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Happiness re-considered
November 23, 2007

Today, the traditionally biggest shopping day of the year, came and went. While lots of people came away satisfied with their purchases, equal number of people complained about exhaustion and annoyance. Wait until the bill comes…

This brings me to our last discussion for the series this week – happiness index. As I have always suspected that stuff does not bring happiness. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy prosperity and happiness as much as the next person. The definition of a collectively prosperous and happy society is a philosophical question that is beyond the scope of this post. But personally speaking, prosperity and especially happiness really are not proportional to the amount of stuff I own.

We all know that poverty does not lead to happiness. But when most of our material needs are satisfied, does it make us happier when we can afford to and do acquire more stuff? Marketplace visited the once-isolated Bhutan, a tiny South Eastern Asian country sandwiched between China and India. About seven years ago, television and internet opened up the country to the rest of the world. The brand new consumerism hit the country head on. Ironically “there’s a recorded increase in family breakup, and recorded increase in crime — especially violent crime.” Economist Richard Easterlin said that this kind of pattern had repeated itself in country after country. In China for example, income has tripled over the last 15 years, but life satisfaction seems to have declined. Back in the U.S. happiness (funny economists actually define and measure the happiness index) stopped increasing in the 1950s, though per-capita income has risen near 3 folds since then.

Why? Profession Easterlin attributes that to human psychology, “Increases in income are matched by increases in aspirations for income. And the net effect is no change in happiness.”

Professor Peter Whybrow who studies neuroscience and human behavior at UCLA thinks the shopping fervor may even be a disease, both mental and physical. “We grew up in scarcity - we evolved in scarcity, that is - so in fact, most of us don’t know what to do with abundance.” He continued to say, “we are pushing ourselves to our physiological limit. You can’t do the things we’re doing without seeing the predictable outcomes of obesity, Type II diabetes, sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression… All those things are predictable if you live a life where you’re constantly at the edge.” Disease or not, I don’t want to go there, as some big pharmaceutical companies are probably designing a pill to “cure that”, whatever it may be. Nonetheless, it is an interesting and thought provoking theory.

So how do we find happiness in the age of abundance? It is a much much bigger topic than I can realistically tackle in one thread of discussion. But I know what made me very happy this Thanksgiving holiday:

1. We went on a nature walk on Thursday morning and saw two great herons standing against the vibrant fall foliage.
2. I enjoyed a fantastic meal with my family – had a heritage turkey for the first time - definitely the yummiest turkey I have ever had.
3. Friday was cloudless and stunningly beautiful. My 5-year girl completed her first six mile hike up and down 2000 feet. She came back and wrote a story about what she saw – coyotes, gophers, hawks, and all.
4. We saw friends from afar, had good wines and caught up until the wee hours.

Just two content days without stepping into any insanely packed malls.

To read earlier posts in our pre-Thanksgiving series:

Before the holiday shopping mania sets in
How long can we shop like there is no tomorrow?
Real people make real changes
Some businesses are taking a green lead

CindyW at Organicpicks

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