The Happiness Season
This article first appeared in the Minden Times on December 7, 2022.
There’s been push-back against the GDP, the Gross Domestic Product, being the measure of goodness. Because, among other criticisms, it means that spending money, no matter for what reason, is good for society. So the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that defiled the Gulf of Mexico was a marginally better contributor to the economy than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the Alaska coast. GDP says spending is good.
The OECD twigged to the inadequacy, even idiocy, of this stance and in 2009 developed an alternate framework for measuring well-being. It was informed by an international meeting in 2005 at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in which a contingent from the small country of Bhutan shared learnings from their then-33-year foray into using happiness as a measure of well-being. The three pillars of their approach to the change process seem eerily appropriate to the current Canadian scene: they prioritized cultural traditions, environmental protection and maintaining responsible government.
I like aphorisms, memorable shortcuts. Heather McLeod, in episode 2.4 of her podcast Something Different This Way Comes, interviews Paul Berger, an assistant prof in education at Lakehead University, who offered as scientifically proven knowledge that happiness has these four components: connecting, acting, learning, giving. That fits my experience so well that I have written the four in bold black on a sticky note at eye level from my desk chair.
The post-pandemic world is having trouble finding its happiness. It’s doubting that government is responsible. The huge cost of worldwide degradation –weather disasters, population displacement, wars – is arm wrestling for priority over the cost of making the pivot to healing the planet.
The depth of our current unhappiness is rooted, I think, in the pandemic disruption of cultural traditions, the third Bhutan pillar. Our approach to Covid-19 upended almost every cultural tradition. It disrupted every aspect of happiness. We became disconnected, unable to see family and friends. Our actions were constrained; we hunched over our devices, binge-watched Netflix, pillaged our fridges. We were confused by waves of complex information, learning and unlearning and relearning. Those we desperately wanted to give to were often unavailable, cloistered for their safety, shrivelling to nothingness in their abandonment. Or – this happened too – the giving tank was empty.
We are now creaking through the process of adapting our cultural traditions to accommodate the hard truth that not only the Covid family, but all its relatives, past and future, are our companions going forward. And that all the medicine in the world is not apt to deliver the security to health and well-being that we previously took for granted – because we didn’t realize, privileged society that we are, how rare and tenuous a security that was. It is a smack upside the head that approximates the impact on prior generations of the Great Depression (although that lasted ten years, to the paltry two and counting of Covid) and the two Great Wars (also a sum of ten years, not counting the before, after and elsewhere side-events).
Add economic downturn, looming recession , inflation sneaking its hand into our pockets, debate and dissention about the proper management of recovery and our journey will likely stretch to ten years.
But as intellectual Paul Ralston Saul said in the 2005 meeting in Antigonish, ‘It’s ideas which determine the directions in which civilizations go. If you don't get your ideas right, it doesn't matter what policies you try to put in place." We need to put this (or any other) definition of happiness at the centre of our intent. Dr Ronald Colman, research director for the Canadian Index of Well-being, and the Nova Scotian who organized the meeting, noted that GDP does not recognize the value of volunteer work in community building (and as a means of achieving happiness, using the definition I’ve adopted). We don’t need to be hired to do the work we want to do; rather, it’s up to ‘them’ to stop us if our efforts are unwelcome. Dr. Alan B. Kreuger, a Princeton economist, confirmed the importance of individual contribution: ‘We should not be hoping to construct a Utopia. What we should be talking about is piecemeal movement in the direction of things that make for a better life.’
My conclusions on re-jigging our culture: Don’t wait for ‘them’ to do it for you; grasp the thistle and do it yourself (acting), in concert with those whose interest coincide (connecting), figuring it out as you go along (learning), and making your little corner of the world a better place (giving). Happy Happiness this giving season.
