tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/on-happiness-18035/articlesOn Happiness – The Conversation2015-07-08T01:31:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437762015-07-08T01:31:11Z2015-07-08T01:31:11ZHappy? Consider how giving builds a life of meaning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86475/original/image-20150626-16889-uoa29k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Giving, or contributing, beyond ourselves is one of the strongest predictors of happiness and health.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-247744987/stock-photo-two-identical-banners-one-with-and-one-without-a-word-cloud-about-charity-on-a-rustic-dark.html?src=2pP4wGv-Sd7huOWCeBivXQ-1-1">Shutterstock/Nikki Zalewski</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p>In The Conversation’s series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, it has been pointed out that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-a-cult-of-happiness-leading-us-to-lose-sight-of-life-42820">pursuit of happiness</a> for its own sake might be a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lies-of-happiness-living-with-affluenza-but-without-fulfilment-42886">futile</a> and even <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-we-love-happiness-or-do-we-then-risk-more-sadness-42898">counterproductive</a> enterprise. It has also been pointed out that happiness, however important to us, is merely a beneficial side-effect of a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11148302">eudaimonic approach</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-out-shows-well-being-isnt-just-about-chasing-happiness-43629">pursuing a life of meaning</a>. I agree very much with these views.</p>
<p>But what exactly does it mean to have meaning in our lives? <a href="http://www.positivepsychology.org/">Positive psychology</a> (with its focus on generating positive emotions) and <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/existentialism">existentialism</a> (with its focus on philosophically reconciling ourselves to the tragedies of life) provide useful counterpoints for exploring the spectrum of happy and sorrowful emotions in which we humans search for meaning and self-actualisation. These counterpoints provide the creative tension for many articles on happiness in general. </p>
<p>But in what ways, exactly, can “meaning” possibly provide a bridge between these two opposites in our lives — our sadness and our happiness, our joys and our sorrows?</p>
<h2>Connecting the ‘dots’</h2>
<p>As I argue <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4939-0308-5_6">here</a>, if one connects the dots from the findings in various fields of happiness and well-being research, it turns out that there seems to be one common denominator for what people, across cultures, races and religions, report as giving them meaningful happiness: it is that of being something for others. </p>
<p>What is meaningful to us, of course, can be very individual, subjective and culture-specific. What most definitions share is an element of feeling interconnected with someone or something other than oneself and, as importantly, feeling that one is able to contribute to those connections. This may be contributing to one’s family, friends, the community, the environment or a cause. </p>
<p>What we humans describe as meaningful in our lives most often contains an element of having the opportunity to give of ourselves to someone, or something, beyond ourselves. <a href="http://unlimitedloveinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ITS-GOOD-TO-BE-GOOD-2014-Biennial-Scientific-Report-On-Health-Happiness-Longevity-And-Helping-Others.pdf">Research</a> shows that giving, or contributing, beyond ourselves is one of the strongest predictors of increasing our happiness and health. </p>
<p>Personal pleasure is not to be dismissed, but having meaningful giving in our lives accounts for the highest levels of happiness and health. When we give to others, we have higher and more meaningful levels of happiness. We also are more resilient in the face of adversity and we recuperate more quickly from traumatic events.</p>
<h2>To be or not to be – that is not the question</h2>
<p>Realising that giving, or contributing to others, provides us with sustainable and genuine happiness, we also realise that, apart from a few profound thinkers throughout history (for example, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/">Socrates</a> and <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/">Aristotle</a>), this very simple, yet powerful insight often seems to have been a “missing link” in many attempts to answer some of our most profound questions, such as, “what is the meaning of existence?”, “what is the meaning of life?”, “what is a good life?” etc.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86476/original/image-20150626-16889-1rekit9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86476/original/image-20150626-16889-1rekit9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86476/original/image-20150626-16889-1rekit9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86476/original/image-20150626-16889-1rekit9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86476/original/image-20150626-16889-1rekit9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86476/original/image-20150626-16889-1rekit9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86476/original/image-20150626-16889-1rekit9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Some existential thinkers seek answers through faith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-262789442/stock-photo-silhouette-of-woman-praying.html?src=G7sEbNUvu4qjm28Wtc-XmA-1-6">Shutterstock/CHOATphotographer</a></span>
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<p>For example, inherited largely from <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/">Søren Kierkegaard</a> and <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/">Friedrich Nietzsche</a> respectively, existentialists have often argued that either religious faith or self-determined goals are the means by which we achieve meaning in our lives. </p>
<p>When it comes to creating individual and collective well-being, however, both positions, in and of themselves, ultimately depend on an underlying philosophy of “being good to each other”. Only when this dimension is applied do the other two seem able to reach their full potential – from a humanistic perspective, at least. </p>
<p>“Faith” and “self-determined goals” can easily be fundamentalist or self-serving, unless they are situated in a genuine social concern for the whole. In other words, to be religious or not (faith element), or to create your own story of your life or not (self-determined goals element), are not the most central question we can ask if what we want is healthier, happier and more meaningful lives. To give or not to give – that seems to be the question.</p>
<p>Positive psychology often (but not always) focuses on creating positive emotions. Existentialism tends to deal with the things that make us unhappy in life (grief, guilt, tragedy), trying to reconcile these with the feeling that life is still worth living. </p>
<p>Both positions are important in order to examine the spectrum of human emotions and living. Yet, beyond being “happy” or “sad”, it seems, is to give. Only through being generous to one another, it seems, will we achieve our full human potential for individual and collective well-being.</p>
<h2>The need for a (new) philosophy and science of giving</h2>
<p>Giving might forge a relationship between the authenticity that existentialists have often advocated as the means to acquire meaning in life, and the moral and rational thinking that they often have denounced in the process. </p>
<p>That is, if giving, or genuine social concern – whatever we call it – is the most valuable dimension with which we measure meaning in our lives, we suddenly realise that rationality or any moral constructs, in themselves, have insufficient explanatory power when it comes to understanding meaningful and happy living. </p>
<p>As noted, moral ideologies, unless grounded in a social concern for all, can be detrimental to individual and collective well-being. Likewise, “rationality” can be very cruel without a truly human dimension, as seen in the very “efficient” German machine that created the second world war.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86480/original/image-20150626-16881-18up25m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Genuine concern for others may go to the essence of being human.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-113771614/stock-photo-close-up-of-a-mother-hugging-her-children.html?src=xfcAkNLguQEGQupJMFtJdA-1-17">Shutterstock/Imagedb.com</a></span>
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<p>Being human in the truest sense of the word – that is, showing genuine social concern for all – might therefore be the most authentic “essence” of our being. That stands in contrast to being anything we “choose to be”, which is the other measure of meaning sometimes applied by existentialists (and pop culture). </p>
<p>Conversely, in this line of thinking, the link between existential absurdity (I choose to be a horse) and irrational and <em>un</em>-human-like behaviour also becomes stronger. If generosity and not man, as <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/protagoras/">Protagoras</a> would have it, is a truer “measure of all things”, it certainly challenges us to research and investigate generosity in a much more collective and scientific way than has so far been the case - <em>and</em> to apply a service-minded understanding to our most pressing issues (such as some are trying to do in the field of <a href="http://www.timjackson.org.uk/">economy</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-everyone-lived-in-an-ecovillage-the-earth-would-still-be-in-trouble-43905?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The+Weekend+Conversation+-+3020&utm_content=The+Weekend+Conversation+-+3020+CID_e92a8a0e9176c8150b84fe98ec5a9da2&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=If%20everyone%20lived%20in%20an%20ecovillage%20the%20Earth%20would%20still%20be%20in%20trouble">environmental sustainability</a>.</p>
<p>One thing is certain: situating altruism and generous behaviour in evidence-based theory and practice, rather than solely in ideology and religion, seems perfectly suited to forming neutral ground on which different ideologies and religions could find shared purpose and productive co-existence. </p>
<p>A philosophy of giving could become an important bridge builder not only between positive psychology and existentialism (“happy” or “sad”), but also between extremist views, still so present in our world today.</p>
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<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://www.springer.com/us/book/9781493903078">Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology</a>, and was kindly co-edited by Jennifer Ma, PhD candidate, National Institute for Mental Health Research, Australian National University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas William Nielsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A philosophy based on giving of ourselves to others may help us live more meaningful and fulfilling lives, while helping to bridge the extremes of our emotions and beliefs.Thomas William Nielsen, Associate Professor, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428202015-07-06T01:23:47Z2015-07-06T01:23:47ZIs a cult of happiness leading us to lose sight of life?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86499/original/image-20150626-18257-1632nat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">However hard we pursue happiness, when the party's over we must still confront the grimmer aspects of life.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-155193032/stock-photo-portrait-of-cute-young-woman-in-mask.html?src=8u3d3sCU_50AzfW9n9XLaQ-1-24">Shutterstock/YanLev</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p>We live in a society that seems obsessed with the “cult of happiness”. Characters in movies and on television are frequently asked, “Are you happy?” Parents incessantly wish happiness upon their children:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I just want them to be happy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In her song Just Be Happy, pop singer Rihanna chants “just as long as it makes you happy”, over and over again. Pharrell Williams’ 2014 song Happy was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/happy-in-iran-the-trials-of-the-young-and-disenfranchised-27164">worldwide hit</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">If you sing it enough, maybe you can ‘be happy’ in Rihanna’s world.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Countless websites, shelves and shelves of self-help books and endless magazine articles attempt to identify exactly just what makes us happy! These are accompanied by step-by-step guides such as lifestyle website body+soul’s <a href="http://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/sex+relationships/wellbeing/eight+steps+to+happiness,6693">Eight Steps to Happiness</a>.</p>
<p>One example of this self-help genre is <a href="http://sonjalyubomirsky.com/">Sonja Lyubomirsky’s</a> step-by-step program, <a href="http://thehowofhappiness.com/">The How of Happiness</a>: A Practical Guide to Getting the Life You Want. According to Lyubomirsky, each of us has a kind of happiness “set point”, which can be calibrated to different highs and lows. The book advises readers on how to raise this “set point”. </p>
<p>The ubiquitous motivational speaker Anthony Robbins also offers a great deal of advice on happiness. His books, websites, conferences and training programs, not to mention special appearances on Oprah Winfrey’s Life Class series, tell us about the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/tony-robbins-success-secrets-make-it_n_2553113.html">three steps</a> we need to follow to find true happiness.</p>
<p>Robbins has built a prosperous career linking happiness with success. His <a href="https://www.tonyrobbins.com/events/unleash-the-power-within/">Unleash the Power Within</a> training programme is accompanied by testimonials from none other than Bill Clinton and Hugh Jackman.</p>
<h2>So much advice, so little of it good</h2>
<p>Through my involvement in writing on “happiness”, I have done my best to review the overwhelming volume of self-help literature and I have found very little to salvage. You are left, at best, cynical and, at worst, feeling inadequate. </p>
<p>This assessment is based on three broad observations.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Happiness is often identified as an “end point”: a place to which we travel. </p></li>
<li><p>The focus is on the individual and ignores any community bonds. In the <a href="http://www.academia.edu/202760/Governing_Citizens_through_Self-Help_Literature">words of Heidi Marie Rimke</a>, this celebrates a culture of “hyper-individuality for which an inherent, responsible relationality with others is actively discouraged and pathologised”. </p></li>
<li><p>Happiness is presented as something that can be administered through a list of exercises, or checklists. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The key question that each of these books, magazine articles and speakers fails to ask is whether happiness is actually possible.</p>
<p>If we accept that happiness is a state of being satisfied with one’s life, at what point is it possible to say we are truly satisfied? Perhaps happiness relies on the way we view the world. Is happiness a function of the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Good-People-Bad-Things/dp/1559723246">world around us</a> or our own perception of it?</p>
<h2>Must we forget the world to be happy?</h2>
<p>Can we be happy, for example, when successive Australian governments pursue brutal detention policies against refugees seeking asylum in this country? On our behalf, in our name, they are banished to what have been described as <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-28/keane-when-concentration-camps-and-democracy-clash/5397152">“concentration camps”</a>. </p>
<p>In this context, the pursuit of happiness can seem trivial or juvenile. </p>
<p>Or is our happiness only possible through exclusion? That is, is the pursuit of safety and freedom from persecution by asylum seekers pitted against the happiness of the domestic population: two populations whose interests are said to be at odds. </p>
<p>Can we be happy when on any single night across Australia <a href="http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/Fact_Sheets/Homelessness_in_Australia_v2.pdf">one person per 200</a> experiences homelessness? In a wealthy nation of only 23 million people, this figure ought to be astonishing.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/Fact_Sheets/Homelessness_and_Women.pdf">principal cause of homelessness</a> among women and children is male violence: <a href="http://homelessnessaustralia.org.au/images/publications/Fact_Sheets/Homelessness_and_Children.pdf">two-thirds of homeless children</a> are accompanying a woman escaping domestic violence. Other reasons range from entrenched structural inequality and inadequate affordable housing supply to intergenerational poverty and long-term unemployment. </p>
<h2>Happiness as a shared expression of love</h2>
<p>Sara Ahmed takes a similar journey in questioning the pursuit of happiness in her well-recognised work <a href="http://sfonline.barnard.edu/polyphonic/print_ahmed.htm">Feminist Killjoys</a>, which was followed by <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Promise-of-Happiness">The Promise of Happiness</a>. In these texts, Ahmed undertakes a robust cultural analysis of the idea of happiness as it functions in present-day Britain – but with much broader relevance. </p>
<p>It is worth recounting Ahmed’s arguments, as she simultaneously captures the individualised nature of happiness that allows us to ignore the plight of others, and the idea that happiness is something that someone else can bestow upon you. Happiness, Ahmed argues, is that which we “promise to give to others as an expression of love”. We say, “I just want you to be happy.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Beatles were perhaps wiser than they knew when they closed the first global live satellite TV broadcast with All You Need Is Love.</span></figcaption>
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<p>As someone who is inherently optimistic, I do think happiness is possible. But rather than an end point, it can be found in the fleeting moments of the everyday: noticing the sunset, the taste of fresh tomatoes, or a meal with friends and family. </p>
<p>It is within these moments that we need to appreciate happiness – to understand it within the context of an often brutal world and contextualise it within our own frailties and mortality.</p>
