Paul Thomas: The trillion-dollar business of finding happiness

COMMENT

Back when there were Reds under our beds and industrial action rivalled rugby as our national sport, a leading trade unionist emerged from a bruising negotiation.

"Are you happy?" he was asked.

"Happiness," he mused, "the most elusive of human conditions."

Indeed. The American Constitution guarantees the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness but sensibly says nothing about achieving it.

Most religions tackle the issue head-on, portraying the pursuit of earthly happiness as futile and impious.

But then fun isn't really a religious concept, and much of the activity associated with happiness of the short-term, self-gratification variety comes under the heading of sin in religious circles.

Furthermore, in its historic role as upholder of the establishment and instrument of social control, the Church has endeavoured to pacify the down-trodden masses with the line that misery in this life is a prelude to everlasting happiness in the hereafter.

Yes, life on Earth is nasty, brutish and short and then you die, but once you've got that out of the way, it's all blue sky.

After sermonising thus, the high priests would retire to their palaces to guzzle wine and frolic with their mistresses, just in case the whole afterlife thing turned out to be hocus-pocus.

Now private enterprise is making happiness its business and, as you'd expect, adopting a more upbeat, can-do approach.

American economist Paul Zane Pilzer claims that increasing people's happiness is poised to become a trillion-dollar industry, up there with cars and information technology. Australians are already queuing to hand over $220 a day to an outfit called the Happiness Institute.

Not surprisingly, this fledgling industry's core message is money can't buy happiness. There will be a blizzard of research findings reinforcing this because the moment the opposite view takes hold, the happiness industry is dead in the water.

As long as people can be persuaded that money won't make them happy, they will waste it on trying to find out what will.

Exhibit A for the case against money are celebrity flame-outs like Elvis Presley, beached, bloated and paranoid in Graceland on a diet of uppers, downers and Southern fried crap.

Exhibit B are celebrity fizzle-outs such as the late Marlon Brando, the heavyweight hermit of Mulholland Drive.

But would Elvis have become a Rhinestone lardass with a death-wish drug habit if he had made it big in ball-bearings or waste management?

When big stars fall out of the sky, it usually has less to do with the extravagant rewards of stardom than its corrosive side-effects, particularly on personal relationships, or self-destructiveness perhaps propelled by the pernicious myth that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Where is the evidence to show that ordinary people who happen to be significantly better off than the rest of us are unhappy with their lot, with their flash houses in desirable suburbs and annual overseas trips and architect-designed beachfront getaways and private health care and ability to give their children the best education money can buy?

Has anyone actually asked them whether they would be happier just making ends meet?

Of course not. Why bother asking when we already know the answer?

If the trappings of wealth, all those freedoms, privileges, comforts and delights, don't provide happiness, why do most people strive to earn more money? Are they all wrong and the self-styled happiness gurus right? Are we, as a species, so stupid that we don't know when we're on to a good thing?

Of course many sources of happiness aren't directly dependent on one's income although, here again, we should be sceptical of anything that emerges from the research arm of the happiness industry. After studying 16,000 people, two American economists concluded that going from having sex once a month to once a week caused as much happiness as a $60,000 raise.

However, having drawn attention to themselves with this eyebrow-raising revelation, the economists admitted they weren't sure if happiness led to more sex or vice versa.

A layperson might venture to suggest that the difference between sex monthly and weekly is probably the difference between an arrangement and a relationship.

Sometimes wisdom comes from an unlikely source.

Asked for his idea of perfect happiness, George Hamilton, actor, playboy and proud owner of the deepest tan in Hollywood, came up with a wife, a child, a dog and a book to write.

Well, I don't know about you, but that's me taken care of.