What If? A More Critical Lifestyle and Some Policy Options

Happiness as a standard in our personal life. What could we expect if individuals were to accept happiness more deliberately, as a descriptive standard and/or as a standard to be pursued in their personal life? We may expect some change. People usually adopt and adapt their standards unknowingly, and may adopt inconsistent, overambitious and inconvenient standards, and perhaps even immoral standards. The adoption and adaptation of standards are subject to cognitive peculiarities and social dynamics, like social comparison, manipulation and positional competition. If people apply evaluative happiness as a standard in their personal life a bit more knowingly, then this may lead to a more critical inspection of adopted standards, and a more critical adoption of new standards. All of this can contribute to more self-knowledge, a more critical lifestyle and a more effective pursuit of happiness. It may also focus more attention on visible and less visible unhappiness among people in their social environment. It is problematic, however, that there are no effective explanations of differences in individual happiness within nations. There is no general knowledge which enables us to explain such differences. Individuals are primarily on their own, even if there are many publications about happiness. Up to a point however, this lack of general knowledge can be compensated for by a more profound understanding of one’s own needs and ambitions. Happiness as a standard in politics. What could we expect if happiness were accepted as a descriptive standard and/or as a standard to be pursued in politics, to be applied in combination with objective standards? It would first of all imply that happiness as a standard would be used more systematically to detect unhappiness. In a second step this unhappiness can be analysed, to find explanations and to develop policies. There is a lot of general knowledge about differences in average happiness that can be applied, and some knowledge about differences in individual happiness that must be further developed. Perhaps national governments would pay more attention to the interests of unhappy people in their own nations and in other nations. Negative utilitarianism, putting priority on reducing unhappiness, would be a logical option in nations with a high average happiness. Evaluative happiness is also an interesting issue for politicians, policy-makers and political scientists. Information about evaluative happiness can help them to understand political preferences and the results of elections.