<p>These moments do not end the plight of refugees or house the homeless. What they do, however, is challenge the individualised nature of happiness as described by self-help literature. We are prompted to actively seek out moments of happiness in daily interactions with others and experiences, and take a moment to reflect and appreciate such instances. It echoes Eleanor Roosevelt’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-6qA0bGjja8C&redir_esc=y">valuable advice</a> that happiness is a by-product of experiences, not an end in itself. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Arvanitakis receives funding from Australian Research Council and the Office of Learning and Teaching. He is affiliated with various social justice organisations.</span></em></p>We can pursue our own happiness to the exclusion of the real world, but how meaningful can that be? Far better to engage with life and both the happiness and sadness it brings along the way.James Arvanitakis, Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437092015-06-29T20:07:17Z2015-06-29T20:07:17ZHappiness is an illusion, here’s why you should seek contentment instead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86670/original/image-20150629-9096-sptwtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Feeling content means having a deep-seated, abiding acceptance of oneself and one’s worth, together with a sense of self-fulfilment, meaning and purpose. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/_theo_/4484245088/">James Theophane/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I want to share a personal view of what it is to be happy and how it differs from feeling content. Let me begin with a clinical story. </p>
<p>They met at a party; it was love at first sight just like one reads about in romantic novels. They married following an exhilarating courtship, and since they shared an eagerness to raise a family, Jennifer soon announced the joyful news of her pregnancy. They called their baby Annie after Adam’s late mother. </p>
<p>They felt blessed; every moment since their first encounter had been nothing but pleasurable. Everyone who knew them concurred that their lives as a couple had been replete with happiness. </p>
<p>Tragically, it was not to endure. Their first setback occurred only days after Annie’s birth. She was sleeping fitfully and her colic stubbornly persisted. Jennifer felt utterly demoralised as a new mother. Her mounting sense of guilt and melancholy led to her admission to a psychiatric ward (her first ever encounter with psychiatry); the fear of her harming Annie or herself spread through the family and circle of friends. </p>
<p>And then, quite shockingly, despite the most diligent medical and nursing care, Jennifer met her death after jumping off a second floor balcony. Her family and friends plunged into deep grief; the medical professionals who had looked after her were similarly bereft.</p>
<h2>An elusive goal</h2>
<p>Having worked as a psychiatrist for over four decades and got to know dozens of men, women, and children of diverse backgrounds and with unique life stories, I have witnessed many a sad narrative, although suicide has mercifully been a rare event. </p>
<p>These experiences, in tandem with a lifelong fascination with what makes people tick, have led me most reluctantly to the judgement that while we may savour happiness episodically, it will invariably be disrupted by unwelcome negative feelings. Still, most of humankind will continue to harbour the expectation of living happily and remain oblivious that this wishful fantasy is an unconscious way of warding off the threat of psychic pain. </p>
<p>Rather than confront and demoralise those who have sought my help, I have gently but honestly responded to their plaintive yearning (“all I want is just to be happy”), by highlighting an inherent human sentiment. Namely that clinging to the fiction of being able to avoid suffering and enjoying a continuing state of pleasure is tantamount to self-deception. </p>
<p>I have offered them the hope – but not a guarantee – that they have the potential to lead a more fulfilling life than hitherto by participating in a challenging, and at times even distressing process of self-exploration whose purpose is to enhance self understanding and acceptance of the reality-bound emotional state I call contentment.</p>
<p>You may retort: “But you treat people who are miserable, pessimistic and self-deprecating, surely you must be hopelessly biased.” I would readily understand your reaction but suggest that all of us, not just those in treatment, crave happiness and are repeatedly frustrated by its elusiveness. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most of humankind continues to harbour the expectation of living happily and remains oblivious that this wishful fantasy is an unconscious way of warding off the threat of psychic pain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha/5129669316/">Kate Ter Haar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the father of psychoanalysis <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud">Sigmund Freud</a> emphasised in his 1930 essay, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents">Civilization and Its Discontents</a>, we are much more vulnerable to unhappiness than its opposite. That’s because we are constantly threatened by three forces: the fragility of our physical self, “doomed” by ageing and disease; the external world, with its potential to destroy us (through floods, fires, storms and earthquakes, for example); and our unpredictably complicated relationships with other people (regarded by Freud as the most painful source of unhappiness).</p>
<p>So, am I simply a misanthrope? I hope not but I am inclined to agree with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbert_Hubbard">Elbert Hubbard</a>, the American artist and philosopher, who said, “Life is just one damn thing after another”. </p>
<p>We only have to think about the 50 million people who are currently displaced and unlikely to find a secure haven anytime soon, or the 2.2 billion people – including millions of children – <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview">who live on less than US$2 a day</a> to appreciate the validity of that remark. </p>
<h2>A better option</h2>
<p>Given the formidable obstacles to chasing after happiness or promoting its sustainability if we are lucky enough to come by it, what options do human beings have? I have not come across any meaningful approach to this question, even from the <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9744812-flourish">unswervingly confident proponents</a> of the contemporary school of positive psychology.</p>
<p>So, I espouse the following: given that we have the means to distinguish between happiness and contentment, we can examine how they differ and, in so doing, identify an alternative to the futile pursuit of happiness. </p>
<p>Happiness, derived from the Norse word <em>hap</em>, means luck or chance; the phrase happy-go-lucky illustrates the association. Many Indo-European languages similarly conflate the feeling of happiness and luck. <em>Glück</em> in German, for instance, can be translated as either happiness or chance, while <em>eftihia</em>, the Greek word for happiness, is derived from <em>ef</em>, meaning good, and <em>tixi</em>, luck or chance. </p>
<p>Thus, a mother may have the good fortune to feel ecstatic when responding to her infant’s playfulness, only to see it evaporate a couple of years later and be replaced by the initial features of autism. In the story we started this article with, Jennifer may have persevered had her baby slept peacefully and not been assailed by colicky pain in her first few weeks of life.</p>
<p>Contentment is derived from the Latin <em>contentus</em> and usually translated as satisfied. No multiple meanings here to confuse us. In my view, feeling content refers to a deep-seated, abiding acceptance of one’s self and one’s worth together with a sense of self-fulfilment, meaning and purpose. </p>
<p>And, most critically, these assets are valued and nurtured whatever the circumstances, or even especially when they are distressing or depressing. </p>
<p>I have had the privilege of knowing men and women who suffered grievously as children in the ghettoes and concentration camps of Nazi Europe but emerged from their nightmare to face the challenge of seeking strengths, emotional and spiritual, within themselves. With the passage of time, many succeeded in achieving a sense of deep-seated contentment. </p>
<p>What these survivors have clearly demonstrated is that accepting and respecting oneself, coupled with determining what is personally meaningful, stand a greater chance of accomplishment, even if never completed, than a relentless and ultimately futile pursuit of happiness. What’s more, contentment has the potential to serve as a robust foundation upon which episodes of joy and pleasure can be experienced and cherished.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sidney Bloch supports GetUp.</span></em></p>Happiness might seem like a worthy goal but it will invariably be disrupted by unwelcome negative feelings. Far better to seek contentment, which can serve as a foundation for both joy and pleasure.Sidney Bloch, Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/438432015-06-29T04:23:58Z2015-06-29T04:23:58ZWhy business suddenly cares about staff being happy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86346/original/image-20150625-13008-1tir08f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The smiling face of the person serving you is an important part of the retail experience that makes customers want to come back for more.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-176982854/stock-photo-client-at-shop-paying-at-cash-register-with-saleswoman.html?src=3yrzlooMTx4iVK_h34OrNw-1-83">Shutterstock/Ikonoklast Fotografie</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Clothing retailer Cotton On <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/retail/cotton-on-tells-staff-to-keep-it-real-or-face-the-sack-20150318-1m1t2t.html">hit the headlines</a> this year after reportedly instructing staff that failing to have “fun” and “keep it real” are sackable offences. Has Cotton On suddenly — and unexpectedly — gotten in touch with its sensitive side?</p>
<p>Unlikely. A more likely reason for businesses’ current interest in happiness and wellbeing has to do with cold hard economics and shifts in the labour force. Happiness, in short, is good for business.</p>
<p>This is particularly the case in economies such as Australia, where around <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/service-sector/assasid.pdf">four out of every five jobs</a> are in the services sector. Services by their nature tend to be delivered in person and are intangible.</p>
<p>In an economy where profit increasingly comes from delivering services rather than making stuff, the emotional comportment of workers isn’t just an added extra. It’s indistinguishable from the product itself.</p>
<h2>Service with a smile</h2>
<p>Whether it’s a flight attendant calming a white-knuckle flyer, caregivers looking after patients or a sales assistant greeting customers with a smile, the rise of service jobs places an added premium on what US sociologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlie_Russell_Hochschild">Arlie Russell Hochschild</a> called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor">“emotional labour”</a> — that is positive emotional displays performed for paying customers.</p>
<p>Little wonder that happiness — and its outward expressions such as “fun” — have become big business.</p>
<p>In retail and other service industries, competition from online providers is only going to intensify employers’ focus on the emotional lives of their workers since it’s one area where in-person service providers can carve out a competitive advantage.</p>
<p>After all, the army of warehouse wage slaves who fill the tubs at ASOS or The Iconic could have the emotional range of a parsnip, and the customer experience wouldn’t be dented one bit. So long as the parcels are delivered on time, customers aren’t even aware of whether workers are having a good day or not.</p>
<p>Things are different for bricks-and-mortar operations like Cotton On. To attract and retain customers, they need to create an experience that makes people want to come back for more. Positive emotional displays by workers are one of the ways in which these service providers can distinguish their offerings from competitors.</p>
<p>As such, we can expect service companies to invest much more in developing their staff’s capacity to perform – or fake – emotions for better or for worse. And it’s probably for the worse.</p>
<h2>The emotional cost of faking it</h2>
<p>The intensification of emotional labour in the service industries is likely to have a range of unintended consequences.</p>
<p>Just as the introduction of electronic typewriters and computers in the 1970s and ‘80s produced a range of hand and forearm conditions known as repetitive strain injuries (RSI), as office workers sat at desks in fixed postures performing repetitive tasks for long periods, the spread and intensification of emotional labour throughout the workforce is likely to produce its own set of maladies.</p>
<p>German researchers Christian Dormann and Dieter Zapf, for example, argue that workers who fake emotions risk “emotional dissonance”, which can be defined as “discrepancies between felt and displayed emotions resulting from emotional labour”.</p>
<p>As Hochschild <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=X7rSS1RMvVAC&pg=PA90&dq=Maintaining+a+difference+between+feeling+and+feigning&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FoOLVaShN5Xg8AXa0KKADw&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Maintaining%20a%20difference%20between%20feeling%20and%20feigning&f=false">writes</a> in her book The Managed Heart:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Maintaining a difference between feeling and feigning over the long run leads to strain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Emotional dissonance can lead to emotional burnout and situations where people become estranged from their own emotions from the effort of displaying — and often fabricating — positive emotions day in and day out.</p>
<p>With the intensification of emotional labour, conditions like emotional dissonance threaten to be the RSI of the service industries.</p>
<p>Such is the concern about the impact of such problems on productivity and profitability that there is now academic literature about how to avoid emotional burnout. Strategies range from more effective screening procedures – to weed out employees who might be susceptible to such emotional burnout – to devising coping strategies.</p>
<p>Pieter A. Van Dijk and Andrea Kirk-Brown <a href="http://www.anzam.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf-manager/1452_VAN_DIJK_PIETER-442.PDF">note the negative side</a> of emotional dissonance but also suggest that “display rules” — such as those provided to Cotton On staff — can help workers to manage such emotions by rationalising them.</p>
<p>Interviews with tourism and visitor staff revealed a number of coping strategies to rationalise away negative feelings. As one interviewee explained to Van Dijk and Kirk-Brown:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’re constantly reminding yourself (what you’re here for) if you are having an off day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whether such strategies work over the longer term is open to question. And whether such emotions come back to bite workers in other area of their lives is another question.</p>
<p>While much attention has, rightly, been paid to the physical working conditions of workers in warehouses and the world’s sweatshops that churn out the goods we buy, it’s perhaps time that we thought through the consequences for workers who engage in the mass production of happiness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Scanlon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A more likely reason for businesses’ current interest in happiness and wellbeing has to do with cold hard economics and shifts in the labour force. Happiness, in short, is good for business.Christopher Scanlon, Academic Director, Learning Focus Area Hub, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428922015-06-29T01:47:05Z2015-06-29T01:47:05ZPursuing happiness: it’s mostly a matter of surviving well together<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85011/original/image-20150615-5838-16btdkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Our individual happiness, the quality of our relationships and community well-being are closely interconnected.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-178533422/stock-photo-large-group-of-diverse-people-holding-hands.html?src=Ms7K8OFdxl7RtmKVNubz6g-1-81">Shutterstock/Rawpixel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Understandings of happiness are shifting. More and more research is finding that we cannot <a href="https://theconversation.com/however-you-spend-it-money-isnt-the-key-to-happiness-25289">spend our way to happiness</a>. Increasing incomes do not necessarily lead to increasing happiness. Even in a country such as China, average incomes have increased fourfold since the 1990s while life satisfaction has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-happiness-and-satisfaction-should-replace-gdp-in-policy-making-30934">decreased</a> over the same period. </p>
<p>Research is also finding that happiness is less an individual matter and more a collective endeavour. The quality of our relationships with others is <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-gdp-happiness-is-about-more-than-just-individuals-33768">pivotal</a>. These others include those closest to us (our immediate family and friends) as well as those unknown to us but with whom we comprise a society. </p>
<p>In a climate-changing world, this relational understanding of happiness also has to extend to our relationship with the planet on which our survival depends.</p>
<p>The shift in understanding happiness could not be better summed up than in the <a href="http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Short-GNH-Index-edited.pdf">words</a> of the first elected prime minister of Bhutan in 2008: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know that true abiding happiness cannot exist while others suffer, and comes only from serving others, living in harmony with nature, and realising our innate wisdom and the true and brilliant nature of our own minds.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In our research on economies for <a href="http://takebackeconomy.net/">people and the environment</a>, we have focused on our relationships with others. Thus, instead of happiness, we talk of “surviving well together”. The idea of survival might seem too linked to material sufficiency, but for us it reframes our human-centred view of the world and locates humans as part of the web of life on Earth.</p>
<p>Surviving well together means taking into account not just our individual happiness and well-being but the happiness and well-being of others and the planet on which we live. </p>
<p>Surviving well together means considering how we live our lives on multiple fronts.</p>
<h2>The five elements of well-being</h2>
