Category Archives: State/policy

The power of negative emotions – and two other lessons of the Foro Bienestar

3 December 2014 20:55 ,

I just came back from two weeks in Mexico. During these weeks, I fled the Brussels grey, rain and cold to replace it by the occasional Mexico City grey, the jungle rain, and Pacific coast warmth. Moreover, I spent a couple of days at the Foro Bienestar (International Forum of Well-Being and Development) in Guadalajara, where I was invited to speak. In the next two weeks, I’ll offer some thoughts about my own presentation on happiness and public policy and about the question ‘why are Mexicans so happy’ that was the leitmotiv of the conference. However, today I wanted to share some insights about the main points that I took home from the conference. Are you ready? Here we go!

Don’t forget the power of negative emotions

IMG_1937

Speaking of negative emotions: this slide by Stefano Bartolini (University of Siena) shows the problem of social comparisons and happiness very well.

Most of the speakers were academics and the good thing about academics, contrary to some happiness consultants, is that they don’t allow themselves to be carried away by their enthusiasm so much that they forget that being happy all the time is not possible and not desirable. Negative emotions are a necessary counterweight to positive ones. In a simple metaphor: feelings are a mountainous landscape. Without the valleys of anger, frustrations and anxiety, the happy peaks of joy, tranquility and exaltation would not be happy peaks but part of a plain.

Robert Biswas-Diener, often labelled as a positive psychologist, brought this forward most prominently. Answering his own question ‘how happy should an individual be?’, he suggested that the ideal rate of positive and negative emotions might be positive 80% of the time and 20% negative of the time. Being happy all the time does not do justice to real and important feelings as guilt, grief and anger. For instance, as he also discusses in his book ‘The Upside of your Dark Side‘, guilt can motivate us to work harder and accomplish more than we ever could do if we’d be simply content with everything.

Measuring happiness is very, very simple and very, very, complex

A large part of the conference was dedicated to one simple question: how do you measure happiness? It is clear that there are many ways to do so: the World Happiness Database at the Erasmus University Rotterdam knows 963 different methodologies, said Jan Ott.

But professor John Helliwell, one of the authors of the UN World Happiness Report, explained these can be summarised in a couple of simple ways. One way is to ask people how happy they are in a specific moment. This can be happiness in the ‘now’, to grasp a person’s feelings most accurately, or a moment like ‘yesterday’ or even longer ago, to prevent that events limited in time have a major influence. Such a question can be answered very quickly, without a lot of thinking. A second way is to ask a more reflective question, asking how satisfied you are with your life as a whole. Questions asking about positive or negative emotions typically give more random and diverse answers.

The debate is open on happiness as a policy objective

Picture from the opening session. Source: La Jornada de Jalisco.

Picture from the opening session. Source: La Jornada de Jalisco.

In my opinion, it should be obvious that governments would aim to increase quality of life and well-being – happiness if you want – especially where incomes increase and poverty reduces. Still, using insights about happiness and well-being in public policy is quite scarce: another research to welcome that Jalisco, the region where Guadalajara is located, is facing the challenge. Meik Wiking, from the Danish Happiness Research Institute, identified that taking happiness as a political goal is a trend. But there is also a counter-trend: skepticism about government efforts to formulate happiness policy objectives.

Professor Bruno Frey strongly advanced the argument that with happiness as a policy objective, there would be major incentives to governments to manipulate data, for instance by excluding people with lower happiness and by  falsification of indicators. In a high-level debate – the Tyson vs Ali of  happiness researchers – he was taken on by professor Helliwell, who thought these risks could be reduced as methodologies will be tweaked over time and that manipulation could be constrained in a democratic society.

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Beyond GDP, a long road to travel

20 October 2014 19:37 ,

Almost fifty year since the famous speech by Robert F. Kennedy, and almost ten years after the start of a thorough debate on ‘beyond GDP’, it’s time to meet the unfilled promise.

