Don't worry, we're happy

Depending on circumstances, and especially if we are pushed in the right direction, this individual capacity for fear can be turned quickly into a collective capacity for panic. Throughout history humans have panicked about a stunning array of things from race to plague to radio plays. Many panics are based on real danger, but plenty are not.

These others are induced, sometimes accidentally and sometimes deliberately, when our fears of social ills or general dangers have been piled on top of each other like dry leaves ready for the tinderbox. It's not just laughter and irony that separate us from the beasts: we are the only animal that regularly scares the hell out of ourselves.

People scare each other to gain political support, get funding for scientific research, make headlines, raise money for causes or sell books. In a crowded society everybody's trying to get an edge on the competition for attention and resources and many of them are turning up the volume of their doomsaying to get a little love.

It is in the interests of both the extreme Right and the extreme Left to pretend our values are in crisis. Crisis suits extremists of all persuasions because an impending calamity suggests you must adopt new behaviours immediately to avoid annihilation. Go to church immediately! Abolish the World Trade Organisation immediately! Have more/fewer/happier children immediately!

What they all have in common is the desire to restrict our freedom. Intellectuals and elites spent centuries resisting giving ordinary citizens the vote. Now they want to restrict the enfranchisement that we experience in the modern capitalist economy.

Disposable culture and dumbing down are the constant concern of people who think they have better ways for us to live. And while everyone likes to have a go at Paris Hilton, the real targets of this derision are not the idle rich, they are the working class, the people who buy the big-screen TVs, McMansions and cheap Korean cars. It is over consumption and trash consumption by the masses that really gets up the snouts of the clever types.

Choice has become a four-letter word to many cultural commentators. For them it's just code for private schools and private wealth and over consumption and the decay of the great social contract.

Which is a pity because the weight of research on happiness suggests we are programmed for Jefferson's pursuit of happiness rather than its attainment, that the quest itself constitutes a kind of satisfaction.

Prosperity provides opportunities to explore the self-actualising behaviours and social engagement that improves our wellbeing. In addition, prosperity and the availability of a wider variety of experiences increase opportunities for sensory pleasure such as better food and more stimulating recreation that, although it isn't happiness, certainly helps the winter nights fly.

The problem with looking to social reformers and intellectuals to provide prescriptions for happiness is that freedom to choose for ourselves is fundamental to the pursuit of happiness. Within reasonable limits, that includes freedom to think, to do and, yes, consume what we wish.

Perhaps it makes Hamilton happy to sit in his office pondering how to make me happier by stopping me from consuming. But what makes me happy is to take my kids to laugh our heads off through the new Pixar movie, stop in at Time Zone to bust some moves in a video dance-off and put in an order for the new Harry Potter before wolfing down a Happy Meal.