<p>One starting point is our own well-being. Consistent with the research on happiness, well-being is not about material wealth. In a <a href="http://www.gallup.com/press/176624/wellbeing-five-essential-elements.aspx">comprehensive study</a> of people in more than 150 countries, Tom Rath and Jim Harter found that there are five essential elements to well-being: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well-being is about the combination of our love for what we do each day, the quality of our relationships, the security of our finances, the vibrancy of our physical health, and the pride we take in what we have contributed to our communities. Most importantly, it’s about how these five elements interact.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This definition can help us think about what we do with our time. Are we using our time to cultivate all the elements of our well-being? <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-its-not-you-why-wellness-isnt-the-answer-to-overwork-42124">Are we overworking</a> to the detriment of our relationships, physical health and community contributions? </p>
<p>Downshifters are one group of people who take these questions seriously. They <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/documents/dp_fulltext/DP62.pdf">downsize their paid work</a> to have more time for other kinds of “work” – for nurturing their relationships, communities, environments. Some sea changers or tree changers are likewise experimenting with <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-tax-why-you-pay-150000-extra-to-live-in-emerald-city-20150606-ghhb3z">ways of surviving well by moving</a> to areas with cheaper housing and shorter commutes. </p>
<p>Not all of us have these options for surviving well (or what are sometimes disparagingly call “lifestyle choices”). Surviving well is also a matter of surviving well together by ensuring that there are social supports for all – such as decent and affordable health care, education, public transport and housing – safe working conditions and reasonable working hours; and jobs that are fairly paid. </p>
<p>With these conditions in place we can start to create societies in which all have an opportunity to achieve the five elements of well-being.</p>
<p>At the same time it is important that we do not forget what the late environmental philosopher Val Plumwood <a href="http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-March-2008/plumwood.html">described</a> as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the many unrecognised, shadow places that provide our material and ecological support. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the climate crises deepens, the importance of attending to our ecological supports becomes all the more evident and pressing. Sadly, it all too often takes tragic events such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-more-tragic-than-death-who-remembers-rana-plaza-18222">Rana Plaza factory collapse</a> in Bangladesh to remind us of those people whose work in shadow places provides our material support. </p>
<p>We can take individual steps to care for our own well-being while insisting our governments provide social supports for all. So too, in an interconnected world, we can take individual steps to change our relationship with shadow places by considering what and how much we consume, while also pressuring governments and corporations and supporting the work of labour and environmental rights organisations. </p>
<h2>Moving to an alternative sensibility</h2>
<p>With the shift in understandings of happiness, various indicators and indices have been developed to more accurately reflect the well-being of nations. These include the <a href="http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/">Gross National Happiness</a> measure devised and used by the Bhutanese government; the <a href="http://genuineprogress.net/">Genuine Progress Indicator</a> adopted in the US by the states of Maryland in 2010 and Vermont in 2012; and the <a href="http://worldhappiness.report/">World Happiness Report</a>, developed by the <a href="http://unsdsn.org/">Sustainable Development Solutions Network</a> for the United Nations.</p>
<p>In various ways these measures delink money from happiness and recognise that happiness is a collective rather than individual pursuit. Their downside is that they reduce the state of a nation to a single measure and lead to the inevitable ranking of nations. They have limited capacity to generate what the sociologist John Law calls <a href="http://cus.sagepub.com/content/3/2/239.abstract">“an alternative sensibility”</a> that recognises the complexity of any given context.</p>
<p>We have been interested in the potential of what we call “relational metrics”. These are tools such as a <a href="http://takebackeconomy.net/?page_id=387">24-hour clock</a>, which people can use to track their use of time and evaluate whether it is being spent in ways that support or undermine their ability to survive well. Or the <a href="http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/ecologicalfootprint/calculators/personal/introduction.asp">ecological footprint calculators</a>, which people can use to assess the impact of their lives on the well-being of the planet. Or the <a href="http://takebackeconomy.net/?page_id=391">Ethical Interconnection Checklist</a>, which people can use to consider the shadow places that are part and parcel of how we survive well. </p>
<p>It is practical tools such as these that might help us shift from the pursuit of happiness to the pursuit of surviving well together. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42892/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We now know that we cannot spend our way to happiness nor pursue it as an individual goal. It turns out that happiness is built on the foundations of good relationships and broad well-being.Katherine Gibson, Professor of Economic Geography, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityJenny Cameron, Associate Professor, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of NewcastleStephen Healy, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428882015-06-26T01:27:53Z2015-06-26T01:27:53ZHow happiness becomes a burden of identity as a wife and mother<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86058/original/image-20150623-19368-11o7yy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Life is naturally sunny for the 'happy mother' of social mythology, which makes it doubly difficult for mums when they are miserable. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-204759562/stock-photo-happy-beautiful-woman-young-mother-playing-with-her-adorable-baby-son-cute-little-boy-enjoying.html?src=eDwzWNZ5IQhgole7yHhjRw-1-113">Shutterstock/FamVeld</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Why are housewives “happy” and feminists “angry”? Why are queens blithely labelled “tragic”, trannies “sad” and spinsters “bitter”? One of the intriguing things about identity stereotypes is how cultural constructions of identity are aligned with emotional regimes. This has long been an issue of contention for feminists, who are, as <a href="http://feministkilljoys.com/about/">Sara Ahmed</a> has eloquently argued, habitually castigated as “killjoys”.</p>
<p>Being labelled bitter, sad or tragic is certainly marginalising, but so too can the expectation of happiness be a burden. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the onslaught of seraphic images that make up the myth of motherhood – celebrity mummies pushing prams on magazine covers, yummy mummies with fashion spreads on Facebook, or the age-old stereotype of mothers in advertising who remain ubiquitously obsessed with cleaning products and “alpine fresh” scents. </p>
<p>Even if you consciously reject the media images, these ideas about what a mother ought to be and ought to feel are there from the minute you wake up until you go to sleep at night.</p>
<p>In an age of increasing workplace demands, so too the ideals of motherhood have become paradoxically more – not less – demanding. The new credos of motherhood – whether they are called <a href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=0300066821">“Intensive Mothering”</a> or <a href="http://naturalparentsnetwork.com/what-is-np/">“Natural Parenting”</a> – are wholly taken up with a narrowly prescribed way of doing things.</p>
<p>In the West, 21st-century child rearing is becoming increasingly time-consuming, expert-guided and, above all else, emotionally all-absorbing and incredibly expensive.</p>
<p>It is no longer just a question of whether you should or should not eat strawberries or prawns or soft cheese – or, heaven forbid, junk food – while you are pregnant, or whether you should or should not breastfeed for the required two years. The issue of what you should or should not feel has come under intense scrutiny.</p>
<p>The construction of new emotional disorders for mothers is something of a pop-psychology pastime. The old list of mental disorders is expanding from pre-natal anxiety, post-natal depression, post-partum psychosis and the baby blues, to include postnatal stress disorder, maternal anxiety and mood imbalance, and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/explaining-tokophobia-the-phobia-of-pregnancy-and-childbirth-9726809.html">tokophobia</a> — the latter being coined at the start of the millennium to designate an unreasonable fear of giving birth.</p>
<p>In all of this, the message is clear. A good mother is a happy mother. A sad mother is a bad mother. A sad mother is not only unnatural but certifiably insane.</p>
<h2>The rise of Parenting Hate</h2>
<p>Little wonder such miserable standards of perfection triggered a backlash. The decades of the seeming triumph of the ideologies of Intensive Mothering and Natural Parenting also led to the rise of the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/12/parenting_trend_stories_the_new_york_times_knows_we_love_to_hate_read_them.html">“Parenting Hate Read”</a>, an outpouring of books and blogs written by mothers who frankly confessed that they were depressed about having children for no reason other than the fact that it is frequently exhausting and occasionally dreadful.</p>
<p>The first in the genre was Heather Armstrong’s <a href="http://dooce.com/about/">Dooce</a> blog. This went on to make Armstrong the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/14/most-influential-women-in-media-forbes-woman-power-women-oprah-winfrey.html">26th-most-influential</a> woman in the American media, according to Forbes Magazine. This was followed by blogs like <a href="http://www.scarymommy.com/home/19">Scary Mommy</a> and <a href="http://www.rantsfrommommyland.com/">Rants from Mommyland</a>, or books by writers such as <a href="http://alicebradley.net/about/">Alice Bradley</a> who <a href="http://www.blogher.com/node/5563">declared</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mommy blogging is a radical act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In marked contrast to the yummy mummies featured in the media, what these parenting blogs tend to give their readers is the messy lived experience in between. Parenting Hate is an ironic misnomer because almost every posting ends with a ritualistic endorsement of children and family life.</p>
<p>The mainstream media has been quick to cash in on the trend. Coca-Cola <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRqUTA6AegA">ran an ad</a> for “Coke Life” in Argentina in which a toddler relentlessly destroys his parents’ home, if not their lives, piling up the kiddie trash, the green goo and dirty nappies on the living room floor. </p>
<p>Fiat ran the “Welcome to the Motherhood” ad for its 500L car, which features a fashionable albeit dishevelled mother rapping amidst the toys and cornflakes on the living room floor. She may not “have it all” but clearly “does it all”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eNVde5HPhYo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fiat tapped into the ‘Parenting Hate’ trend with its ‘Welcome to Motherhood’ ad.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Parenting Hate trend was accompanied by the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/03/health/03mood.html?_r=0">startling findings</a> of Nobel Prize-winning behavioural economist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Daniel_Kahneman">Daniel Kahneman</a> that American women ranked child care <a href="http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/what-are-parents-really-juggling">among the least pleasurable activities</a> of their entire life, on a par with housework – a finding replicated by a range of social scientists.</p>
<h2>Motherhood as misery contest</h2>
<p>The Parenting Hate phenomenon might have gone some way to shattering the myth of maternal bliss, but it also runs the risk of turning motherhood into a kind of misery competition.</p>
<p>It should come as no surprise that in America, which has no government support for childcare, no statutory right to maternity leave and few social services, that women should be more miserable than – for example – their Scandinavian counterparts.</p>
<p>Another problem may well be that Western ideas about happiness have grown impoverished. Happiness, as it is commonly construed in the English-speaking world, is made up of continuous moments of pleasure and the absence of pain. </p>
<p>These popular assumptions about happiness are quite culturally specific. They are also comparatively recent historically. Their origins can be found in the works of liberal philosophers such as <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/">Jeremy Bentham</a> and <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-mill/">James Mill</a> (father to John Stuart) who argued that people act purely out of self-interest and the goal to which self-interest aspires is happiness.</p>
<p>Bentham and Mill were political progressives in their day. Their ambition to ameliorate the existence of their fellow human beings perhaps disguised — for a time, at least — the fact that utility and self-interest might not be all there is to goodness or, indeed, to happiness.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, popular Western assumptions about happiness have remained broadly utilitarian and self-interested. This has readily transformed into an endless string of television commercials showing families becoming happier with every purchase, or sad people being transformed by motivational coaches selling the idea that self-belief can overcome all odds.</p>
<h2>Key is to recast relationships</h2>
<p>There may be uncomfortable realities to be faced. Unless you are Mother Teresa, you probably spent your life in a naively self-involved way until you had children. You went out to parties and came home drunk. You worked hard through the day and slept in on the weekend.</p>
<p>Babies have other ideas. They stick forks in electric sockets, go berserk with their mashed bananas and throw up on your work clothes. They want to be carried around through the day and wake up in the night.</p>
<p>Babies challenge the central tenets of our liberal individualistic society and its endless privileging of “me, me, me”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/current-affairs-politics/Motherhood-Anne-Manne-9781741143799">Anne Manne</a> has bravely talked about the ways in which mothering entails relationships and responsibilities that do not sit well with the individualistic language of late capitalism or, indeed, certain strands of feminism. However, there is something deeply uncomfortable in some of the political lessons that Manne extrapolates from the supposedly transformative social power of a mother’s love, even when it goes under the safe-sounding catchphrase, an ethic of care.</p>
<p>It excludes women who do not have children. It excludes men. It excludes teenagers and the elderly. In many ways it excludes children, too. </p>
<p>It may be a fallacy to understand children as resilient, fully independent creatures, as Manne argues. But it is equally false not to recognise the activity of children — to understand them only as passive recipients of “mothering”. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott">Donald Winnicott</a>, author of the theory of the <a href="http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindful-parenting/2013/09/the-gift-of-the-good-enough-mother/">Good Enough Mother</a>, would surely have questioned the idea that endless amounts of mothering would help children grow into autonomous, flourishing human beings.</p>
<p>Mothers, as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/fashion/06Culture.html">Elisabeth Badinter</a> has <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/spiegel-interview-with-french-feminist-elisabeth-badinter-women-aren-t-chimpanzees-a-713890.html">argued</a>, are not chimpanzees. Yet questions of motherhood are too often structured around deeply flawed arguments about what is “natural”. Of course there is biology. But lives are also constructed through culture. </p>
<p>If society can solve its social problems, then maybe motherhood will cease to be a misery competition — mothers might not be happy in a utilitarian or hedonistic sense, but will lead rich and satisfying lives. And then maybe a stay-at-home dad can change a nappy without a choir of angels descending from heaven, singing Hallelujah.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women are supposed to be happy about motherhood – if they’re not their parenting is open to question. We have seen a ‘Parenting Hate’ backlash against this, but what’s needed most is better social support.Camilla Nelson, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428172015-06-25T02:52:59Z2015-06-25T02:52:59ZMeasures of happiness tell us less than economics of unhappiness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83916/original/image-20150604-11737-o19jls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C41%2C995%2C564&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Happiness about a new car is relative - it depends on your expectations and on what other people have. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-242077372/stock-photo-young-woman-receiving-the-keys-of-her-new-car.html?src=x7_6Yu2XUU4jEEjv8A9Ycw-1-76">Shutterstock/Minerva Studio</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>– Tolstoy, Anna Karenina</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Money doesn’t buy you happiness, but it does buy you a better class of unhappiness.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>– unsourced, but perhaps a modification of a remark by Spike Milligan</strong></p>
<p>Over the past 20 years or so, the study of the economics of happiness has boomed. By contrast, the economics of unhappiness has been almost entirely neglected.</p>
<p>The neglect of happiness is not simply a quirk of nomenclature, like the use of “health economics” to describe a field that is almost entirely concerned with responses to illness and disability. The central problem in the economics of happiness has been to determine how people’s answers to questions of the form “How happy are you?” are related to economic variables like income and employment. Unhappiness is never considered, except as the absence of happiness.</p>
<p>Even the most basic results of the economic theory of happiness are, to a substantial extent, spurious artefacts of the analytical framework rather than genuine facts about how people experience happiness.</p>