On some occasions before, I have written blog posts to encourage EU policy makers and politicians to step up their ambitions and integrate ‘beyond GDP’ indicators in their policies. For instance, see posts on ‘Gross European Happiness‘ or ‘An EU Happiness Manifesto‘, and an essay I wrote for the Next Generation for Europe magazine NGE Magazine 1 (Chapter three, pdf).

And I must say, the topic is on the agenda. I recently had the fortune to attend a European Commission expert conference on ‘beyond GDP’. Noting the importance of the topic, the conference was opened by two outgoing Commissioners: Laszlo Andor, for Social Affairs, and Janez Potocznik, for Environment.

Winning the battle of measurement…

How to make the giant leap from theory to practice? Enrico Giovannini, a former Italian Minister and OECD Chief Statistician, has pushed the debate on GDP forwards in the recent decade. He asked whether those supporting the idea of beyond GDP have won or lost in the debates from the last years. His conclusion was that the ‘battle of measurement’ has been won. In comparison to ten years ago, national statistic offices do a lot more effort to measure what matters.

Routine measurements of social and environmental indicators allows us to get a broader understanding of quality of life than economic growth and inflation could give us. They are more and more interested in collecting and refining social figures on employment rates, NEET rates (people Not in Education, Employment or Training – a proxy for youth employment), and inequality-adjusted GDP growth. Environmental numbers like generated waste, emission of green house gasses and water use also gain more prominence. And new indices like the OECD Better Life Index treat all indicators equally.

OECD

Screenshot of the OECD Better Life Index website

… but the battle for policy must still be fought

There are two questions around this: do we measure enough? And do we do enough to exploit this massive amount of data and adapt our policies to it? When asking whether we won the battle of policy, the answer from Giovannini is simple – no. If you want to make simple policies from these crunched numbers, you have to make trade-offs. How much air pollution is an increase in GDP of 1% worth? How much fossil fuels can you burn to lift one thousand people out of poverty? And what, objectively, is well-being anyway? These are incredibly difficult questions to answer. Economic growth is a lot easier objective. There is no easy way out.

Can economic, environmental and social betterment go hand in hand? The Commission – via its stated objective of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth – thinks so. But MEP Philippe Lamberts doesn’t agree. He believes that in a finite planet, sustainable growth is an inherent paradox. From an environmental perspective, we may need degrowth; but at the same time, that has consequences on employment. And, higher growth is also associated with more money invested in environmental protection.

How do you cut this Gordian knot?

The quest for perfection limits action

Nobody can easily answer these complex these questions. But I can offer my own conclusions:

  1. A lot of laudable work is being done by statisticians and policymakers, especially in social and environmental departments. With a lot of conviction and passion, they had managed to put the issue on the agenda. But they need to get economists more involved in these debate to get more leverage. It was telling that very few participants were trained economists.
  2. Call me a pessimist, but my feeling is that the political momentum behind the beyond GDP drive is fading. There are generic references to the agenda, but the policy efforts needs to be stepped up. In my view, policymakers need to be more courageous and bring their policies to main stream politics. That requires broad political campaigning and communication, as the new economics foundation also writes (pdf). Reports don’t change reality. Action does.
  3. Finally, maybe it is a quest for perfection that is limiting action. A perfect measurement of well-being does not exist. If you group indicators together in one figure – say well-being is ’42’ – you can make little sense of it. Similarly, a ‘dashboard’ with eleven different figure as in the OECD Better Life Index can be difficult to apply. But in this case, it appears the perfect is the enemy of good. GDP also has been refined often. It’s better to refine measures and policies of well-being on the way than to never start the journey.

Beyond GDP: a long road to travel, but one that is worthy to go.

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Gross National Happiness – an idea whose time has gone?

8 September 2014 21:51 ,

In a piece in between a challenge and a provocation, the Financial Times’ Beyond Brics blog this week claimed that “Gross National Happiness is a bad idea whose time has gone”.

