Do you think people in South Africa, on average, are happier today than fifty, hundred, or two hundred years ago? Are you as happy as you hoped to be when you were younger and dreamed of ‘one day’? What, ultimately, do you think determines a person’s happiness? Can one live a fulfilled and meaningful life without necessarily being happy most of the time?
You might think the questions above are at best interesting for philosophical debate. Happiness is subjective and contemplating the subject doesn’t lead to anything. But perhaps there is something to learn about our modern lives and the set of assumptions that most people seem to have about the preconditions for happiness. After all, people would often say ‘I just want to be happy’ and they therefore plan their lives according to what they believe will make them happy. It is what drives them, and ultimately it plays out in our culture – the things we value, work for, plan for, dream and talk about. As always is the case, leaders have the responsibility of evaluating the direction we are going, charting the course and of influencing for a better future. Are we leading in the right direction?
According to Gregg Easterbrook (The progress paradox) life is getting better but people are feeling worse. If you consider the hardships that people lived through four generations ago and compare it to, let’s say, the typical life of a Westerner today, you might agree with Easterbrook when he says that our great-great-grandparents would have thought that we live in utopia. One example of progress is that in 1900 life expectancy in the United States was forty-one years, while today it is sixty-six years for the entire world. For essentially all of human history until the last few generations, the typical person's lot has been unceasing toil, meager living circumstances, uncertainty about food, rudimentary health care, limited education, little travel or entertainment; all followed by early death. The typical 21st century person today can enjoy a life of abundance and comfort compared to the past. The irony is however that people feel more depressed today than in previous generations and what’s more, they believe that life is getting worse. ‘The condition in which a person simply always feels blue, is today ten times as prevalent as it was a half century ago…We live in a favoured age yet do not feel favoured.’
It is not uncommon to hear people aspiring to more wealth with the expectation that it will increase their happiness and enjoyment of life. The vision is about all the things rich people can do that others can’t. The truth is however that the list of experiences rich people can have that the average person cannot, has shrunk steadily through the past century. By the standards of history, the differences between rich people’s lifestyles and the lifestyle of a typical person are nothing compared to previous chasms in food, shelter, health care, and education. Yet, if you ask an American how much he must earn to ‘live well’, regardless of how much he is earning currently, he will tell you that he needs twice as much. Clearly, at some point in our so-called progress, greediness takes over.
In his book Easterbrook analises various aspects typical to modern, in particular American, culture that help to create the impression of things getting worse. One of them is the role of media. ‘Western life is methodically made to sound perilous or precarious by media spin, which emphasizes the negative aspects of developments while downplaying the positive.’ By obsessively focusing on smaller and smaller risks like brain damage from cell phones, extremely rare allergies or toxic drinking water, they create anxiety. We have our own, uniquely South African, examples.
One message we get from a study, such as the one by Easterbrook, of the apparent contradiction between scientific, material and technological progress together with the advantages of market economies on the one side and people’s inability to live satisfied and fulfilled lives on the other, is the need to constantly put things in proper perspective. However, psychologically we find it very difficult to do once we get used to living with an attitude of entitlement and once we start justifying why we can never forgive others for the harm or injustices they caused us. Even religious people, if they are honest with themselves, find it very difficult to live with gratitude and forgiveness in their hearts. The fact of the matter is that those two key virtues do not come automatically or as a once-off inspiration. They are things we need to practice consistently and consciously for as long as we live. The one (gratitude) ultimately implies to be open to God – how else can I be grateful for the beauty of nature, for the gift of a grandchild or the blessing of good health? The other (forgiveness) implies acceptance of forgiveness, forgiving oneself and then to live as a matter of principal from a basis of love rather than fear and retaliation.
If Easterbrook is correct in stating that society is undergoing a fundamental shift from ‘material want’ to ‘meaning want’, then it is time for leaders to truly value the importance of and responsibility they have to see people and organisations holistically. People won’t respect a leader who sees them as no more than an economical asset. There is an obvious challenge, namely to create workplaces that people experience as meaningful to them. Emphasis on gratitude for what we have and the willingness to forgive would be a good start.
I wish you a happy month of May
Warm regards
Gerhard
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