<p>The crucial finding <a href="http://clubtroppo.com.au/2007/02/21/whats-wrong-with-the-layard-thesis/#comments">is this</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cross-country data shows pretty consistently that on average happiness increases with income, but at a certain point diminishing returns set in. In the developed world, people are not on average happier than they were in the 1960s.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Self-assessed happiness ratings are relative</h2>
<p>The data that supports this consists of surveys that ask people to rate their happiness on a scale, typically from 1 to 10. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/map-happiness-benchmark_n_5592194.html">Within any given society</a>, happiness tends to rise with all the obvious variables: income, health, family relationships and so on. But between societies, or in Western societies like Australia over time, there’s not much difference even though both income and health (life expectancy, for example) have improved pretty steadily for a long time.</p>
<p>This sounds like a striking discovery, but actually it tells us little. An example illustrates the point. Suppose you wanted to establish whether children’s height increased with age, but you couldn’t directly measure height.</p>
<p>One way to respond to this problem would be to interview groups of children in different classes at school and ask them the question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how tall are you?”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83917/original/image-20150604-11710-1ao4hyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A class of children’s ratings of how tall they are don’t even tell us whether their group is tall or short overall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-158646758/stock-photo-portrait-of-cute-boy-standing-with-friends-in-a-row-at-kindergarten.html?src=oPV4EouSDPdvUdeTJTNIPA-1-52">Shutterstock/Tyler Olson</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The data would look pretty much like reported data on the relationship between happiness and income. That is, within the groups, you’d find that kids who were old relative to their classmates tended to be report higher numbers than those who were young relative to their classmates (for the obvious reason that, on average, the older ones would be taller than their classmates).</p>
<p>But, for all groups, the median response would be something like 7. Even though average age is higher for higher classes, average reported height would not change (or not change much).</p>
<p>So you’d reach the conclusion that height was a subjective construct depending on relative, rather than absolute, age. If you wanted, you could establish some sort of metaphorical link between being old relative to your classmates and being “looked up to”. But in reality height does increase with (absolute) age.</p>
<p>The problem is with the scaling of the question. A question of this kind can only give relative answers. Since we have no internal scale of happiness that would allow us to say “I feel 6.3 today”, the only way to answer the question we have been asked is with reference to some implicit expectation of what constitutes, for example, an above-average level of happiness, which might justify the answer 7 or 8. </p>
<p>In a society where most people are hungry most of the time, having a full belly might justify such an answer. If everyone has enough to eat, but mostly rice or beans, you might consider yourself happy to be eating roast chicken. And so on.</p>
<p>Inevitably, therefore, the income and health status needed to report yourself as more than averagely happy will depend on what you consider average. Critically, this is true whether or not people in rich societies are in fact happier, and whether or not the average person is happier now than the average person in 1960. A relative scale tells us nothing one way or the other.</p>
<h2>Why unhappiness is more revealing</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83915/original/image-20150604-11715-1qf0v1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">With objective causes such as hunger, unhappiness may reveal more about well-being than happiness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/faugusto/73577336">Flickr/Filipe Moreira</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we think instead about unhappiness, a very different set of research questions emerges. While happiness is an elusive and subjective concept, there are plenty of objective sources of unhappiness: hunger, illness, the premature death of loved ones, family breakdown and so on. We can measure the way these sources of unhappiness change over time, and compare this to subjective evidence.</p>
<p>The shift of focus from happiness to unhappiness has important implications – most notably with respect to the central dividing line of modern politics, the welfare state. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/robin-hood-and-piggy-bank-what-the-welfare-state-does-for-us-25790">welfare state</a> is not an institution much associated with happiness. Few people, if asked to list the sources of happiness in their life, would nominate the receipt of unemployment benefits, or a stay in a public hospital. What the welfare state does, or tries to do, is to remove or ameliorate many of the sources of unhappiness in a market economy: illness, loss of income through unemployment or inability to work, homelessness and so on.</p>
<p>The track record of the welfare state has been one of remarkable success. This can be seen by comparing outcomes in modern welfare states with those in the United States, where the <a href="http://rooseveltinstitute.org/policy-and-ideasroosevelt-historyfdr/new-deal">New Deal</a> produced only a stunted, and stinting, version of the welfare state. Despite its technological leadership and its founders’ <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html">endorsement of the pursuit of happiness</a>, the US leads the developed world on numerous measures of unhappiness, including <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279981/">premature mortality</a>, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696644/">food insecurity</a>, <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All">incarceration</a> and inadequate <a href="http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/in-the-literature/2013/nov/access-affordability-and-insurance">access to health care</a>.</p>
<p>These achievements have not earned the welfare state much love on the political right. Whatever the ostensible concerns about fiscal sustainability, the real motive for most attacks on the welfare state is the feeling that unhappiness is good for us, or at least good for other people. Malcolm Fraser, in his now-forgotten incarnation as an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-evolution-of-malcolm-fraser-was-a-wonderful-thing-to-behold-39175">admirer of Ayn Rand</a>, put this sentiment as well as anyone when he opined that “<a href="http://andc.anu.edu.au/australian-words/meanings-origins?field_alphabet_value=171">life wasn’t meant to be easy</a>”.</p>
<p>Despite decades of relentless attacks from the political right, with the support of “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way">Third Way</a>” converts from social democracy, the welfare state remains largely intact, and remarkably popular. We have even seen some limited expansions: examples include <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D">Medicare Part D</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act">Obamacare</a> in the US and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (<a href="http://www.ndis.gov.au/what-is-the-ndis">NDIS</a>) in Australia.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, a renewal of the social democratic project will require new theoretical foundations. Hopes that such a foundation could be found in the economics of happiness have so far not been fulfilled. What we need is an improved understanding of the economics of unhappiness.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay by the author, What Happiness Conceals, which is part of a newly published collection, <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42817/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Quiggin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While the economics of happiness has boomed, the economics of unhappiness has been neglected. Yet there are many objective sources of unhappiness that good economic research might tackle productively.John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics , The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/433412015-06-25T01:31:57Z2015-06-25T01:31:57ZHope, anger and courage – or why are conservatives so miserable?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86042/original/image-20150623-19368-12g84e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The conservative attitude stems from a childlike fear of not being able to change things around them.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/artetetra/13933065633/">Artetetra/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>We live in a time of positive psychology, where the path to happiness is apparently paved with the right thoughts. At its most bizarre, this manifests itself in the popularity of snake oil salesmen like <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/deepak-chopra-9542257">Deepak Chopra</a>, who – for a healthy fee – will grant you eternal youth, and <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com.au/The-Secret/Rhonda-Byrne/9781582701707">The Secret</a>, which using hitherto unknown laws of physics will bring you health, wealth and happiness.</p>
<p>If these were merely further examples of human’s extraordinary capacity for self-deception, it would be laughable, but the climate in which positive psychology flourishes has a more sinister aspect. If poverty, oppression and ill-health can be overcome by positive thinking, then what are we to make of those who succumb to them?</p>
<p>Our political system appears to have drunk the positive psychology Kool-Aid, when it lauds aspiration and industriousness and increasingly comes to regard those who fall through the cracks, be they refugees or the urban poor, as weaklings with insufficient mettle.</p>
<p>The proper response to suffering should be compassion. To be virtuous, compassion obviously needs to be tempered by the occasion: a doctor in an emergency room confronted by the drug addict clutching his stomach and demanding opiates may, in considering both the long-term needs of this patient and justice towards the community, rightly set aside compassion. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, good people give those who are suffering the benefit of the doubt. How then are we to take the apparent fact that, for large segments of the Australian population, the suffering of refugees such as the Rohingyas and of our own Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people seems more likely to invite apathy or disdain? Australian politics increasingly resembles a grim contest to prove who can be the most mean-spirited.</p>
<p>Are we really a country utterly lacking in compassion? The charitable impulses of ordinary Australians are beyond doubt. We saw it in the large numbers of health professionals who risked their lives to save others after the 2004 tsunami or the more recent Ebola outbreak, and we are among the highest charitable donors in the world. </p>
<p>Yet the dominant political discourse seldom reflects this. How do we explain this paradox?</p>
<h2>Our sad culture of victim blaming</h2>
<p>The work of <a href="http://www.springer.com/us/book/9780306404955">American social psychologist Melvin Lerner</a> gives us a clue. In the 1970s, Lerner and his collaborators were struck by the widespread phenomenon of “victim blaming”. </p>
<p>Lerner’s explanation is that we are equipped with a cognitive bias he dubbed the Just World Hypothesis. Its implied proposition is that the world distributes rewards and punishment equally. In situations where we are confronted with suffering and are unable to do anything to alleviate that suffering we tend to resort to the assumption that the victims somehow brought their fate upon themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86044/original/image-20150623-19403-1aitx34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People assume victims brought their fate upon themselves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wolframburner/13987070118/in/photolist-niZoDm-dDm9Je-dDr2yE-qTNVBW-dDmq4B-dDmnTT-dDrK4j-5MquFU-dDmk1B-dDrGQs-dDrFK3-omhdAM-omhc1T-c6Aq2A-c6AoWh-omGDJe-o46CPe-on3uov-ojNwfD-cccUQN-o3rNFN-o3sb4A-ojPd28-okJJSe-cco9jd-c8rsR1-c8rthh-c6AoGb-omRS2T-ohLNqw-o3j1Kx-o4NP8k-c7FEHd-bV1TMB-bV1Twz-on6xPw-ojKdiS-o3MEu7-ok6cRb-bUQEuP-c6Aqib-c8ZuPf-c6AoSu-9dfUtG-ojgwU7-ojgyES-okxoV9-c6ApHC-o3t4it-o32F5n">Wolfram Burner/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps even more shockingly, his <a href="http://tinyurl.com/kqjepx8">subsequent studies</a>
showed that women were even more likely than men to blame victims of sexual violence. The observer’s rationale seems to be that if she can convince herself that the victim made herself a victim, the world becomes a safer place; she would not dress that way or act provocatively.</p>
<p>The stark realities are that the simple fact of being a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time is all that is required to become a victim – and more often than not, that place <a href="http://www.ourwatch.org.au/Understanding-Violence/Facts-and-figures">is the woman’s home</a>.</p>
<p>Lerner’s conclusions look bleak and it is easy to lapse into despair at the human condition. There is, however, another way of interpreting them. The crucial variable is agency. </p>
<p>We victim blame in response to our own powerlessness, perhaps as a way of assuaging our guilt. It is true that individually we are powerless to deal with the problems of refugees, racism, domestic violence or the ecological catastrophe which Pope Francis has so eloquently denounced. </p>
<h2>We can always do something</h2>
<p>Yet collectively we can and must do something. As Pope Francis <a href="Http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html">writes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hope would have us recognise that there is always a way out, that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Pope’s remarks echo St Augustine, who wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Collective action requires the right combination of anger and courage. As Augustine understood them, these are virtues rather than feelings. One can have a surfeit or a deficit of them. In the wrong combination or in the wrong setting, they can be disastrous; anger can lead to bitterness and courage can become foolhardiness.</p>
<p>Viewing Augustine’s comments in this light enables us to understand a striking feature of those who would have things remain as they are: their bombast and their fury. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86043/original/image-20150623-19427-10nqt5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saint Augustine said hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/7878444030/in/photolist-seUydG-38CLHi-4ypi6s-rDYrAJ-rE7qSp-m8wMRa-duccvi-ofR8VE-bB5ide-9g3fGx-b7APJr-4V86Q-4V84w-d1c5VU-dRrgqn-bzvxDz-nLHXu1-6Ae6Jr-95dRc8-95gKWQ-nLJBKD-nJxwRZ-jwn7wq-jumqMM-3k2soY-3jXaXX-jujX5g-jun1KY-jujZqZ-cgEVDo-jumpCc-nMSH9A-nMTdTK-nGN2P7-nskXed">Lawrence OP/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Behind <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/">Andrew Bolt’s</a> twisted grimace or <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/">Miranda Devine’s</a> patrician sneer, a sensitive and compassionate observer can recognise the frightened child hiding under the blankets. For the most immediately obvious fact about such figures, their wealth and fame notwithstanding, is how very unhappy they seem.</p>
<p>Understandably so, for a life with neither hope nor compassion is not properly human. Their message amounts to saying that nothing can be done, that nothing should be done and if something is done <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674768680">then the consequences will be dire</a>.</p>
<p>For those of us who are philosophers and thus have a certain faith in human rationality, any attitude, whether utopian or cynical, must answer to reality. The conservative attitude, whose advertising copy is hard-headed realism, amounts to little more than abject cowardice in the face of avoidable evil. Like a crutch, cognitive biases such as victim blaming can serve us for a while but eventually they distort us.</p>
<p>Every time we deny the suffering of others, some part of ourselves dies. To move forward in tackling the enormous problems that confront us, in the ways recommended by the African Saint and the Argentinian Pope requires courage. Above all, it calls for us to replace an ethic of blame with an ethic of compassion and mutual responsibility. Through these we might find genuine happiness.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43341/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Paul Hamilton is branch president of the National Tertiary Education Union, University of Notre Dame Australia. </span></em></p>Without compassion for others and the courage to do something about it, our community is more likely to be mean-spirited and miserable than happy and generous.Richard Paul Hamilton, Senior Lecturer Philosophy and Bio-Ethics, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428982015-06-24T20:14:40Z2015-06-24T20:14:40ZCan we love happiness? Or do we then risk more sadness?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86032/original/image-20150623-19371-19tqo71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The most powerful strategy for achieving happiness is to give up trying to be happy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-266829029/stock-photo-living-painting-smiling-woman-completely-covered-with-thick-paint.html?src=tvfNNSpK4dUkqVvbsXcHDQ-3-49">Mila Supinskaya/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>To pose the question of whether we can love happiness in today’s world feels a bit like asking whether the Pope is Catholic. Most of us believe we not only <em>can</em> love happiness, but that we <em>should!</em> Unfortunately, it is this very love of happiness that is leading many of us to experience more sadness. </p>
<p>Why, I hear you ask? Well let me start with an example. Imagine you have a goal and it is to become smarter. You decide to enrol in an science degree and major in astrophysics (being an astrophysicist is clearly going to make you smarter), you spend every spare minute playing Sudoku and purchase the latest “get smart quick” brainpower gimmick. </p>
<p>Over time you notice that indeed you are becoming smarter. You are winning more often at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit and can amaze your friends with complex theories of black holes and dark energy.</p>
<p>Yet, you would still like to be smarter. You feel slightly disappointed that you are not as smart as you thought you might be. This feeling of disappointment motivates you to learn more and try harder until eventually you reach your goal. </p>