Criticising Bhutan is not new. The Himalaya kingdom famously has inspired the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) in the 1970s (earlier discussed in several posts). But the country remains poor. Average GDP per capita stood around $7,000 in 2013, below China and Thailand but above India and the Philippines.

Bhutan. Photo via Let's Travel Somewhere.

Bhutan. Photo via Let’s Travel Somewhere.

A young democracy

It is a young democracy. The royal family in 2008 decided to hand over power to the parliament. The elections in 2013 where the second in Bhutan’s history and saw the ruling party hand over power to the opposition. Nevertheless, Bhutan by no means have the democratic culture similar to Western democracies. Like in many Asian countries, Bhutan has a history of serious troubles with minorities. In the 1980s, tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis have been expelled, suggesting the idea of one harmonious society does not extend to people following other faiths than Buddhism.

Do all these ills discredit Gross National Happiness as a concept to inspire government to bring about higher levels of well-being for the population?

In an interesting statement quoted by the FT, current Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay says:

If the government of the day were to spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about GNH rather than delivering basic services, then it is a distraction. Rather than talking about happiness, we want to work on reducing the obstacles to happiness.”

GNH is a tool

Both FT writer Alan Beattie and from PM Tobgay here blatantly misrepresent what GNH is. GNH is not a religious credo offering answers to all questions. Like GDP, it is a tool that should be used to judge where the government should focus its efforts. Using a broader indicator like GNH can help a state of offer more holistic objectives beyond promoting economic growth. GDP is better suited to factor  in environmental and social criteria.

GNH as a concept is not the problem. It is the lack of a systematic administration that can thoroughly implement the idea. The contradiction between GNH and basic services. If GNH is the focal point, and you ask yourself what you can do to enhance the quality of life of your citizens, the major way you can increase well-being is realise these basic services. Spending a disproportionate amount of time talking about GNH is just as unproductive for a government as spending a disproportionate time of talking about the weather.

The duty of a government is to take care of the population it governs. That means taking care of safety and security, functioning healthcare and education systems, and doing so in a way that ensure well-being and a good life for the future generation. How can people be happy without basic services?

Any index is arbitrary

Gross National Happiness, or alternative indices offering national accounts of well-being, have also been criticised for a lack of transparency. They are not perfect. Indeed, in an autocratic state – of which Bhutan still appears to have some characteristics, there are ways to manipulate the outcomes of an index. But at the same time, GDP or economic indicators are not an exact science. They can be manipulated, albeit with more difficulty. And like GNH, elements included in GDP can be arbitrary or inflated. Should investment in research account as productive, or a cost? Should the shadow economy be included? Is prostitution productive? And what about money spent on jails or rifles, as Robert F. Kennedy asked?

There is one point where I agree with Alan Beattie. He appears to support the OECD’s Better Life Index. Rather than formulating results in one number with little value per se (as GDP and GNH do), the Index offers a comparison between several objectives. This makes it easier to compare performances in different fields, and to assess where performance is lagging and efforts should be focused on.

Where I disagree with Beattie and Togbay is in my belief that GNH, if applied well, is getting closer to the right answer than GDP. Considerations of GNH can set the direction. GNH is not a goal per se, but sets a horizon and offers a sense of direction. Where confronted with various options for government measures to invest in, happiness considerations can guide politicians in prioritising the area where the most impact on well-being can be made. They might sacrifice a couple of percentage points of economic growth, but perform better for social or environmental terms.

The main lesson of Bhutan, in the last decades, is that there is more in life than economic development. By raising his standard against GNH, Beattie risks losing four decades of slow and hard needed progress: social, environmental and economic.

