In the cold light of day
hmmm, these things never seem quite as much fun as they did when you were just daydreaming about them, do they? Apparently we're going to have policy shaped round managing the Gross National Happiness going forward. Because money isn't everything you know. It was when we were making loads of it but now it isn't. I think this is the definitive answer to students campaigning about fees and debt and the like - god it's all about the money with you people isn't it? Don't you have better things to think about? Stop and think about the flowers and magnets man, don't just obsess about your nine thousand bloody pounds all the time. Etc, etc. You can be just as happy living in a bedsit in Luton as you can on full housing benefit. Here's a book by Philip Blond that explains it all, I really think you should read it.
I would guess that there are a fair few dozen economists of the leftish persuasion who are feeling right now rather as one used to on Christmas mornings past, as the realisation seeped in that the MegaRanger Exclesior was not really quite as life-transformingly cool as it had appeared to be in the advert.
PS: Bhutan was hardly ever any kind of Shangri-la either, by the way.
Is there some suggestion that Blond think Bhutan was some kind of Shangri-la? If so, at what period in its hideous, blood stained history?
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else suspect they want to measure how happy we are so they can make us less happy?
ReplyDeleteThe government of Bhutan was, up until recently, the only one in the world which had an official target of maximising "Gross National Happiness". This caused a few people who should have known better (viz) to suddenly ignore everything else about the place, and me to wonder whether the word for "Happiness" in Bhutanese was in some strange way cognate with the word for "misery".
ReplyDeleteI don't know what Blond thinks about Bhutan, but that was the reason for the reference.
I've just been banging on about utilitarianism in a criminal justice lecture, and what leaps out at me is that maximising overall national happiness doesn't necessitate making everbody happier - far from it. So you could cut education funding, making 50-60% of people a bit less happy, then round up all the Travellers and send them back to Romania where they came from, making 20% of people a lot happier, and come out ahead. (The Travellers would be a lot less happy, of course, but (a) there are fewer of them and (b) they'd be in Romania.)
ReplyDeleteOr cut out the middleman and just ship-off/kill the unhappy people.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's the thing innit? If we're trying to maximise gross happiness per capita, murder everyone except CBeebies presenters, and if we're trying to maximise aggregate gross happiness, breed armies of blind clones whose lives are marginally worth living.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah I knew that PPE degree was gonna come in handy one day.
breed armies of blind clones whose lives are marginally worth living.
ReplyDeleteAh, you've been to Merseyside then.
I came across a book of Bhutanese children's tales, and it's some fucked-up shit. Like the one in which this guy steals some sort of wish-granting device from someone else and proceeds to use it to A. get rid of the person he'd stolen it from, B. give himself vast power, and C. immiserate anyone who opposed him.
ReplyDeleteAnd he lived happily ever after. That's it. That's the moral.
I've a book of erotic Russian folk tales, from which I drew the conclusion that Russian peasants were fucking crazy.
ReplyDeleteas well as whatever or whoever else they were fucking, I presume.
ReplyDeleteLet's just say it ties into the discussion on B&T the other day...
ReplyDeleteThere's happiness and then there's happiness lite. This stuff is bound to be happiness lite. No substance. You want substance? Roefie Hueting. Stefano Bartolini.
ReplyDelete"you could cut education funding, making 50-60% of people a bit less happy, then round up all the Travellers and send them back to Romania where they came from, making 20% of people a lot happier, and come out ahead. (The Travellers would be a lot less happy, of course, but (a) there are fewer of them and (b) they'd be in Romania.)"
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much what Bhutan actually did from 1990 on, to residents of Nepali ethnicity - about 100,000 in total.
I googled "bhutan deport nepal" and blimey. There definitely seems to be a positive correlation between efforts to promote (a) happiness and (b) ethnic homogeneity.
ReplyDelete"breed armies of blind clones whose lives are marginally worth living.
ReplyDeleteAh, you've been to Merseyside then."
Roaring with laughter here.
Nice post, by the way. I remember the post-Xmas blues well. Only yesterday I was moaning to my wife that the Purple People Eater I'd yearned after for 9 months turned out to be total shit.
Only yesterday I was moaning to my wife that the Purple People Eater I'd yearned after for 9 months turned out to be total shit.
ReplyDeleteYou call, and think about as, your child that?
It was called Happy Valley, and it was ruled over by a wise old king called Otto. And all his subjects flourished and were happy, and there were no discontents or grumblers, because wise King Otto had had them all put to death, along with the trade union leaders, many years before.
ReplyDeleteThat's another story my friend.
ReplyDelete