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The phrase isn't mine (it was uttered by a British Member of Parliament), but it neatly captures my reaction to the recent announcement that governments are now in the business of measuring happiness.
Watch out, Big Brother wants to smother you with love.
You don't have to be a fire-breathing libertarian to be alarmed that just last year British Prime Minister David Cameron said his government would launch a "happiness index." The idea is for that country's Office for National Statistics to measure personal well-being in key areas such as health, education, and the environment. The UK's government believes that with these data it can formulate policies which can improve peoples' satisfaction with life.
Like every bad idea whose time has come, this one looks like it's going viral. Although economists started measuring happiness in the 1970s, a whole new field of "happiness experts," predictably headquartered on college campuses throughout the industrialized world, is currently expanding with lightning speed. I'm sad to say that researchers from my own country of Canada are in the vanguard of this dubious movement.
The Boston suburb of Somerville just got in the act. It mailed out census forms to its inhabitants asking them, among other things, "how satisfied are you with your life right now?" For reasons I can't fathom, the city also asks "how similar are you to other people you know?"
What that has to do with gauging happiness, I frankly don't know. But for a city that's been lauded by the White House for its program against obesity, a move into the field of emotional health is a natural progression.
Actually, I'm the first to agree with David Cameron that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) isn't a great way of calculating a nation's overall welfare. But that's not an excuse for government to get even more intrusive in individuals' everyday lives.
As I see it, there are two big problems with state-sponsored, happiness indexes. Realistically, can happiness be measured? How candid are people when asked these kinds of questions? How many will respond that they aren't satisfied with life?
Most of the people I know, when asked how happy they are, just shrug their shoulders and say they're pretty content. Those who are really unhappy rarely admit it on surveys. So, what's the value of data from such studies?
And what is happiness, anyway? Philosophers and theologians have wrestled with the problem for centuries, and today they're still no closer to an answer. I don't trust state bureaucrats to be any wiser.
The other problem has to do with what governments intend on doing with these data. There's been a disturbing trend in the history of mental health care over the last two centuries. Increasingly governments have become involved in the management of psychological well-being by providing programs of health and welfare. This pattern has gained momentum dramatically in recent years.
Investigating individual happiness can only accelerate this trend.
When I think of how such an initiative might be implemented in our schools, I shudder. I can see educators, already in love with the concept of self-esteem, using behaviour management in an effort to impose a blanket definition of contentment on all children.
I'm betting that in a day and age when elected officials find it harder and harder to satisfy their electorates with material welfare programs, they'll be glad to change the subject to "emotional welfare." As critics like Frank Furedi have warned, emphasizing "therapeutic governance" gets politicians off the hook for their failures in other, more concrete policy fields.
The bottom line is that governments have no business trying to define and meet individuals' emotional needs. They can't make us happy. Let's keep the state out of the consulting rooms of the nation.