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Where the life is good: the OECD’s Regional Well-Being index

30 June 2014 09:18 ,

[Gross Domestic Product] measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile

Robert F. Kennedy, 1968

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has taken Kennedy’s words to heart. Through its Better Life Index, it is conducting an impressive work programme to analyse quality of life in the 34 developed countries that constitute its membership. The OECD index provides a broad overview of quality life, measuring the performance of countries on various important issues, from housing to environment and from civic engagement to life satisfaction. Like  the Gross National Happiness (GNH) concept, the Better Life Index indicates what the good places to live are in a much broader sense than the mere economic data of GDP could do. Wealth’s correlation with happiness is limited at best, scientists have shown time and again.

But there remains a problem with this kind of national indices: they provide national averages – and do not say anything about the extremes and the equality of the data. California differs from Vermont. Sicily is not the same as Südtirol, the German-speaking part of Italy. To take account of regional differences in quality of life, the OECD has now released a similar website on regional well-being.

Some of the observations:

  • The balance varies a lot across regions. In California, income, jobs and education are at higher levels then in Vermont, but for safety and civic engagement the golden state is a lot worse off than Vermont.
  • Brussels is performing a lot worse on jobs (1.5 points out of 10) and environment (1.6) then I would think, but apparently has a high level of civic engagement (8.6).
  • Across the board, Dutch regions reach high scores, except for income and environment. All over the Netherlands, safety and access to services are close to perfect 10s.
  • Südtirol (or province of Bolzano) is indeed a different world from Sicily. The differences are most striking in the rate for jobs (8.8 vs 0.5). Italy’s figures confirm the large divide in incomes between North and South, whilst incomes are most equal in Austria.
  • Czech regions, to my mind, score surprisingly bad in health but almost all have full scores of 10 for education, here defined as the level of people with secondary education or higher.
  • The Mexican region of Jalisco has adopted well-being as a guiding principle in its policies. Still, it has a lot of space for improvement when compared with regions of richer OECD countries. The region already scores well on jobs and environment. And as a survey from a local NGO suggest, the comparable low scores do not mean that people perceive a low level of well-being. According to their figures, 67% in the region feels prosperous.
Picture 1

Brussels Capital Region, the region where I live, scores well on civic engagement and access to services, but has a lot to improve for jobs and environment. Source: OECD

So What?

Lists and rankings have a broader use than providing bloggers something to browse through on a Sunday night. They can bring order to life – be it by classifying which celebrities are hot and which are not lists, listing the best goals of the World Cup so far (no surprise, Flying Dutchman van Persie tops the list), or of countries which provide the most creative ideas (Ireland is first according to TED).

The OECD list, similarly, provides a benchmark of how regions performance. Seeing where you outperform peers or lag behind gives a motivation to improve. The index can help regions to decide where to focus their resources, and thus make better-informed decision how to spend civil servants’ time and money. As our representatives, politicians and administration should learn from these data. The data can help our administration to perform their duty: continuous improvement of our collective well-being.

Examples of well-being projects in some regions are already included on the OECD site.

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Robert F. Kennedy: measure what makes life worthwhile

23 June 2014 08:53 ,

If there is one icon that inspires me in my discoveries on For A State Of Happiness, it is Robert. F. Kennedy. In a way, this is a bit ridiculous. For a large part, my image of the man is based on an extract of barely 300 words in a speech delivered almost five decades ago. There must be leaders alive in our times who have something to say about the topic.

Robert F. Kennedy (or RFK) was the seventh out of nine children in the Kennedy family. He served as Attorney General is his brother John’s administration. After the murder of JFK, RFK was one of the most prominent members of the Democrats. In 1968, he ran for President.

JFK and RFK kept a joint diary with quotes that inspired them. Many of those are aphorisms from old Greek philosophers, like Plato. French writer Albert Camus was another favourite. I really like the idea and have started my own notebook. I imagine I can look back at the quotes in some years and be re-inspired by them.