<p>Now imagine that your goal is to be happy. You buy the latest books on how to be happy, repeat positive sentiments to yourself in the mirror each morning and spend at least ten minutes a day holding a pencil between your teeth (it’s true, it <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/54/5/768/">actually does work</a>!). </p>
<p>Upon reflection, however, you are not as happy as you would like to be. Now, the feeling of disappointment, rather than motivating you to try hard, tends to make you feel less happy. As a result, you are now further removed from your desired state of happiness. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86036/original/image-20150623-19411-1ltg5rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86036/original/image-20150623-19411-1ltg5rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86036/original/image-20150623-19411-1ltg5rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86036/original/image-20150623-19411-1ltg5rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86036/original/image-20150623-19411-1ltg5rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86036/original/image-20150623-19411-1ltg5rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86036/original/image-20150623-19411-1ltg5rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Endless pleasure, and endless happiness, quickly becomes very dull and even painful.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/duni_dun/6166474655/">Duunn/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The nature of goal pursuit itself predicts this ironic outcome. Aiming for a goal often involves feelings of disappointment along the way, which means that trying to be happy may be <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/emo/11/4/807/">counter-productive</a>. </p>
<p>The aim of this illustration is to show that the very act of trying to be happy ironically pushes happiness further away. The most powerful strategy for achieving happiness is to give up trying to be happy. </p>
<h2>Living in a world of laughing clowns</h2>
<p>Consistent with the above insights, current approaches within psychotherapy have begun to challenge how people relate to their own emotions. People walk out of these sessions more accepting of their negative emotions and holding less tightly to the need to be happy. </p>
<p>As they walk out of the therapist’s door, however, they are confronted with a world that is beset by happiness. From advertising on billboards and television screens to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9535365/State-happiness-campaigns-leave-people-feeling-gloomier-research-suggests.html">national campaigns</a> designed to raise national levels of happiness, the value of happiness is <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YLb1148-VWcC&oi=fnd&pg=PT2&dq=Smile+or+die:+How+positive+thinking+fooled+America+and+the+world.+&ots=SPhvbxvrqx&sig=9YdvqJsLJ1e0qcXKIw3NP58YgVs#v=onepage&q=Smile%20or%20die%3A%20How%20positive%20thinking%20fooled%20America%20and%20the%20world.&f=false">promoted everywhere</a>.</p>
<p>On the flip side, our Western world values sadness very differently. In some cases even everyday malaise is quickly pathologised and medicalised, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Normal-Out-Control-Medicalization/dp/0062229265">treated with drugs</a> designed to return people to “normality”.</p>
<p>Indeed, there is an eerie similarity between our current approaches to our emotional worlds and the kind of dystopian society that Aldous Huxley envisaged in his book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World">Brave New World</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86034/original/image-20150623-19368-18k73yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86034/original/image-20150623-19368-18k73yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86034/original/image-20150623-19368-18k73yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86034/original/image-20150623-19368-18k73yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86034/original/image-20150623-19368-18k73yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86034/original/image-20150623-19368-18k73yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86034/original/image-20150623-19368-18k73yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We believe we need to have complete control of our emotional lives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/beth19/4907410699/">Βethan/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our own research has begun to highlight the possibility that “happiness cultures” may be responsible for <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/emo/12/1/69/">reducing life satisfaction and increasing depression</a>. This is especially true when people experience high levels of negative emotion and <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/emo/14/4/639/">feel that these emotional states</a> are socially devalued. </p>
<p>Experiencing this mismatch between our own emotional states and those that are considered valuable by the cultures that we live in <a href="http://spp.sagepub.com/content/6/5/496">may even leave us</a> feeling lonely and socially disconnected.</p>
<h2>So should we hate happiness?</h2>
<p>I am certainly not suggesting we should all dress in black and revel in our shared despair. Being happy is a good thing and it is exactly this state that we are all so keen to achieve. </p>
<p>The point is that we often go about this in the wrong way. We fail to value negative experiences along the way and think that striving for more and more pleasure and enjoyment is the best way to achieve our happiness goals. </p>
<p>The fact is that endless pleasure, and endless happiness, quickly becomes very dull and even painful. For true well-being we need contrasts. Our negative experiences and negative feelings give meaning and context to happiness: they make us happier overall. As <a href="http://psr.sagepub.com/content/18/3/256">our own research suggests</a>, pain has many positive consequences and experiencing pain is often a critical pathway to flourishing in life. </p>
<p>So can we love happiness? I think we can. It is not so much our love of happiness, but our dislike of sadness, the tendency to run away from pain and suffering and to see these experiences as a sign of failure, that leads to the problems I describe above. </p>
<p>Perhaps our problem with happiness comes about because we live in a world where we believe we can control everything in our lives. From our temperature-controlled homes to our capacity to insure against every possible risk, we believe we should have the same level of control over our emotional lives.</p>
<p>There is an oft-quoted saying (commonly found on a wall calendar at your grandmother’s house), “If you love something set it free”. Perhaps that is how we should be thinking about happiness? </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century</a> (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brock Bastian receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>To pose the question of whether we can love happiness feels a bit like asking whether the Pope is a Catholic. Most of us believe we not only can love happiness, but that we should!Brock Bastian, ARC Future Fellow, School of Psychology, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428962015-06-24T01:17:48Z2015-06-24T01:17:48ZHappiness born of connectedness lifts up Aboriginal Australians<p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I recently spent some time on an outstation in the Northern Territory. Unless you have been on one, it is hard to understand the level of poverty that some Aboriginal people live in – sleeping on concrete floors, little money, no luxuries. Life is supplemented with <a href="http://www.mbantua.com.au/bush-tucker/">bush tucker</a> and everyone works together and shares what they have. </p>
<p>Among the basics of life, there is resilience. But there is also something else that is perhaps even more surprising. As I sat around the campfire in the evening, what rose up into the night sky amid the smoke was laughter. </p>
<p>This is a community surrounded by tragedy and hard social problems. This is a community with deep concerns about the impact of mining on sacred sites, about access to education, feelings of being disenfranchised and the stresses of having very little money to survive on. In nearby towns, there are issues of <a href="http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/health-risks/substance-use">substance abuse</a> and <a href="http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/domestic-and-family-violence#axzz3dCePmYjU">violence</a>. So it is easy to fall into cliché and to see this laughter as being cathartic, an important release. </p>
<p>But there is something deeper than just the fleeting laughter that comes at the end of a funny story, a witty comment or a parody. It always strikes me in a close-knit community that something much more profound is at work. Around a campfire with shared resources – food, clothes, blankets, utensils, even shoes – there is a deep sense of contentment, a profound happiness. </p>
<p>Maybe the generosity of spirit creates a deeper contentment, a deeper happiness. Or maybe it is the happiness that gives a person a more generous spirit, a larger heart. </p>
<p>How do you take the pain of the past, whatever your background, and make it something that doesn’t cripple you? How do you stop it from being a barrier to happiness? </p>
<p>Happiness knows no cultural barriers or bounds. But I wonder what can be learnt about true happiness from the Aboriginal women on the outstation who can illuminate the world of the rest of us. </p>
<h2>Connected to community and country</h2>
<p>The first lesson from my friends around the campfire is the way they look at the world around them. They see its riches. </p>
<p>They look at the sky and understand its meanings. They look to the land and sea around them and see additional sources of food. They look at the people who make up their family and community and they see the blessings in what they do have.</p>
<p>They tell stories of their fishing and hunting trips, of great romances and funny anecdotes. Their world is full of rich stories, of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dreamings-and-dreaming-narratives-whats-the-relationship-20837">songlines</a>, of music, of dance. It is impossible not to be struck by the deep interconnectedness that they have with each other and with the world around them. </p>
<p>When you have so very little, you are reliant on the people around you. You rely on them to share resources, to help you get from one place to another (you have to share vehicles and find a way to pay for petrol), to join together to confront a school that is not working with the community or a land council that has not been negotiating properly. And through this meaningful reliance on each other – where you don’t just take but give what you have – there is deep, meaningful human connection. </p>
<p>This interconnectedness with other people seems to provide a strong grounding in one’s own identity, one’s own value, one’s own place in the world. This grounding is essential for a sense of self and a sense of self-worth. </p>
<p>How can you be happy when you are uncomfortable with who you are? How often do we see people struggle with their identity in a way that causes them distress and misery? There is none of that among people who are deeply rooted in their community and have a strong sense of their place.</p>
<p>There is also interconnectedness <a href="https://theconversation.com/remote-indigenous-communities-are-vital-for-our-fragile-ecosystems-38700">to the natural world</a>. The women on the outstation have been hunting turtles and fishing in the waters since they were small girls. They know which plants are edible and they know what fruit is edible. </p>
<p>They also know the stories about the creation of the world around them, how the constellations in the sky were formed and the songlines about great trips across the country. In the world around them, there are stories and legends but there is also knowledge of the seasons and an ability to read the landscape and the weather. </p>
<p>Research shows that people who live on the outstations <a href="http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/land/aboriginal-homelands-outstations#axzz3dCePmYjU">have better health</a> than those living in town. These are alcohol-free communities but their diets are also better as a result of the richness of the food found in the land and sea, which supplements the processed, unhealthy food. </p>
<p>In these remote areas, fresh food is expensive. Lollies, soft drink and processed foods are cheap. Diets are poor and health is poor as a result. So on the outstations, where fruits, vegetables, fish, turtles and other bush food supplement diets, it is easy to see why people are healthier. </p>
<h2>Lives enriched by creativity</h2>
<p>So it is easy to see how the <a href="https://theconversation.com/welcome-to-my-country-seeing-the-true-beauty-of-life-in-bawaka-31378">interconnectedness to country</a> is also a source of a contented life. But there is something else that engages the women here, something that is linked to their culture but also seems to be a basic element in fundamental happiness. They have a very rich creative life. </p>
<p>The women of this community – and some of the men – are gifted painters. They translate the stories told by their parents and grandparents into vivid canvasses. They express themselves as eloquently through their brush strokes as they do with their words. </p>
<p>In addition to their painting, they have their traditional songs, their songlines and their dance. They are creative performers of their cultural traditions and they not only perform but teach the children the same songs and dances. </p>
<p>And between the painting, the dancing and the music is a rich traditional of storytelling as old as the culture. These women are natural storytellers. Although they have not written the stories, they perform them in the way they tell them. They are the expression of the vibrancy of the world’s oldest living culture.</p>
<p>Living in close proximity to others is not easy and this is a community where there is overcrowding. On fine nights, people sleep under the stars, but there are not enough rooms for the number of people here and so people share concrete floors when they have to. </p>
<p>So life is not without its arguments and disagreements, its jealousies and bickering and all of the other things that happen between people who live closely. But the generosity and openness of the women who have the moral leadership in this community is defined by the love they have for their families, especially their children. </p>
<p>There is no romance in being poor, but there is happiness to be found when you can find the richness in life. That is the abiding lesson I learn from my visits to this other way of life.</p>
<p>And as the laughter rings around the campfire, and I listen to the women, all sisters, sing their songs, teach the children to dance, tell their ancient stories, gently tease each other – and me – it is a reminder that there are ties that are deeper than blood and that lightness of spirit is the measure of happiness.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larissa Behrendt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Indigenous communities beset by tragedy and social problems, the connection to each other and to the land remains a powerful source of shared contentment and happiness.Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law and Director of Research, Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/431142015-06-23T20:08:56Z2015-06-23T20:08:56ZHappiness and the art of care and conversation on the cancer ward<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85499/original/image-20150618-23235-17irq1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The gift of time makes patients happy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-230137186/stock-photo-stethoscope-and-heart-painted-medical-concept.html?src=pp-same_artist-230137189-5T8-xbhoOgj2jRte4GZBKA-4&ws=1">Number1411/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is based on an essay from the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century</a> and is part The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">series</a> on what happiness means.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When asked to contribute to On Happiness I readily agreed because I had been mulling over the meaning of happiness that whole month as I cared for a patient nearing the end of her life. She had young children, a supportive husband and, most of all, an abiding faith that allowed her to imagine heaven as a better place now that treatment was no longer possible for her advanced cancer. </p>
<p>It struck me as extraordinary that she could muster such unflappable peace in the face of something as momentous as death. But I also thought that if everyone shared a drop of her equanimity, the inevitability of dying would be so much easier on all of us, the deceased and the ones left behind.</p>
<p>The week I sat down to write the essay was the week she finally died, peacefully, surrounded by her family as she went to meet her god. All I could think about was her child about to start school whose mother would not be present to see her on her first day. With my child about to do the same, I wrote the story from a deep and affected place, not as an oncologist but as a mother who happened to be an oncologist.</p>
<p>Some days on the ward, happiness is avoiding the fate of many of my patients. Everyone who works in oncology is only too aware of the flick of the wheel of fortune that transforms happiness into its opposite.</p>
<p>But if being an oncologist is sobering stuff, it’s also a job where happiness steals into your life in unexpected ways. My working week is filled with diverse roles, including reading interesting research and fine literature, writing health columns, public speaking and mentoring, but my favourite moments in medicine are those spent in direct patient care. </p>
<p>I am at my happiest at the bedside of a patient, explaining a diagnosis and coming up with ways to navigate through a difficult time. Much of the fear of cancer arises from a total lack of control, so I am at my happiest when a patient with a new diagnosis comes in bewildered and shaken and leaves my office feeling a modicum of control. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86028/original/image-20150623-19411-1tzisl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86028/original/image-20150623-19411-1tzisl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86028/original/image-20150623-19411-1tzisl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86028/original/image-20150623-19411-1tzisl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86028/original/image-20150623-19411-1tzisl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86028/original/image-20150623-19411-1tzisl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86028/original/image-20150623-19411-1tzisl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Much of the fear of cancer arises from a total lack of control.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-236631238/stock-photo-patient-with-iv-drip-in-a-hospital.html?src=mCMExOTXOnVDqrAEYkstyA-3-84">Anan Kaewkhammul/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once or twice a week someone is vocally appreciative towards my colleagues and I. “People say the public hospital is no good, but, to me, you are all angels,” one patient recently said of her encounters with nearly half a dozen different nurses and oncologists. It’s impossible to describe how much happiness such compliments bring into our lives when we often feel we are short-changing the tide of patients that confronts us.</p>
