The project of national happiness and vanity fair

(About happiness as a political ideology)

The idea of happiness is not new, Epicurus said that philosophy is an activity that through
discourse and argumentation is designed to bring happiness in human life. Of course, the type of
philosophy the Greek philosopher was referring to was less a form of knowledge and more a way
of building oneself.
If viewed from the individual's perspective happiness indicates a state, an emotion or a
sentiment, the social recovery of the meaning of happiness is more complicated. With the
neoliberal ideology where the meaning of the production and economy of goods is utility and
utility finds its measure in the sense of the measure where it creates satisfaction or pleasure of
consumption, emerges the idea that the product and consumption have a lower threshold which,
once attained, will lower their pleasure. What must be done to multiply the pleasure or to enter
into a continuous upward spiral is to diversify the products and provide them in higher quantities.
The natural consequence: we measure happiness by GDP because the higher it will grow, the
satisfaction may also grow by buying more goods or consuming more.
In the postmodern era, consumerism brings a new kind of hedonism, but also a profound
upheaval of mentalities in which case the meaning of happiness is somehow lost. Today, in the era
that Lipovetsky calls hyper-consumerism people dont buy products or services for their utility,
but also referring to the social criteria provided, and this act is part of a scenario of a happy life,
social model or lifestyle, part of the recipe for triumph and success. To this, one may add a new
type of narcissism and self-reconstruction philosophies, remodeling the body or prolonging life.
In the civilization of desire we go all the time only through continuous stimulation of demand
and infinite multiplication of needs. The lifestyles are changing rapidly, as the French sociologist
says, and we are invaded by a series of extreme phenomenon: the hetero-stimulated hedonism,
political militancy coupled with new forms of populism, while comfort replaces the former
nationalist passions. The consumer credit stimulates desires for a better living, for luxury or
holidays, and we witness the expansion of a market of soul and its transformation, a market of
balance and self-esteem simultaneously with the proliferation of pharmacies of happiness and the
concept of misery is empty of all meaning or it even became a nonsense, in a haven of al
opportunities, in a world without classes, where the middle class is the engine of the society, and
where all pretend that there isnt a base for the social pyramid, the most solid part, where poverty
and deprivation are present.
Once in a while, international organizations, that turned into facade institutions, such as
WHO, timidly say that by 2020 suicide will be the second cause of death in young people under
25 years, becoming a serious social problem. But where we find the causes of this phenomenon?
In the bankruptcy of major social and political transformation projects or in the poor connection
of the individual to the collective values? On the other hand, more and more are wondering:
however, money does not bring happiness? John Stuart Mill makes a clear differentiation between
happiness and fulfilling our desires, but this thing is almost forgotten.
After World War II, economic growth in European countries, North America or Japan were
able to multiply for several times the GDP per capita. But in spite all these measuring the
satisfaction in life, a kind of global indicator, did not correlate with this criterion. Social scientists
who have tried to analyze surveys from several countries noticed that there is no correlation
between income per capita and the results of the survey regarding satisfaction in life. Inglehart
(1988) or Veenhoven (1991) demonstrate that sometimes we even find positive correlations, but
we will find many cases where poor countries have a degree of satisfaction much higher than most
developed countries in the world.
Lately, more and more frequently we use the gross domestic product indicator as a measure
of progress and also of economic growth in general as a guarantor of prosperity. Even in Romania
in recent years, the annual economic growth was somewhere at three percent and at the same time,
the poverty indicators were growing with the same score. Righteously I believe, that many social
activists or politicians say the GDP and its growth is not interested in raising the living standards
or improving the quality of health sector and education. Invented in 1934, the GDP, as an indicator,
begins to be increasingly replaced by indices of poverty, by the Human development index, of
indices of social health or the economic welfare. If GDP is related to the assessment of market
activities linked to the production of goods, of its effectiveness, more and more researchers are
suggesting that we look not at the GDP growth, but rather to an increase in welfare. Sure, we may
challenge the American model which correlates the growth with progress, but we must put in place
a new balance centered on the exigency of human and social development and even on those of
human development in general. It is true, the GDP can grow by increasing the production, and this
can drain the nonrenewable natural resources or create serious environmental imbalances, such as
pollution or global warming.
We must notice a methodological fact: the two concepts are not comparable hundred
percent, the GDP growth having infinite possibility, theoretically, while for the satisfaction of life
the scale is limited.