In 1968, RFK was one of the candidates in the Democratic primaries for the position of President of the United States. On 18 March, he delivered a long speech at the University of Kansas. Amongst others, the speech talks about civil rights, inequality and the Vietnam war. But he (or his speech writer) also gave an extremely sharp critique of Gross Domestic Product. It has a central place in my own notebook, and I’d like to quote a full extract:

“And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year.  But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all.  Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

That was on 18 March 1968. What has happened next? The US went through a volatile time. Martin Luther King was murdered on 4 April. RFK had the same fate on 5 June. And the elections that year were won by the Republican Richard Nixon.

This month, it is 46 years ago that RFK died. Who knows what could have brought into motion if RFK had won the Presidency…?

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The EU elections

26 May 2014 23:18 ,

Sorry, for once a post that requires a specific interest – and some prior knowledge – in EU politics. No worries, next week I’ll talk about happiness again.

EU elections! After weeks of tensions built up, it’s over. The electorate has voted across the 28 EU countries. We don’t really know what they have said, but at least we’ll spin it in our favour.

There is a lot you can read in the result, but I would argue that the outcome – a low turnout of 43.09% and the rise of Eurosceptic and extreme right/left parties – suggest voters are not fully content with their leaders. I’ll avoid the discussion about happiness and politics today and just share five stories about the EU elections.

  • At 43.09%, the turnout is low, though marginally higher than in 2009 (43.00%). Absurdly enough, this was a reason for some EP voices to boldly claim the decline in turnout has been reversed. It is very worrisome to sustain democracy in a country like Slovakia, only 13% went to the polls. Seven out of eight simply didn’t care enough to make their voice heard! 

 

  • Let’s visualize it to better understand what the impact is that this 56.91% which is not represented in the EP.  Imagine 56.91% of the seats in the EP would not be assigned to anyone. In that case, more than half of the EP – 427 seats – would be empty. The political groups together would only fill 324 seats, the EPP with 92 being the largest. 

Non-voters

  • Another important narrative of the elections is the rise of the populists and extreme right. To me, this is too simplistic. In many countries, far right parties are doing well. Sadly, there are even enough for the Huffington post to make a list with “9 Scariest Far-Right Parties now in the European Parliament“. But not all of them are winning: Wilders’ PVV lost one seat in the Netherlands, and Jobbik in Hungary is staying at three seats. And euroskeptics come in many different flavours: UKIP (UK), AfD (Germany) and M5S (Italy) are incomparable in their opposition to the EU.

 

  • Altogether, the most interesting story to me is the fragementation of the EP. The slim lead of the EPP against the S&D could reinforce a strong competition. But will want to put their mark on the EP’s position. All the smaller parties will also want to be visible. This fact, and the ample presence of eurosceptics may result in some polarisation and could end the impression that all MEPs agree that whatever the problem, more Europe is the solution.

 

  • On the web, these are the elections of ‘Dear Europe, we are sorry‘. French people everywhere on Twitter share this to ‘apologise’ for the fact that Marine Le Pen’s Front National went from 3 to 24 seats in France. I can understand their frustration, but I don’t see the point in apologising for decisions taken by others. You don’t need to carry the weight of a quarter of the country on your shoulders. Rather than taking an apologetic stance, do something to fight bigotry and discrimination. Become member of a party. Do volunteer work to help people who are worse off. Fight for your ideals! But feeling ashamed about other people’s choices – that will never change anything.
Picture 4

Screenshot of www.deareuropewearesorry.eu

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A EU Happiness Manifesto

12 May 2014 23:21 , Leave a Comment ,

Act React Impact for EU Happiness!Only ten days to go until the European elections start!

From 22 to 25 May, around four hundred million voters from Lisbon to Tallinn and from Dublin to Nicosia can vote for the European Parliament. In a year still tainted by the economic crisis, employment and growth promise to one of the most important topics for those people who bother to vote. The campaign is going slow, and at least on the EU level, it is hard to see a clear difference between the lead candidates.

But why is there no debate about happiness in the EU elections?