<p>But lately, I have been hearing a lot about disillusionment in medicine. How doctors would not recommend the profession to their children. How doctors are burning out amidst skyrocketing rates of drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness. </p>
<p>Medicine is just another form of consumerism, doctors sigh, as they rush from pillar to post to satisfy the urges of a consumer society fuelled by unrealistic expectations and diminishing personal responsibility. Bureaucrats breathe down our necks, tired of our inability to distinguish cost-effective measures from plainly wasteful ones. Patients no longer regard us with the level of respect, or even affection, that they once did.</p>
<p>As an oncologist working in a public hospital system that attracts a large share of the educationally deprived and the socioeconomically disenfranchised, I find myself at the heart of these experiences. They have me wondering how to recapture the joy of medicine for myself and convey it to the next generation of doctors. </p>
<p>Here is what I have realised. More beds, shiny wards and more scanners don’t make anyone happy. More beds without more staff means more patients per overworked doctor and nurse. More scanners mean more scans but not necessarily better care.</p>
<p>I have rarely met a patient who felt better for being on a new ward that was staffed by jaded doctors and nurses. So while pouring money into medicine is usually well-intentioned, it’s a stretch to say that it makes doctors happy.</p>
<p>What does make doctors happy is happy patients. Nothing puts a spring in a doctor’s step like the sight of a satisfied patient. In a profession where established beliefs are routinely turned on their heads, this seems to be a fairly irrefutable one. In fact, the capacity to make a palpable and immediate difference to the human condition is what sets medicine apart from any number of prestigious jobs. Corporate lawyers, management consultants and investment bankers tell us this.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86029/original/image-20150623-19397-wmopxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86029/original/image-20150623-19397-wmopxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86029/original/image-20150623-19397-wmopxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86029/original/image-20150623-19397-wmopxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86029/original/image-20150623-19397-wmopxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86029/original/image-20150623-19397-wmopxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86029/original/image-20150623-19397-wmopxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">While pouring money into medicine is usually well-intentioned, it’s a stretch to say it makes doctors happy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-266797934/stock-photo-blurred-patient-waiting-for-see-doctor-abstract-background.html?src=mCMExOTXOnVDqrAEYkstyA-4-121">weedezign/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But how can the modern doctor make the modern patient happy? In this age of unrelenting dissatisfaction with every aspect of our life, is it even possible to aim for a happy patient, or should doctors just accept that customer service delivered with civility, efficiency and accuracy ought to be enough? </p>
<p>I think this would be a shame because the wonder of medicine really lies in its human touch. The rest Google keeps getting better at. </p>
<p>Take the example of a skin rash that a patient took to Google for a diagnosis. Google reassured her that the rash should get better by itself. It took the triage nurse’s radar to sense that although Google was right about the rash, it couldn’t possibly diagnose the patient’s distress at remembering that a similar rash had heralded the death of her mother from leukaemia when the patient was merely seven years old. </p>
<p>I often see that what makes a patient happy is the gift of time. I have met some wonderful doctors in my career, loved by patients and their colleagues. They all have something in common – they have honed the art of communication. </p>
<p>These doctors look at their computer screen less and their patients more. They smile, wince, celebrate and commiserate with their patients and they look them in the eye. They show empathy without losing their professionalism. Through their words and their gestures they show that they care. </p>
<p>I asked a very busy GP once how he managed to keep so many patients happy. “I behave as if for those ten minutes the patient before me is my only concern in the world,” he said. </p>
<p>When patients feel listened to they tend to engage in decision-making and the management of their condition. Patients come to doctors for a diagnosis and treatment but also for comfort. A kind gesture, a soothing word can be as therapeutic as a prescription. </p>
<p>“If only she’d stop trying to be extra clever and just be a little nicer,” an old lady once grumbled. For many doctors this is a difficult pill to swallow and one that is the obverse of what the profession has traditionally valued. But I am convinced that for medicine to deliver happiness we must not forget the human dimension. </p>
<p>As far back as the fourth century BC Hippocrates observed, “May you cure sometimes, relieve often and comfort always.” This may be the one prescription in medicine without an expiration date.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century</a> is available this month from UWA Publishing.</em></p>
<p><em>Read the other articles in The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">happiness series here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ranjana Srivastava does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Much of the fear of cancer arises from a lack of control, so I’m at my happiest when a patient with a new diagnosis comes in bewildered and shaken and leaves my office feeling a modicum of control.Ranjana Srivastava, Oncologist, Author & Guardian Columnist , Monash HealthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/436362015-06-23T20:08:22Z2015-06-23T20:08:22ZOne day my end will come – kids don’t need happily ever afters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85861/original/image-20150622-8993-lbnj1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The idea of the happy ending as appropriate literary fare for children is an illusion.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Geraint Rowland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p>In children’s bedtime stories it is often expected that the story will end with everybody living happily ever after. Adulthood, however, brings knowledge that life is messier than stories. It does not deliver happy endings, if only because it does not deliver endings. </p>
<p>Or at least, it only has one ending. As Margaret Atwood <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/609514.Murder_in_the_Dark">identified</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Narrative, on the other hand, requires a cutting-off point. When a story is described as having a happy ending it is easy to think of the happily-ever-after of a fairy tale. That is, the default story that produces the happy ending is romantic, heterosexual, and concluded at the point of marriage. </p>
<p>But when did this become the default? The very idea of the happy ending as appropriate literary fare for children is an illusion from practically every possible angle. Most fairy tales are full of darkness and violence, and as often as not do not end happily. </p>
<p>“The good end happily, the bad unhappily, that is what fiction means,” as Oscar Wilde <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92303.The_Importance_of_Being_Earnest?from_search=true&search_version=service_impr">put it</a>. Almost all of his own fairytales have miserable endings.</p>
<p>In fact, stories for children have always had mottled conclusions. The heroines of Perrault and The Brothers Grimm are sometimes married off, and other times gobbled up; it is merely that their most famous tales have been the happy ones. Hans Christian Andersen’s stories more often end in sorrow (The Little Match Girl, The Steadfast Tin Soldier) or are not about romance at all (The Ugly Duckling, Little Claus and Big Claus). </p>
<p>In the real world children have always experienced traumatic incidences, and have periodically inflicted them on their companions. The denial of this in choosing what stories to share with them says a great deal about what adults want to believe about childhood, rather than speaking to children’s own understanding of the world.</p>
<p>The question for parents and teachers of children lucky enough to live comfortable lives turns on the tension between a desire to give children a period of their lives unburdened by worries, and a need to help them develop empathy. </p>
<p>How much are we prepared to let the ones who avoid suffering know that it exists? Or that some never escape it? </p>
<p>Stories for very young children hold to the principle of happy endings almost without deviance, but the exceptions are noteworthy. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/632429.Old_Pig?from_search=true&search_version=service">Old Pig</a> (1999), which is aimed squarely at primary school-age children, introduces the idea of coping with the death of a loved one and Eleanor Coerr’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181077.Sadako_and_the_Thousand_Paper_Cranes?from_search=true&search_version=service">Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes</a> (1977), in which the young heroine never gets her wish to be cured of leukaemia, provides about the earliest introduction to a genuinely sad ending in a children’s novel. </p>
<p>A few children’s books deliberately subvert the expectation of happy endings. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78411.The_Bad_Beginning?from_search=true&search_version=service_impr">Lemony Snicket</a> (1988) repeatedly disavows any prospect of happy endings and implores those looking for them to go elsewhere:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85858/original/image-20150622-8977-sufqk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ryan Summers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the grittier world of <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-adult-fictions-dark-themes-give-the-hope-to-cope-27335">young adult literature</a>, narrative outcomes become increasingly complex and some novels feature realistic or even dystopian endings. Kevin Brooks’ <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17210598-the-bunker-diary?from_search=true&search_version=service">The Bunker Diary</a> (2013), a book with no happy ending, in which the protagonist dies without ever resolving a meaning for his suffering at the hands of a psychopath, won the Carnegie Medal and at the same time prompted <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/24/carnegie-medal-the-bunker-diary-kevin-brooks">some serious reflection</a> on what children should be exposed to. </p>
<p>So if fairy tales are prepared to end unhappily, and so are books designed as literature for children, where did we get the impression that a happy ending is the norm? It is not actually classic children’s stories that insist on happy endings, but rather their modern movie versions. </p>
<p>It is Hollywood that cannot abide the idea of anything less than perfect happiness. Movies take considerable money to make, and a happy ending is by far the safest investment. Chiselled and suave James Bond always saves the world and gets the girl(s), and in rom-coms it is only a matter of time until the pleasant-looking lead male and the subtly sexy girl-next-door surmount a series of goofy mishaps and admit the inevitability of their attraction. </p>
<p>No wonder these movies are appealing, and that occasionally even the most dedicated arthouse film buff will succumb to their lure, despite knowing that Hollywood blockbusters invariably reinforce the status quo by perpetuating western hegemonies that privilege notions such as capitalism, whiteness, masculinity and heterosexuality above all else. </p>
<p>It begins to seem more likely that the insistence of mainstream movies on a happy ending has seeped into what we offer to children, rather than that children’s stories have influenced the movies. </p>
<p>But as long as children have access to books as well as mainstream films, there is scope for them to experience that neatly resolved, happily-ever-after endings are only one aspect of storytelling, and that many other, more complicated outcomes are possible.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century</a> (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The very idea of the happy ending as appropriate literary fare for children is an illusion. Most fairy tales are full of darkness and violence, and as often as not do not end happily.Georgina Ledvinka, Assistant Dean and Lecturer in English Literature, University of Notre Dame AustraliaAnna Kamaralli, Lecturer in Theatre Studies, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/436292015-06-23T20:08:06Z2015-06-23T20:08:06ZInside Out shows well-being isn’t just about chasing happiness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86059/original/image-20150623-19397-ppja41.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C637%2C1014%2C654&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Inside Out's five emotions are not a bad reflection of the emotional diversity within our own minds.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pixar</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pixar’s new animated feature, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096673/">Inside Out</a>, is based on a rather straightforward premise: emotions situated in 11-year-old Riley’s brain control her behaviours, help organise her memories and, overall, seek to maintain her well-being. </p>
<p>Which emotions are these? Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. A few minutes into the film it becomes clear that Joy has the power. The other emotions defer to her, and increasingly so, particularly as Riley’s life is disrupted by a cross-country move. The sole goal appears to be: keep Riley happy!</p>
<p>At at the outset of the film, it’s unclear why the negative emotions are even there (aside from comic relief and story arc). Why not just have Joy up there, controlling the reins? </p>
<p>Given that lead emotion researcher <a href="http://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/dacher-keltner">Dacher Keltner</a> advised the film team, it’s perhaps not surprising that a diversity of emotions was represented.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/seMwpP0yeu4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">What goes on in your head?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A functionalist script</h2>
<p>Recognition of the need for a diversity of emotions is firmly rooted in “<a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/dacherkeltner/docs/keltner.haidt.social.functions.cogemo.1999.pdf">functionalist</a>” theoretical approaches. According to this view, the human affective system developed under evolutionary pressures to aid in the navigation of physical surroundings, and increasingly over recent evolutionary history, social relationships. Basically, emotions help us to survive.</p>
<p>As the theory goes, positive states arise out of situations where there is no pressing demand or threat. As such, <a href="http://www.unc.edu/peplab/publications/Fredrickson%20AESP%202013%20Chapter.pdf">positive emotions</a> often promote savouring and relaxation, or curiosity-driven exploration and building of psychological resources. </p>
<p>Negative states, on the other hand, alert us to things that need attention and remediation. Notice a threatening predator? Fear promotes fight-or-flight. Smell something rotten? Disgust prevents ingestion. </p>
<p>Like other systems, the affective system runs most efficiently when things are in relative balance. That is, if any one emotion “over-fires” it’s likely to have negative consequences for adaptive functioning. This is clearly the case with negative emotions, and indeed, excess anxiety, anger, sadness and fear contribute to many mental illnesses and social ills. </p>
<p>There can also be too much of a good thing – literally. <a href="http://www.gruberpeplab.com/pdf/TBD.pdf">Excess happiness</a>, especially over extended amounts of time and in inappropriate contexts, is a key feature of bipolar disorder. </p>
<p>Recent evidence suggests that it’s “<a href="http://www.emodiversity.org/">emodiversity</a>” that underscores psychological well-being. That is: experiencing a variety of states, both positive and negative, is correlated with mental and physical health.</p>
<h2>A character spotlight: Sadness</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86035/original/image-20150623-19371-56bl8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86035/original/image-20150623-19371-56bl8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86035/original/image-20150623-19371-56bl8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86035/original/image-20150623-19371-56bl8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86035/original/image-20150623-19371-56bl8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86035/original/image-20150623-19371-56bl8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86035/original/image-20150623-19371-56bl8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sadness has its place in the human affective system. In addition to motivating taking time to ‘pause and reflect’, it can also confer social support in times when that support is most needed: loss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/jaded one</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The evolutionary argument for why we have negative emotions such as disgust and fear is fairly logical. The case for sadness, though, seems at first glance to be tenuous. Why would we need such a low-motivation, negative state, particularly one that is a key contributor to mental illnesses, such as depression?</p>
<p>Support for a functionalist view of sadness is actually quite <a href="http://dept.kent.edu/psychology/coifmanlab/2008_Bonanno,_Goorin,___Coifman_HANDBOOK_OF_EMOTION.pdf">robust</a>. Sadness serves the function of motivating “pausing and reflecting” during times of loss, which allows for mental accommodation of the new situation and understanding. Sadness can also promote a detail-oriented mindset, contributing to more efficient problem solving. </p>