Romania - happiness as a state of facts

In the world happiness reports, Romanians are somewhere in the middle. In surveys, we find an
average of grades somewhere towards six (6) an auto-estimative evaluation on a scale from 1 to
10. I will not open here the long debate on the exact possibility of measuring happiness. Its too
long and its not even very interesting and taken to sociological parameters it becomes too
technical. But it is clear that we can observe some paradoxes that arise when trying to determine
the dimensions of the social model of happiness. We have, firstly, a series of negative parameters
of perception regarding the daily things: over two thirds of the population in Romania say that the
country is going in the wrong direction, as many dont trust our institutions, almost half of the
Romanians believe that things will not go well next year or in coming years, but still there is an
optimism of the unfortunate.
Where does this energy of dreaming, of hoping, come from is very difficult to measure, it
is more easy to logically deduce these things. There are a few parameters and a few constants that
can be seen as conditions: a state of positive health, good relationships with others, especially with
family and a good financial situation. Important moments as states of happiness and excitement
that people remember are the moments you spent in the family, the birth of your children, attending
events with affective potential (weddings, graduations or anniversaries). The comparison also
provides, happiness or unhappiness, most Romanians considering themselves less fortunate than
politicians, priests, bankers, lawyers, doctors, police officers, actors, writers. The only categories
that most people believe they experience a lower level of happiness are the peasants and the
unemployed (also teachers, but in their case the margin of error is somewhat equal to the most of
the Romanians). We believe we are happier than Moldovans, Russians or North Koreans, but less
happy than Hungarians, French, Poles, Czechs, Englishmen, Germans, Americans or Swedes.
Overall, only 22% of Romanians consider themselves happier than Europeans, 60% of them think
they are less happy. And there is an equal sharing community feeling of happiness, Romanians are
considering themselves equal in terms of happiness with friends, parents, spouse, co-workers and
neighbors. The state of happiness does not operate uniformly throughout life, it reaches a
maximum somewhere after 45 years and probably is generated by the sense of stability and
certainty.
Overall, happiness for Romanians has a paradoxical dimension: it is based on a magic
belief in the future, a very hard thing to observe from the data in the reality near us.

Social uses of happiness

Happiness is increasingly institutionalized, politicians or non-politicians, marketers or simple

crooks want to use happiness as a mascot or as promise. The UN has established a global day of
happiness in March 20, and people commit suicide on that day against the prescription to be happy.
Somewhere in France there is an International Happiness Observatory, and in Bhutan, instead of
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) they use the Gross National Happiness indicator (GNH). Yet in
the World Happiness Report, Bhutan is ranked only on 84 place, while Romania is on 71. Truth
be told, our Moldovans over the Prut are ranked on 55. Recently, a team from an Institute for
Happiness brought happiness courses in Romania, named Happy U, modeled after the most
popular course at Harvard University, initiated by Tal Ben-Shahar in 2004 and where thousands
of students were expected.
An Institute for Happiness was also founded in our country and is already organizing
conferences and courses. Recently at a conference of this kind about 200 young people attended
(obviously with an entrance fee of 400 lei per person!) and it was a combination of positive
psychology and personal development with an exceptional guest, Vanessa King, author of several
books and TV shows, who has issued ten solutions for a happier life, easily remembered by the
acronym GREAT DREAM! Nothing simpler, the acronym contains the ideal formula for
happiness easily obtained through ten simple steps: giving, relating, exercising, appreciating,
trying out, direction, resilience, emotion, acceptance, meaning.
Very simple, isnt it? You have to simply remove from life what makes you sad, as a
motivational slogan on Facebook states. Or to quote a Romanian author: I like to think that days
should not be anonymous. What if at the beginning of a day we could give a name to it: the big
wishes day, the blue shoes day or, why not, 12 hours of flight day. Or what if each day has
a color? For me, the color is red: vitality, dynamics, power. The power of words has no limit
because at the beginning of each day, if we draw in mind how that day could be, then we are
without borders. [...] Be creative when you give happiness!. It is a fragment from the book of a
Romanian specialist, Anca Ghinea, creative manager adviser and author.
As motivation matters, it is enough to choose to be happy, there is no social barrier and
no drawbacks. One might think that the Roma students from a poor ghetto have equal opportunities
to children of new bourgeois or the child in the Apuseni Mountains who walks to school several
kilometers every morning, and in the afternoon he leads the sheep to graze, just have to focus and
the entire Universe will conspire in favor of his escape in the big city, the place where all tourists
came from with bubble gum and Coca Cola cans.