An economic crisis as the one we’re now gradually recovering from is not only pain. It is also an opportunity to reflect on our policies: never waist a good crisis, as the cliché goes. What is it that really matters to people in Europe? A job and a good income are important. But ultimately, these are a means to an end: living a good life. Well-being, or happiness if you want.

So can’t EU politicians do more for our well-being?

I am certainly convinced they can. And that’s why I call on all candidates, across the entire EU, to campaign on this topic: Gross European Happiness. And my points are the following:

Gross European Happiness (GEH) as a key concept

The most important indicator in the EU is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Commission collects stats about economic growth, business confidence and consumer confidence every month. GDP is important, but has is limits. Robert F. Kennedy once said that GDP measures everything in life, except that what makes it worthwhile. As an accounting system, GDP has failed. Wouldn’t it be better to focus on people’s quality of life instead? As I’ve argued before, the EU should to use Gross European Happiness (GEH), next to GDP. GEH would be based on Gross National Happiness (GNH) in Bhutan, and help informing EU policies.

Development of a GEH scoreboard

GEH is a lot more complex than GDP. But the Commission has a lot of highly skilled staff. They should be able to grasp what GNH means for the Bhutanese and translate it to European values. They can develop a methodology for GEH, that understand how our economic conditions, community life, free time, (mental) health and education all contribute to well-being. This can be developed into a scoreboard, providing a benchmark on how countries perform – and where they can improve.

A Commissioner for Well-Being

At the moment there are 28 Commissioners, covering a wide spectrum of topics.In one way or another, all these portfolios affect well-being and GEH; for economic affairs, social affairs, health, environment and education the case is most clear. But these are various silos. To effectively make GEH a reality, we need a strong political steer. Therefore, we need a Commissioner for Well-Being to oversee the GEH process, and also to ensure well-being is fed into all other policies.

We could even grant their own Directorate-General; with an administrative French term, it could have DG BONH (Bonheur) as it’s acronym (a bureaucrat is nothing without an acronym). Commission services already assess the impact of their policies on human rights before a proposal is adopted: why not add a ‘happiness impact assessment’ to study whether new policies actually contribute to our well-being?

Education, education, education

Happiness does not only depend on the circumstances you’re in, but also on the way you deal with them. At school, we learn many valuable things, like math, science and history. Though we spend twenty years in education, we learn little about ourself. How does happiness work? In what ways do our brain and our behaviour function? How can you recognise, and prevent, mental health problems? These are important life skills, and schools should pay attention to them. The EU, for instance, could promote the inclusion of the Five Ways to Well-Being into school curricula.

Tell your candidate to work for Gross European Happiness

In 2009, the Commission adopted a policy paper on ‘GDP and beyond. Measuring progress in a changing world‘. Since, it has been silent. It’s time to chance that. Go vote. Tell your candidate what you expect from the EU. Tell them to work for Gross European Happiness. It’s about time that the EU honours the EU Treaty’s line that the Union’s “aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples”.

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‘Frohes Schaffen’ – on our identity as a worker

7 April 2014 09:55 , Leave a Comment ,

When we meet new people, why do we always ask them where they work? Why is the place where we work so defining for our identity? And is it morally permissible to be happily unemployed?

These are some of the questions that Konstantin Faigle researched in his film ‘Keep Up the Good Work’. The German original version is released under the more apt title ‘Frohes Schaffen. Ein Film zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral’.

I very much recommend you to see the film. Faigle’s film is  a combination of two elements: a documentary about work and a series of personal stories on what work means to his characters.

The craze of work

Let’s start with the documentary. The ‘talking heads’ all underline how crazy our relationship with work has become. From the Industrial Revolution onwards, productivity has risen, and work has become so much more than subsistence. Most of us spend more time at work than we know that is good for us. Have you ever met someone who regretted leaving work early? With smartphones and teleworking, work is more invasive of our free time than ever before. Let me give two examples how serious this is: people who are close to retirement can now get a ‘pensioner’s coach’ or see a psychologist to redefine their purpose and find a way to fill their seas of time. And the Japanese language has the word ‘karoshi’: death by overwork.

