Jobsworths take over our happiness

From the Telegraph Newspaper online today: The Government hopes that they will gain a better insight into society from the survey than from traditional economic indicators and tests.

"At the moment there's a fairly high level aspiration that policy should be based on more than just economic measures," said Paul Allin, ONS programme director.

The 200,000 people involved will be asked to rank how "satisfied" they are and how "anxious" they felt the previous day.

From April, the ONS will ask:

• How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?

• How happy did you feel yesterday?
• How anxious did you feel yesterday?
• To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
There will also be broader questions that are designed to try to explain people's feelings, to dig down into the drivers of individuals' happiness.
Other countries are devising similar measurements. French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a former White House adviser and World Bank chief economist, and a group of international experts to find new ways to measure economic progress taking into account social well-being.
Mr Stiglitz's report was critical of the way GDP, a raw measure of economic activity, was being used to gauge society's well-being. An increase in fuel consumption, it noted, would boost growth figures even if it merely reflected more traffic jams and pollution.
My Comment: Do these questions really find out about happiness? Did you know that we are all very good at deceiving ourselves and tend to rate our happiness higher than it is?  What is the difference between 'satisfied' and happy? Does pursuing happy feelings really result in happiness?

Happiness in Britain is....

Taken on my camera phone. First things first lads - put the shovel out of the way and get the tools plugged in. The kettle. Aaaaahhh - happiness is a nice cuppa.

Love and relationships are two different things

Happy love means conflict -free love? Alain de Botton muses on why a bookish life is a poor preparation for marriage! He says Western literature's obsession with unrequited love means the average love story is of help only to the lovelorn. And he argues that the blandness of the word marriage hides a "welter of intensity and depth that put to shame the most passionate works of literature'. Listen on Radio 4 here

"Huna and Ho'oponopono 2: The Hawaiian Code of Forgiveness"

Free recording. "Huna and Ho'oponopono 2: The Hawaiian Code of Forgiveness". Huna was originally called Ho'omana. Ho'o means to make. Mana means life force. Taken together the word Ho'omana means empowerment or to empower. Huna is about empowerment, about increasing your spirituality, energy and metaphysical healing powers.
Matthew B. James, MA, PhD provides a brief introduction to Huna and Ho'oponopono while also guiding you through an induction and the process of healing. Ho'oponopono (1) helps to cut the aka connections with everything, while Ho'oponopono (2) is very specialized and is for use with a single transgressor.

Choose: more happy slobs or more unhappy intellectuals?

BBC Four just re-ran Michael Sandel’s lecture on Utilitarianism and Happiness. It's saved for you to watch here. Sandal puts JS Mill's assertion that 'it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.' This lecture is a good opener on this old debate, which still rumbles on; for example, Professor Layard, who advised the recent labour government, took James Bentham's opposing view.

Part 1 -- PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LIFE: Sandel takes a modern view to explore how we attempt to resolve moral even political dilemmas. He makes a neat job of showing the possible objections to the utilitarian logic of seeking “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

Part 2 -- HOW TO MEASURE PLEASURE: Sandel then introduces J. S. Mill, a utilitarian philosopher who argues that seeking “the greatest good for the greatest number” is compatible with protecting individual rights, and that utilitarianism can make room for a distinction between higher and lower pleasures. Sandel tests this theory by playing video clips from three very different forms of entertainment: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the reality show Fear Factor, and The Simpsons.