Political campaign and the projects of political happiness

 Now that the election campaign is approaching, projects of national happiness are being
drafted, which obviously will bring long-term happiness, even if this will not be seen in our own
pockets. In some magical phrases, a map of the future happiness of the entire people will be
available. In fact, that was the biggest problem and thats why half of the Romanians live very
tight and 4 million of them live the humiliations of being Romanian citizens outside their country:
we dont have a national happiness project. So, how come no one thought until now, it was so
simple. Nobody will tell people that we have to give up many of our habits, that we have to work
more, to accept that we have to pay fees in order to make more for health or education. That we
must choose people with serious training and experience, not people who act like them. Nobody
will tell them the truth about the country, Romanians will be treated like big babies, always fooled
by those whom they voted naively and in good faith. True innocent victims, voters will be led to
Facebook to see how human are the people who are getting ready for them. We'll find out perhaps,
during the campaign, that the greatest source of unhappiness is corruption or that unhappiness
comes from the dark past of communism or from the political opponents. Certainly, nobody will
say that poverty also kills that the diseases ignored by the system also kill, but also the lack of
school kills and nobody will notice that some of those who today give us lessons are the
grandchildren of those who were diplomats, militiamen or Nicolae Ceausescu spies, young people
already trained in foreign languages to tell us how to translate the word happiness in the social
systems where people didnt use to eat soy salami, not even at the Romanian diplomatic institutions
abroad. Obviously, no one will talk about the fact that it is not normal that the rich and poor pay
the same tax rates, nor that the work should be valued at least as the capital is valued. Unprepared
for the great happiness that everyone has to offer them, the poor Romanians will be blamed that
they still cannot understand that everything has changed and that the new politics descends among
them is communicative, compassionate, simple and friendly. The old thugs will come with new
clothes and will instantly show solidarity in speech with their former victims showing common
miseries. In the happiness fair of our people all sellers of old vows will swarm but also the jugglers
of a new rite. You deserve to be happy, dear Romanians, and, if you choose us, we increase
happiness by at least 20%, from the first month after the election. Some will say: do you remember
how happy you were two or three years ago? You need to be careful with the barriers of your souls,
not to explode of so much happiness! Stunned, the Romanians will buy from different stalls, they
will scratch their heads, they will swarm where the shell game is played with new actors, others
will leave in despair. No one will look at the sociological studies which say that the instability and
uncertainty about the future of our children is the highest source of unhappiness for the Romanians.
Not a fairground with tinfoil happiness and Bengal fires should be given to a people tired to hope
and to be optimistic, but to promote a genuine elite, tested and respected, offering the guarantee
that the society gets more normal and it creates institutions and natural reflexes. Lets not destroy
the intellectual elite, the economic or the technical one, this is the main project of national
happiness, then we can wait the foreign investors with bread and salt.
Sometimes if we would let people find their own happiness, and if we would not drive
them in collective projects maybe they can become much happier. Maybe they would discover
themselves and learn more about sacrifice and even their sacrifice from centuries could make
sense. The national project of happiness for the Romanians could begin with a year of silence, to
reduce the noise of those mighty political projects and perhaps the social body of the nation would
hear its voice more, would feel its desires and would listen to the voice of the new elite, the one
that cannot get through right now because of the war inside the institutions, services, international
foundations, corporations and lobbyists. An elite made up from people who have a vocation,
genuine, not looking to get rich, many of them finding themselves in the situation that now they
cannot imagine they can inspire, motivate and lead a country where the nation's happiness is
trafficking at the fair of all vanities.

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