According to meme expert Susan Blackmore, work has become a ‘memeplex‘: a powerful social construct, grouping various ideas and concepts that define what work means to us. Work becomes an essential part of our lives and our society. In the movie, German philosopher Michael Schmidt-Salomon even argues that work has become our new religion. In the current system, factories and offices replace the church as the place where we profess our faith.

15 hour working week

It’s absurd that we are spending so much time at work. In the 1930s, Keynes though that in two generations, people would only need to work 15 hours a week. If we were to do so – by distributing work evenly across the population or use increasing productivity to work less and keep output constant rather than to increase our economy, we’d probably have to take some lessons from Tim Hodgkinson, the Founder of the Idler’s Academy on Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment. Though the clip is not available, the picture below gives an impression of one of the brilliant part of the Idler’s Academy lecture series: staring at the sky. (This clip, on idle parenting, also gives an idea of his style).

Tom Hodgkinson

Source: Frohes Schaffen / Wfilm

 

Happily unemployed

Faigle also addresses the question whether it is possible, and morally admissible, to be happily unemployed. In countries with protestant working ethics, like Germany and Netherlands, this is an inconceivable concept. In one of the funnier scenes of the movie, Faigle hits the streets on Labour Day with a Jesus-like figure stating that Jesus was happily unemployed. People seemed to be more upset about the idealisation of idleness than by the portrayal of a religious figure!

Faigle’s movie features some characters that for various reasons (dismissal, freelancer without any assignments, retiree, etc) do not work and thus suffer from a lack of purpose in society. But when they meet of one of Faigle’s more cheerful characters, a ukulele-playing guy working as a part-time mattress salesman, they miraculously start to appreciate life.

It is a nice story, but a bit simplistic. Faigle is right in denouncing  our working craze. Having A Career is imperative; work is not just something that provides the income and security to live our life. But Faigle neglects that work also gives us a purpose. Part of our identity is defined by the difference we make every day for our clients, customers, patients, students and colleagues. The labour market in the West has progressed. There is a fair amount of dull jobs, but many jobs do carry meaning and bring about a state of flow. Work can also be a source of happiness. And when it’s too much, just play your ukulele for a bit and you’ll be fine.

frohes schaffen

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Happy International Day of Happiness to all!

19 March 2014 08:54 , Leave a Comment ,

The United Nations has chosen special days to celebrate all small parts of life. There is a World Radio Day (13 February). An International Day of Forests and the Tree (21 March). The UN calendar also marks something called Vesak, or the Day of the Full Moon in Buddhist traditions.

And since 2012, we finally have a UN International Day of Happiness.

The decision to establish an International Day of Happiness has been set out in a formal UN resolution. As the laws of diplomacy-speak require, the text is somewhat swollen (“conscious that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental goal just means: everybody would like to be happy), the text is quite short.

The text recognises the need for “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication and the well-being of all peoples“. Music to my ears, as I’m convinced that governments have a role to play via well-being policies.

20 March was chosen, because on this day, the sun is on the same plane as the earth’s equator. Day and night are of equal length, creating balance in the earth’s celestial coordinate systems. The idea to have an international day of happiness was raised by Bhutan, which bases its policies on the concept of Gross National Happiness.

Though these days can be criticised (should I only care about women on 8 March), it can be a good way to raise awareness and let people think of their own happiness. In a way, the UN recognition is the culmination of years of work that have been done to convince states and international organisation to take happiness seriously. It builds upon Gross National Happiness in Bhutan, but also on comparable initiatives by France, the UK, the EU and the OECD.

Happiness to the People!

But enough about official celebration. This is a day for the people.

The last months many of our days have been lightened up by the hymn of happiness. Last November, you might have seen the 24 video clip on his website. It is amazing to see how big the song has become since. As I wrote about before, the idea has been taken aboard by people all around the globe, who’ve created their own versions.

