Celebrate the noble pursuit of happiness

I mention all of this since yesterday saw the UK launch of Action for Happiness, a new organisation anxious to have us sign up for what it says on its tin. In essence its 10-point plan with ancillary actions repackages and conflates several chunky pieces of social research, all of which have concluded that more equal societies peopled by citizens with a strong sense of community and service lead happier and more meaningful existences.

It cheerfully (of course) accepts that what it peddles is a mantra rooted in many faiths and a philosophy which underpinned much Enlightenment theory. But it offers specific suggestions for segments of your lifestyle in the belief that many small acts of kindness, concern and compassion at home, in work, and in the community can add up collectively to a very substantial shift in the prevailing culture. That culture, as we daily witness, condones huge disparities in personal wealth regardless of personal effort, nurtures a climate of aggressive individualism, and has encouraged the pursuit of wealth and privilege to outstrip the pursuit of happiness and the common weal.

Some people will regard all this as another passing fad, wrapped in fluffy language and implausible good intentions, doomed never to reach the age of maturity. Some will try to hijack it as a new overcoat for the stuttering policy currently branded as the big society. But I suspect it will chime with the frustrations of many who are imbued with a real desire to make their lives more fulfilled, but unsure of the tools to employ; uncertain whether, if they raise their heads above the parapet, they will be greeted with derision rather than gratitude.

If nothing else, drawing together the available studies into what puts the humanity into humans, reminds us of what doesn’t work. A pre-launch lecture last month by Richard Layard, who’s been banging this particular drum for a very long while, drew his audience’s attention to the corrosive effect of the business school ethic of linking pay to performance, useful for routine tasks he concedes, but utterly toxic in terms of encouraging teamwork and creativity.

He reminded them too that while it’s absolutely no fun being poor, a modest boost in income can make people on below average income happier, whilst the rich getting richer brings no cure for coveting their neighbour’s even higher income. But so skewed have we allowed our values to become that millions who can ill afford it will invest in any form of lottery which brings the prospect, however distant, of instant riches. It’s an understandable misjudgment if your quality of life is constantly undermined by the struggle to keep a very basic domestic show on the road. But the super-rich expecting to find a pot of serenity at the end of their search for ever more lucrative rainbows, ought to have grasped by now that when you have very much more than you need, doubling your money won’t buy you contentment. Which is probably why so many celebrated billionaires are finding it fulfilling investing their wealth in other people’s health. Virtue bringing tangible personal reward.

Action for Happiness isn’t offering instant cures for long-standing ills, the time-honoured tactic of the chaps touring the snake oil wagon. Re-emphasising that attempting to maximise the happiness quotient while minimising the misery one in the people around you leads to personal wellbeing, may help rescue the term “do gooder” from casual insult. In re-stating the powerful truth that the state of your relationships is vastly more potent than the state of your bank balance in finding contentment they add to the growing consensus that the bonus and bragging society is not a healthy one.