Our Talk in the Woods

Simon Ling leading our happiness discussion

On one of our walks Simon surprised us with a seemingly random talk about happiness. We started talking about how cultures sustain themselves, which opened up a Pandora’s box to a whirlwind of ideals about the importance of cultural welfare versus economic prosperity. Needless to say, we were there for a while. A lot of people differed on their opinions of how they should live their lives based on personal frameworks of how they saw the world. This was such a difficult conversation because the reality of this conflict was almost tangible. It was really frustrating to me that there is no real measure of happiness in the world yet there is a gage for anything and everything that, on the surface, drives economy. It feels a bit like people are just slaves, stock to count and measure to see how hard they can work and make you money.

Throughout this discussion I could not stop thinking about the Gapminder Ted Talk by Hans Rosling. 

I first saw the presentation as an example of how to get passionate about data and it was incredibly influential. This Swedish statistician compares the growth of individual countries using values like, mortality rate, birth rate, economic development and public welfare to prove that having economic abundance does not equal happiness. What I remember most about this talk was that countries that started out poorer than America with higher social welfare rates caught up relatively quickly and in some cases even surpassed the U.S.

I’ve wanted a family since I was young enough to record this wish in my diary at the young age of five. This was cute at first but then I received all these negative messages toward childbirth, which I understood as a teenager. However, when I hit my twenties the dissenting voices grew even stronger. There were anti-family sentiments from family, media, professors and even my peers. I always wrote this attitude off as a plea for young adults to wait until their responsible to have children. This may be a cautious social practice but it seems weird to me that, as young people, we are so pressured to begin our lives, make large amounts of money and “consume! consume! consume!” but there is virtually not support for young families in American society.

It’s not fair to be forced to lead your life in a certain way when you’re comfortable living in what is supposed to be a free country. It’s hard not to feel helpless in this system when you’re swimming against the gradient. We are constantly fed messages prompting us to work our butts off but in our talk in the words Simon informed us that money can only influence happiness up to 72K a year. He also informed us that he is below the poverty line in Australia and couldn’t be happier with his “off the grid” living situation. He and so many other people participating in what he called a “down shift” are proving our greedy society wrong. After a certain age Simon noted that people in Australia shift from consumerism to self-actualization. They begin to do things that make them happy like travel, partake in hobbies and focus on friends and family. It seems to me that this is the message that we would be receiving in America but of course that couldn’t be because that would put a dent in measurements like the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which is the government’s way of making sure that we have the standard of living that makes society money. The glaring problem in this equation is that there are no known measurements of factors that enhance national satisfaction. This is why things like historical cultures and landscapes are in trouble because there’s nothing in our economy to record the importance of their beauty to global well-being. This is silly because there is obviously a market for happiness but it seems to existential for bureaucracies to break into.

Incorporating a scale that could delve into a community’s self-actualization value would send a message to citizens that the government cares about them and the world they live in. It might pave the way for sustainability and social welfare instead of one that often urges us to use resources past their potential. I know that I would be a lot happier working to support my family if I wasn’t battling against the perpetually poor economy just to get out of debt enough to start one.