Janus Thinking

A study to be published next month by scientists at the Netherlands’ Erasmus University will argue that being happy can help you live a longer life.  It concludes that, while being happy does not cure ills, it does correlate to people not getting sick in the first place.  It can also add years to your life because happy people are more likely to look after themselves, both physically and mentally.

So should happiness take its place as the consummate luxury pursuit?  And, if so, how can it be pursued?

Happiness as a concept is being studied from more and more perspectives.  Developments in neuroscience are allowing scientists to measure and map our behavioural reactions to an increasing number of stimuli.  Is the ultimate luxury product then the one that registers the best emotional response to you personally or perhaps the highest average positive emotional response amongst a given group?

Lord Richard Layard of the London School of Economics has also developed an economic model which is often referred to as “happiness economics”.  He argues that current tax regimes and public policy do not address (or attempt to disincentivise) the negative impacts of competiive consumption rom our lives (i.e. the consumption which does not make us any happier, or makes us even sadder).  Nor does it account for the fact that our tastes evolve over time so that we might need extra money to achieve the same level of happiness as someone with different tastes.

Various studies have also determined that our level of happiness does not substantially increase after an individual’s purchasing power reaches around US$10,000.  Instead, cultivating closer ties to one’s family, friends, or to common interest groups can help, or being able to freely express oneself (in speech and through voting, for example) and to enjoy a reliable and predictable system of justice can make one feel happier. (And even more interestingly, these might differ according to how one pursues his life purpose, as an earlier Theta vs. Lambda post suggests.)

The jury is still out on whether happiness itself will become the metric du jour for what constitutes a luxurious life.  For now, its material proxies still seem to be hotly pursued.