<p>Interpersonally, the adaptive functions of sadness are even more striking. The expression of sadness (on the face and body, and vocally) elicits social support from others, often in times when that support is most needed.</p>
<p>In sympathy with the functionalist view of the adaptive utility of this emotion, it turns out that Sadness actually saves the day in Inside Out. Only when Joy realises the important role Sadness plays in Riley’s well-being and steps aside, do things turn for the better.</p>
<h2>The plot twist</h2>
<p>Many Western cultures place a high ideal on <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/03/18/happy-around-the-world-_n_4985717.html">happiness</a>. The pursuit of happiness is listed as an inalienable right in the United States Declaration of Independence (alongside life and liberty). </p>
<p>A new social robot, Pepper, which has the sole purpose of making its owners happy, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/22/tech/pepper-robot-sold-out/">sold out</a> in less than a minute earlier this week. The unavoidably catchy song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM">Happy</a>” by Pharrell Williams was a smash hit. We constantly hear: “cheer up!” or “grin and bear it”, or “don’t worry, be happy!”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d-diB65scQU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Are you happy now?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there are problems with this state of the world. Not only are we <a href="https://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_gilbert">pretty bad</a> when it comes to knowing what makes us happy, and actually pursuing it, it turns out that valuing happiness too highly might actually undermine well-being.</p>
<p>Work by social psychologist <a href="http://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/iris-mauss">Iris Mauss</a> and her colleagues suggests that people who highly value happiness end up being disappointed when they’re not as happy as they think they should be when things are going right. </p>
<p>Perhaps even more concerning, highly valuing happiness <a href="http://eerlab.berkeley.edu/publications/">undermines social connections</a> and results in loneliness. Folks who highly value happiness have higher symptoms and diagnosis of depression and bipolar disorder.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86031/original/image-20150623-19368-1plkbhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86031/original/image-20150623-19368-1plkbhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86031/original/image-20150623-19368-1plkbhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86031/original/image-20150623-19368-1plkbhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86031/original/image-20150623-19368-1plkbhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86031/original/image-20150623-19368-1plkbhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86031/original/image-20150623-19368-1plkbhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The cultural value placed on happiness is widespread.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Tom Hart</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recent <a href="https://ppw.kuleuven.be/okp/_pdf/Bastian2014IVPEA.pdf">cross-cultural research</a> by <a href="http://www.psy.unsw.edu.au/contacts-people/academic-staff/dr-brock-bastian">Brock Bastian</a> and colleagues analysed data from more than 9,000 respondents around the world. Results suggested that living in a culture that values positive emotion generally has positive outcomes for life satisfaction, a key component of well-being. However, if a person happens to experience less positive emotion in a culture that highly values it, they fail to flourish.</p>
<h2>The finale</h2>
<p>The bottom line is that we, as a society, need to appreciate the diversity of emotional experience. Negative emotions have their place and shouldn’t be avoided (nor should they be dwelt upon). </p>
<p>Researchers engaged in the scientific study of well-being have <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704893604576200471545379388">come to see</a> happiness is a beneficial offshoot of a <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/eudaimonia">eudaimonic</a> approach to pursuing a life with meaning, purpose, and mastery. </p>
<p>Instead of pursuing happiness, we should pursue having meaningful relationships, contributing to society, and engaging in self-development. It is through these activities that happiness occurs. Happiness is not an end, or even a means to an end. </p>
<p>It’s worth noting that this is not a new idea. <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/">Aristotle</a> built an ethics system and philosophy around eudaimonia. <a href="https://spsptalks.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/can-we-pursue-happiness/">Many</a> non-Western cultures recognise that well-being is promoted by much more than hedonic pursuit of positive feelings.</p>
<p>Without giving away any spoilers, Inside Out comes around to a message that resonates with this. At the end of the movie, 12-year-old Riley has emotionally-diverse memories and experiences. Her emotional dashboard, so to speak, is complex. It’s not ruled by Joy, but instead led by a cooperation and interweaving of different emotions. </p>
<p>On this front, at least, Pixar appears to have gotten it right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa A Williams receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP130102110, DP130104468, LP140100034).</span></em></p>Pixar’s new film, Inside Out, shows that chasing happiness along won’t necessarily bring well-being, which is a view backed by the latest psychological research.Lisa A Williams, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/431062015-06-23T04:18:44Z2015-06-23T04:18:44ZLove and disability: ‘inter-ability relationships’ conquer stereotypes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85001/original/image-20150615-30815-c87wje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">He is in a wheelchair, she has multiple sclerosis, but their neighbours know Grzegorz and Magda as a loving couple.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dominikgolenia/527517137">Flickr/Dominik Golenia/In sickness and in health</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before others can be attracted to you, you first need to believe in yourself. So that means, for example, answering with a “Yes!” the question of whether you have what it takes to attract another. This is a crucial question that one must ask; it is a crucial issue in human development.</p>
<p>And we are disgusted, I guess, by the not uncommon practice of a person acting in calculating ways, deviously trying to increase their appeal towards their potential love interests – this is just selfish and contrary to love. Yet many selfish strategies place a higher value on cosmetic enhanced beauty than on the substantial character of the person.</p>
<p>Think about this. If this ethic is deemed valid, which I suspect it is, it means that it is just not plausible to have a disabled love interest. Is this widespread in our society?</p>
<p>To live life as a person with severe disabilities means developing extraordinarily strong self-esteem and the self-assurance of your value. This is necessary to live life according to those values you, as a disabled person, find most admirable in yourself. </p>
<p>So, the challenge is to be defiant of what anyone else may think; you are here now. You can only be the best you can, which indeed is remarkable enough!</p>
<h2>Superficial notions of attraction</h2>
<p>Many of the reasons that disability is not attractive from what I would call a “love interest” sense are baseless stereotypes. These are actually formed according to an antiquated medical model of what it means to be human.</p>
<p>It is possible, I believe, to eliminate the stereotypical fears of inadequacy that are not only held by people with severe physical disabilities, but just as importantly by those who “care” for them. The trick is to encourage the dispirited disabled person to go and seek out stories that inspire. </p>
<p>There are many who excel in different areas of life who acknowledge the beneficial enhancement of their lives by those with such different complexes of abilities and their subsequent development of abilities to influence and attract, which is nothing less than awesome. </p>
<p>I had conducted some research on what I prefer to call “inter-ability relationships” between those depicted as being “extremely disabled”. The results were interesting, and heartwarming, to say the least.</p>
<p>One of my most recent research endeavours was to tour <a href="http://www.cuttersword.com">the website</a> of both Megan (able-bodied) and Barton (severe cerebral palsy), focusing on their marriage and love life. They also shared a passion to communicate with the written word. Their ability to love and laugh together was founded on the mutual passion for writing. Barton and Megan Cutter went on to publish a book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ink-Wheels-Stories-Make-Love/dp/1467544590/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400334771&sr=8-1&keywords=Ink+in+the+Wheels%3A+Stories+to+Make+Love+Roll">Ink in the Wheels</a>: Stories to make love roll.</p>
<p>They are unique characters that drive this story of love, sex and relationship. Love never rolled by itself and their lives experienced the ups and downs that are present in most relationships. But they pulled together through this to tell their story of how they faced the challenges of being an “inter-ability married couple”. </p>
<p>Ink in the Wheels provides a phenomenally powerful love story that allows people to understand some of the conquests that are made by sheer determination.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P0GGORgTDZ0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Megan and Barton Cutter vanquish stereotypes about loving relationships by their example as a couple.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Don’t deny our capacity to love</h2>
<p>In an attempt to drive home my feelings on this, I will reveal something about myself that I have previously made public. I was diagnosed with <a href="http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/friedreichs_ataxia/detail_friedreichs_ataxia.htm">Friedreich’s Ataxia</a> at 14 and in these 39 years, with this severely progressive disability, I have been no stranger to inter-ability relationships. But finding the right person to be able to handle me and my disability has been difficult. </p>
<p>That has been hard enough; how I am also to deal with the demeaning and deplorable stereotypes held by many in our society? Such attitudes, I believe, continue to make it difficult for me to create, develop and sustain the kind of a relationship I would want to develop. </p>
<p>I do not have a complete philosophical account of why I enjoy the chance or fulfilment of making love. Well I guess it’s because I am a human.</p>
<p>Maybe, for starters, this is one form of human pleasure I am still capable of performing. I mean that in a holistic sense. While my abilities of performance may be dwindling, and on a level of consciousness that is distressing, my ability to love has increased. </p>
<p>And for the life of me I don’t see why I also have to combat the utterly ridiculous stereotypes of some. Despite the dumb thinking and incoherent logical responses of others in relation to this matter, I certainly don’t have a cognitive disability. This means that I would respect myself for my knowledge. </p>
<p>But, like many stereotypes, this perception is to some degree an inescapable societal reality. But it’s not a fact, only the fulfilment of social misguidance.</p>
<p>Is life changing? Is there more acceptance of a difference in “love” these days as it is publicly discussed? </p>
<p>The answer is yes, but it has still got a long way to go. This is not to forget that there is also a need for ongoing redemption from past mistakes.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Thank you to Bruce Wearne, Steffan Irugalbandara and Cunxia Li for their assistance in preparing this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43106/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Gibilisco does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our notions of what makes a person a desirable ‘love interest’ are often superficial and involve an element of deception. For someone with a severe disability, finding love is even more complicatedPeter Gibilisco, Honorary Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428862015-06-22T20:18:12Z2015-06-22T20:18:12ZThe lies of happiness: living with affluenza but without fulfilment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84980/original/image-20150615-9561-iywmb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seeking constant distractions and identifying with brands and status symbols, we struggle to escape the superficial self.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-17841535/stock-photo-professionals-waiting-on-bench.html?src=csl_recent_image-1">Shutterstock/Sean De Burca</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the first in a new series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In a short story, Grief, Anton Chekhov tells of a wood-turner named Grigory Petrov, a drunkard and bully who for 40 years regularly beat his wife. One night he arrives home drunk and brandishing his fists. This time, instead of shrinking from him, his wife gazes at him sternly, “as saints do from their icons”, wrote Chekhov.</p>
<p>It was her first and last act of defiance.</p>
<p>Now driving a sled through a blizzard, Petrov is taking his dying wife to the doctor. He curses and whips the horse. He is seized by grief for a life wasted, and wonders how he will live without this woman who has sustained him for so long.</p>
<p>I may have been a drunkard and ne’er-do-well, he mutters to himself, but that was never the true man, and now my wife is dying on me, she will never know my better nature. I beat her, it’s true, but never out of spite. Am I not rushing her to the doctor because I feel sorry for her?</p>
<p>In Chekhov’s story, Petrov engages in grotesque rationalisations. His dignity will not allow him to face the truth of the sort of man he is. He engages in a litany of self-deceptions, even though the truth threatens to overwhelm him.</p>
<p>The myriad ways humans lie to themselves is a recurring theme of literature. Because we all engage in self-deception, we recognise ourselves in the characters. We are forever composing stories about ourselves and our world so as to smooth a path through life.</p>
<h2>Benign fictions and the loss of freedom</h2>
<p>The psychologist Shelley Taylor calls them <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Positive-Illusions-Creative-Self-Deception-Healthy/dp/0465060536">“benign fictions”</a>: the lies we deploy to defend our happiness. For a long time I have believed that if we deceive ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses, creating a veil that distorts our vision of the world so as to render it more agreeable, we may actually be sacrificing the opportunity to find a more authentic self from which to live. </p>
<p>But is that chasing a phantom? Does it really matter if we find contentment by deploying benign fictions?</p>
<p>The philosophers have always told us that happiness should be discounted if it floats on a mirage of lies. But maybe the thinkers are deceiving themselves, rationalising away their melancholy and inflating the value of their solemnity.</p>
<p>Perhaps. Yet there is another reason to question happiness built on self-deception. It opens us up to manipulation.</p>
<p>When we are not truthful with ourselves, we are driven by forces of which we are unconscious, but our real motives and desires can be discerned by others – advertisers, for instance. They can smell weaknesses to be exploited.</p>
<p>So, I am willing to argue, those whose happiness rests on fabrications risk surrendering their freedom. Happiness at the price of freedom is not worth it, unless the limits to one’s freedom are freely chosen after careful reflection.</p>
<p>But is the truth always to be preferred?</p>
<p>The Trade Practices Act outlaws deceptive and misleading conduct by companies making claims about their products. But what if we want to believe the lies? The essence of branding is that by identifying ourselves deeply with a brand – an Apple computer, Diesel clothing, a Volvo car – we take on the image associated with it. </p>
<p>We accept these commercially provided identities because our societies no longer offer other means of creating a sense of self that satisfies. And we are bored.</p>
<p>Increasingly, our attention is seen as a scarce commodity. As always, anything that is scarce has a value, and some are willing to pay for it.</p>
<p>There is even a new branch of economics called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy">“attention economics”</a>. When others thrust information upon us it can be regarded as a form of pollution. We sometimes try to stop this pollution harming us with devices like spam blockers, television mute buttons, “Do not call” registers and “No junk mail” stickers.</p>
<p>However, I think many of us watch television and listen to iPods to avoid paying attention to aspects of our lives that are uncomfortable. And we want our attention to be captured because we have developed a strong aversion to boredom. </p>
<p>It seems to me that the flight from boredom means our society as a whole is suffering from a form of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Movies and television programs have shorter scenes and more action to keep us “glued to the set”. Yet in order to transcend boredom it is necessary to get beneath the superficial self that is entertained by television and a thousand other distractions.</p>
<h2>Is a more authentic life possible?</h2>
<p>It is one thing to recognise that money and the consumer life are in some way shallow; it is quite another to find out what a more “authentic” life would be. Sometimes I doubt whether there can be such a thing in our secular societies. Are we destined to live out selves wholly given to us by the social conditions in which we find ourselves?</p>
<p>Still, there must be some identity more authentic than those constructed for us by the clever manipulators who make brands and produce popular culture. At a minimum, we must fight hard against those influences, for if we do not we will end up as mere cyphers.</p>
<p>Creating the illusion of independence is the most potent tool of the contemporary advertisers’ trade, but the irony is generally lost because most people are too busy congratulating themselves on “being their own person”. The essential ideology of modern consumerism is that we can all live freely and independently.</p>
<p>This is an idea that emerged from the marriage of modern consumerism and the ideology of the liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. We now hear it expressed in inane phrases such as “be true to yourself” and “you are responsible for your own happiness”. So instead of pledging allegiance to God, nowadays a Girl Guide <a href="http://www.girlguides.org.au/About-Us/Promise-and-Law.html">promises</a> to be “true to myself”, a vapid pledge that nevertheless resonates with the inherent nihilism of individualised societies.</p>
