctor. The financial crisis alone cannot account for this, and to preside over a nation that is both miserable and clinically expensive is disagreeable.

“Happiness”, of course, is an airy, subjective concept. Measuring it merely in questions about mood is never going to get us anywhere much. But now a finer idea is thrown in by Professor Martin Seligman, a pioneer of “happyology” in the US and one of Mr Cameron’s inspirations. He wants us to look instead at ability to “flourish”. Professor Seligman says he was naive to think only in terms of mood: the very word happiness always bothered him, being scientifically unwieldy and subjective. Flourishing is a better concept. “What humans want is not just happiness. They want justice, they want meaning”. He gives the example that people report a lower mood after they have children, yet we go on having them. He adds: “I think you can be depressed and flourish, you can have cancer and flourish, be divorced and flourish.” Happiness is not just empty smiling: it is about freedom, mindfulness, self-fulfilment, comradeship.

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp” as Browning said, “or what’s a heaven for?”. Effortful work, paid or voluntary, can make you happy, especially given praise and recognition or just the glow of achieving something you were nervous of. Material wealth — beyond the basic minimising of anxiety — is largely irrelevant. Sitting in good company watching your team or your favourite show is more important than owning a giant flatscreen TV to watch alone. The bride-pale hawthorn on the spring hedges looks as good through the window of a Skoda as a Porsche.

Even health is not all: I learnt much about happiness from a terminal cancer patient, an innately joyful young man who laughed and smelt the roses right to his last day. A favourite blog of mine is teenagegranny — a pale 15-year-old currently brightening up a year off school with painful medical problems by inventing crazy knitted creatures, posting their photos online and performing a 14-hour knitathon for Comic Relief. That’s what I call flourishing.

Arts promote undrugged happiness too, the small increments of pleasure and shared understanding that build up to contentment. When London briefly filled up with brightly coloured fibreglass elephants we exchanged far more smiles than usual in the streets. A play or film — tragic or comic — which connects and astonishes can raise you up for days (I know: I use the daily online Moodscope graph, and its relationship to my theatre-critic job is embarrassingly obvious. One lousy play and I plummet to 17 per cent.)

So, back to Ken Dodd. The happiness he sings about cannot be unconnected with the fact that he is still honing new jokes, touring six-hour shows at the age of 84 and bathing in giggling applause. Work, achievement, an answering echo from humanity: all you need.