Tomorrow, the song will be everywhere. Pharrell teamed up with the UN for another ’24 hours of Happy’, based on videos submitted all around the world.

Watch this page tomorrow to celebrate the International Day of Happiness!

But for now, some of the local versions:

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

I’ve been hoping for a guest appearance of my friend, alas!

Brussels, Belgium

My very own host city has at least ten versions on youtube. This one seems the funniest:

http://youtu.be/ShfqLUutyC4

Vilnius, Lithuania

People in Vilnius aren’t as glum as the word has it!

Tahiti

Tahiti seems the happiest place of all! I need a holiday now…

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Gross European Happiness: A Challenge for EU Policymakers in 2014

17 February 2014 14:40 , Leave a Comment ,

At the end of January, the place to be for the political chic was the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Politicians, economist and business leaders met to discuss myriad fundamental challenges to our future, from internet governance to global poverty.  The WEF also saw the presentation of a report on “Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption with Sustainable Supply.”

Behind this boring title, the International Resource Panel (IRP), a UN think tank, hid a compelling argument: The demand for food and fuel puts an enormous pressure on our ecosystem. On current trends, between 320 and 849 million hectares of natural land worldwide (the latter number nearly being the size of Brazil) will be converted into cropland in the next 35 years. Such an expansion would harm soil productivity, forest cover and biodiversity. That would be a disaster, thus it is imperative to break the link between resource consumption and economic development.

Measuring progress

The conclusions are no surprise to ‘beyond GDP’ campaigners, whom have for years pointed out the limitations of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations. GDP measures the total economic value of all goods and services produced within one country in one year. Though a valuable indicator for economic wealth, GDP has its setbacks. It ignores environmental and social costs – such as land degradation, pollution and social tension.

A rich country is not always one that makes people happy or increases their well-being. Yet, GDP growth has become a proxy for progress. Most government policies are based on the idea that growth is necessary. Policymakers seldom ask themselves how their policies impact well-being or happiness at large.

The beyond GDP movement believes governments should use alternative indicators to steer their policies. Gross National Happiness (GNH), developed in the 1970s in the Himalaya kingdom of Bhutan, is the most famous alternative. GNH aims to measure the well-being of Bhutan’s citizens, and is the core element shaping public policy. The index measures 124 variables concerning people’s economic situation, education, health, psychological well-being, time use, and community life. In the last decades, GNH has inspired countries and global organizations worldwide, including the UN, the OECD, France and the UK.

Moving forwards

Despite this the EU has done little to shift its focus to human well-being.  Since the onslaught of the economic crisis, policies have focused primarily on restoring economic growth. While growth clearly helps in avoiding hardship, the EU can learn a lot from the likes of Bhutan. Five years ago, the EUCommission adopted a policy paper, “GDP and beyond. Measuring progress in a changing world.” But it hasn’t acted on this since.

This must change. The EP elections in 2014 offer a great opportunity to reset the system. Following these elections, and the appointment of a new Commission I propose these two institutions follow Bhutan’s approach and take Gross European Happiness (GEH), not GDP, as their guiding principle for economic and social development.

Gross European Happiness

What does GEH mean? In principle, it’s only a change in accounting systems. Our current accounting system is GDP, and we use it to measure economic growth. What you measure defines your frame of reference. Had we measured our well-being as closely as we’re now doing with GDP, Europe would be a different place. Therefore, the first step of the new Commission President should be to create a European version of Bhutan’s GNH Index. A GEH index, based on European values and aiming to track the development over time of Europeans’ objective well-being, must be created to measure progress in a more meaningful way.

EU policies will get a reboot with new MEPs and Commissioners in office later this year. It’s time to convince them of the benefits of GEH. Robert F. Kennedy once said that GDP measures everything in life, except that what makes it worthwhile. EU policymakers should take his words to heart. GEH is the answer.

This article was first published at the blog of the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP).

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