<p>In Australia over the past 13 or 14 years we have engaged in a national conversation about happiness and how to get it. This was in large part stimulated by the work of my former colleagues and I at the <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/">Australia Institute</a>, building on the work of <a href="http://www.richardeckersley.com.au/main/page_about_me.html">Richard Eckersley</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84981/original/image-20150615-9549-vjxxmb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">When parents spend more time in traffic than playing with their children, is it worth it?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-26052433/stock-photo-england-january-traffic-jam-on-one-side-of-m-in-buckinghamshire.html?src=pTwOiF0fxNbe6wS_UGXhKg-2-35">Shutterstock/gemphoto</a></span>
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<p>From the early 2000s we asked whether national wellbeing was rising along with rates of economic growth. We found that the answer was “no”. We built the <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/node/898">Genuine Progress Indicator</a> as a substitute for GDP. </p>
<p>We showed how advertisers were persuading us to go into debt and how they were increasingly targeting children. We pointed to an epidemic of overwork and estimated that one-third of Sydney fathers spend more time in their cars commuting than at home playing with their children. We measured the value of stuff that we buy and then throw out unused (billions of dollars worth).</p>
<p>We discovered a deep vein of discontent, with <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/4102.0main+features202014">oppressive levels of debt</a>, marriages under stress, overwork leading to illness and depression, children being neglected and a pervasive anomie. And then we uncovered the reaction against it all by describing the remarkably large numbers who had decided to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downshifting">downshift</a> – that is, to voluntarily reduce their incomes and consumption in order to take back some control over their lives.</p>
<p>For a time we had some success, but then something happened. The 2008 global financial crisis brought to a sudden end the zeitgeist and the happiness debate that was part of it. The crash was the direct result of excessive consumption, unsustainable debt and the industries that made them possible; in other words, everything we had criticised.</p>
<p>I always saw the happiness debate we triggered as no more than a prelude to the real task of opening people to an examination of some deeper sense of meaning in their lives, and to precipitate reflection on the moral basis and behavioural structure of our society.</p>
<p>Yet here we are, in the embryonic stages of the next consumer boom, with no collective lessons learned from the last one.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clive Hamilton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the first of our series, On Happiness, the question is whether unsustainable consumption and debt can ever bring us happiness. The global financial question was a chance to take stock, yet did we learn anything?Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics, Centre For Applied Philosophy & Public Ethics (CAPPE), Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428842015-06-22T20:17:47Z2015-06-22T20:17:47ZLarrikin carnival: an Australian style of cultural subversion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85850/original/image-20150622-8981-p7w6vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As always, funny young people are busy self-curating extreme carnival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marley Cook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p>The problem with contemporary ideas about happiness is their intolerance of discontent. Happiness has morphed into a personal responsibility to avoid negative, critical responses to the external conditions of our lives, lest we court depression, anxiety or disturb the tranquility and happiness of others. If we are unhappy, the problem lies with us, and not our job, family situation, neigbourhood or rulers. </p>
<p>In this individualised but mass-marketed therapeutic iteration, happiness is too often construed as a form of quiescence, of contentment, acceptance of social norms and conformity to the status quo. </p>
<p>I want to recast happiness as a form of carnival, a subversive, rambunctious style of happiness derived from trangressive art and “art of the self”, a comedic disruption to conformity that destabilises complacent authority, producing new ways of seeing and being.</p>
<p>In Australia from its beginnings, humour and irony have been small weapons in the armoury of the oppressed, the outcast, or those simply fed up with cultural uniformity. </p>
<p>This fightback begins with Aboriginal people, who have long used wry and ironic humour against authorities as a form of resistance to colonisation. Indeed Australia’s sense of humour may well owe more to its original inhabitants than to the undoubted anti-authoritarian mockery of the convicts – many of whom were also victims of dispossession in the Old World, seeking happiness in the New.</p>
<p>These early influences shape an Australian style of cultural subversion that, in my book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15765924-dancing-with-empty-pockets">Dancing with Empty Pockets</a> (2012), I call the “larrikin carnivalesque”. It is where rabble-rousing lefties meet a style of libertarianism that can also be associated with right-leaning contrarians. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85852/original/image-20150622-8993-1mplpu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">John Safran in 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Harris</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It has a long pedigree in the arts, stretching from groups of bohemian writers, journalists and cartoonists gathered around the early Bulletin in the late 19th century, to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272397/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Kath and Kim</a>, prankster <a href="http://johnsafran.com/">John Safran</a>, <a href="http://www.chaser.com.au/">The Chaser</a>, Chris Lilley and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103538/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Housos</a> in this century.</p>
<p>The term “carnivalesque” was coined by Soviet literary academic <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/bakhtin/">Mikhail Bakhtin</a> to refer to a topsy-turvy spirit of riotous festivity, famously unleashed in the carnivals of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the lower orders deployed misrule, play, humour and vulgarity to subvert authority – if only temporarily. </p>
<p>By crossing arbitrary borders and disrupting expectation carnival could stimulate new ways of thinking, and radically transform culture. This type of dissent has deep roots in Australia’s folk memory where it’s often referred to as our “larrikin streak”.</p>
<p>One of Australia’s great colonial satirists was journalist and writer <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clarke-marcus-andrew-hislop-3225">Marcus Clarke</a>. A celebrated wit, he drank, argued, and scandalised his way through Melbourne in the 1870s, setting up a string of bohemian clubs, outraging respectable society and trying to keep one step ahead of the creditors. </p>
<p>Scalpel in one hand and rapier in the other, young Marcus carved out a journalistic niche for himself as the “<a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/27622662?selectedversion=NBD2555925">Peripatetic Philosopher</a>”, a slightly bemused, cynical observer of the (mock) heroic goings on of Melbourne society, producing sketches that anticipate Humphries’ character monologues a century later. </p>
<p>Few were exempt from his barbs, including sharebrokers, “new chums”, “our boys”, the working man, politicians, squatters, art connoisseurs, journalists, sporting men, ladies and larrikins, all accompanied by their own peculiar slang or jargon. </p>
<h2>Archibald’s Bulletin</h2>
<p>At the <a href="http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_bulletin">Bulletin</a> magazine, founded in 1880, a radical, democratic, grassroots Australian carnivalesque humour flourished. </p>
<p>Its early editor JF Archibald made a virtue of tapping the energies of bush and urban workers, the shearing sheds and city pubs, and from this interactive community emerged writers with a gift for the vernacular as diverse as Henry Lawson,<a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dennis-clarence-michael-james-5957"> CJ Dennis</a>, <a href="http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/whoisMF_herlife">Miles Franklin</a>, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/davis-arthur-hoey-5911">Steele Rudd</a>, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/paterson-andrew-barton-banjo-7972">Banjo Paterson</a>, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/furphy-joseph-6261">Joseph Furphy</a> and <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lindsay-norman-alfred-7757">Norman Lindsay</a>. </p>
<p>The Bulletin drew on the language of the streets and the shearing sheds to mock those in authority, from the capitalist “fat man”, “squatters”, parsons, “wowsers” and magistrates to plutocrats, governors and the Crown. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85854/original/image-20150622-8993-1q1wdfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gina Riley (left) and Jane Turner attend the premiere of Kath & Kimderella, The Movie, in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Jeffers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A particular target was the “wowser”, slang for a pious, Christian proselytiser of either gender who was vigilant in policing others morals, skilled in the tut-tutting of others’ happiness.</p>
<p>Nothwithstanding a nasty strain of sexism and racism in its humour, the Bulletin was radical in its championing of causes such as republicanism, unions, the new Labor Party and female suffrage. But as Sylvia Lawson has argued in her contribution to the 1999 collection <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1459812">Journalism: print, politics and popular culture</a>, it was in the magazine’s disruption of expectation — its mockery of authority, genre-blending, the interplay of short comic pars with cartoons — that the Bulletin was most subversive, helping to create a cultural naissance distinguished by its appeal to both salon and saloon.</p>
<h2>Post-war larrikins</h2>
<p>The postwar expansion of universities provided a stage for young bohemians such as Humphries, Germaine Greer, Clive James and Bob Ellis to hone the larrikin carnivalesque – literally in student revue, and also on campus newspapers such as Honi Soit and Tharunka, where Richard Neville, Martin Sharpe and Richard Walsh rehearsed a new wave of libertarian satire that went off-campus as Oz. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85856/original/image-20150622-9012-7mjpd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85856/original/image-20150622-9012-7mjpd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85856/original/image-20150622-9012-7mjpd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85856/original/image-20150622-9012-7mjpd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85856/original/image-20150622-9012-7mjpd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85856/original/image-20150622-9012-7mjpd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85856/original/image-20150622-9012-7mjpd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Germaine Greer in 2002.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Neville’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Play-Power-Exploring-International-Underground/dp/0394440536">Play Power</a>, published in 1971, makes clear that his brand of counter-cultural satire was not just hostile to the right, but also to the left, for being too dismissive of the revolutionary possibilities of pop culture, humour and media.</p>
<p>I grew up in working-class Port Kembla in the 1970s, where we cheered on Bazza McKenzie, the gormless young Australian larrikin in London, comic-book brainchild of Barry Humphries, translated to feature film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068173/">The Adventures of Barry McKenzie</a> (1972) by director Bruce Beresford and producer Phillip Adams. Self-described as an ordinary “working man”, Bazza was one of us, a life-affirming foil against smug trendies, snivelling officials, puffing pollies in a film caricaturing the xenophobic of all classes. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D4sjyrmSXOw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The people behind the “ocker cycle” of plays, films, television – Stork, Don’s Party, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156198/">Alvin Purple</a> (1976), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068043/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Aunty Jack Show </a>(1972) - were far from mere commercial showmen. They smuggled into them all sorts of critical insights and visceral pleasures from bohemian subcultures like the<a href="http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/%7Ejim/push.html"> Sydney Push</a> and the Melbourne Drift of the 1950s, and the experimental avant-garde projects at which they laboured in the 1960s.</p>
<p>Self-satire was epitomised in the 1974 sequel <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071196/">Barry McKenzie Holds His Own</a>, famously climaxing in a cameo by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, where he regally Dames Bazza’s Aunty Edna Everage. The scene recalls a colourful period where the larrikin carnivalesque moved to the centre of our political culture, an era where leaders laughed along with us at our foibles, engendering a healthy national happiness. Not for nothing did Whitlam once observe “the fun is where I am”.</p>
<h2>Larrikins in the age of bureaucrats</h2>
<p>Today we live in an age where bureaucrats are drafted as politicians, where managerialism, focus groups and gaffe-spotting take the place of wit, passion and ideas. But perhaps because of this political tedium, the larrikin carnivalesque has thrived. </p>
<p>The Anglo-Celts lost their monopoly on larrikinism in the 1990s as “wog humour” emerged from the suburbs with another popular movie where the naïve but vulgar innocent triumphs in Nick Giannopoulos’ <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216417/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Wog Boy</a> (2000). Kath and Kim have confirmed Edna’s secret that women indeed rule the childlike men of the suburbs, and they now do so not by shushing male pleasures but by out-ockering them. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85853/original/image-20150622-9000-o2qej6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85853/original/image-20150622-9000-o2qej6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85853/original/image-20150622-9000-o2qej6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85853/original/image-20150622-9000-o2qej6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85853/original/image-20150622-9000-o2qej6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85853/original/image-20150622-9000-o2qej6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85853/original/image-20150622-9000-o2qej6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Lilley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Paul Fenech’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244357/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk1">Pizza</a> franchise (2000-2005) and its latest iteration <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103538/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Housos</a> (2011), demonstrates how hip-hopping homeboys of Middle-Eastern appearance have the power to offend and shock. Through the long haul of the Howard, Rudd, Gillard and now Abbott years it has been the Chaser team who channel the subversive elements of the larrikin carnivalesque - anarchic anti-authoritarianism, pranks, the parody of other media, and flirtation with obscenity and offences against good taste. </p>
<p>Humphries’ gift for dark, ironic social observations has passed to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1372823/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Chris Lilley</a>, whose We Can Be Heroes (2005), Angry Boys (2011) and Ja'mie, Private School Girl (2013) dared to puncture the myth of Australian goodness. Lilley leapt into the hypocrisy of race relations in Australia: from cruel schoolyard taunts, to the struggling Tongan boys, confined to the gum nut cottage and forced to appreciate their culture through the creepy “Polynesian Pathways” — offensive to those who believe such programs promote civic happiness, but an important truth about regulation of ethnics in this country. </p>
<p>Today’s guerrilla satire is driven by the new technologies of digital cameras and internet distribution via Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, but the big difference is that the interactivity of these mediums allow a participation by consumers not seen in this country since the hey days of the Bulletin. </p>
<p>Meanwhile a somnolent bureaucracy built of metrics, key performance indicators and compliance that enlists a coercive homogenising notion of “wellbeing” is smothering dissent in so many of our great public and commercial institutions, even in those creative spaces such as universities and the media where troublemakers traditionally pushed back for the freedom to experiment, take risks and have fun. </p>
<p>But out in the “burbs”, online and in the back-blogs, funny young people are busy self-curating extreme carnival to smuggle a sense of what former Prime Minister Paul Keating called “vaudeville” into our otherwise utilitarian politics.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century</a> (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em>
<br></p>
<p><em>On Happiness: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century will launch this evening at Dymocks, George Street, Sydney. Details <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/978972762135530/">here</a></em>. </p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42884/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Moore receives funding from Australian Research Council for Discovery Project 'Fringe to Famous: contemporary Australian culture as an innovation system' (2014-16). He is one of the authors of On Happiness: New Ideas for the 21st Century.</span></em></p>In Australia, from its beginnings, humour and irony have been small weapons in the armoury of the oppressed, the outcast, or those simply fed up with cultural uniformity.Tony Moore, Senior Lecturer Program Director - Communications and Media Studies Graduate Program, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.