Happiness Is Understandable, Obtainable and Teachable

Can you make yourself happier? Or are you stuck with who you are?

The debate over this question is intensifying. With each new week, a novel angle on the exploding field of positive psychology, the science of happiness, makes news.

How solid is the new science? If happiness turns out to be serious business, it's much too relevant to real life to leave in the hands of academics. Let's take a peek at this new field and talk about the implications for our system of education and, yes, our own happiness.

In the 1960s, Abraham Maslow challenged his fellow psychologists with a Copernican shift in perspective. Instead of pondering what makes sad people sad, he suggested we think about what makes happy people happy.

Since the 1980s, numerous studies by "positive psychologists" such as Ed Diener and Martin Seligman have tried to place the study of human well-being on a scientific foundation. Many of these studies have homed in on small groups of "very happy people" and analyzed their lifestyles and personalities through multiple questionnaires and interviews.

They found that, to a certain extent, the happiness that people can intentionally generate through their thoughts and actions can "psych out" genetic gloominess.

Seligman's bottom line is that happiness has three dimensions that can be cultivated: "The pleasant life" is realized if we learn to savor and appreciate such basic pleasures as companionship, the natural environment and our bodily needs.

We can remain pleasantly stuck at this stage or we can go on to experience "the good life," which is achieved by discovering our unique virtues and strengths and employing them creatively to enhance our lives.

The final stage is "the meaningful life," in which we find a deep sense of fulfillment by mobilizing our unique strengths for a purpose much greater than ourselves.

The genius of Seligman's theory is that it reconciles two conflicting views of human happiness - the individualistic approach, which emphasizes that we should take care of ourselves and nurture our own strengths, and the altruistic approach, which tends to downplay individuality and emphasizes self-sacrifice.

Granted, the debate between the positive psychologists and their critics is far from over. Yet it is time to think about integrating the study of human well-being into our school curriculums. After all, as the Declaration of Independence suggests, the pursuit of happiness qualifies as a national goal.

If our children have the right to pursue happiness, shouldn't they be educated about how to do it? Millions of parents are taking drugs to escape from misery; why aren't we teaching their offspring about the habits and virtues conducive to peace of mind?

Many secondary school educators express deep frustration over the so-called "values vacuum" in the curriculum. Yet they feel powerless to do much about it in a multicultural society. Who is to say what is good or bad?

The positive psychologists provide a growing body of data indicating that certain virtues and personal strengths are fairly universal. What is more, these virtues are not necessarily good or bad. They are simply conducive to deep feelings of satisfaction and self-worth.

Because the quest for happiness is a universal one, studies of human well-being can promote a genuinely global education. It is worth bearing in mind that the psychology of happiness is not a monopoly of Western academia. It began in China, India and Greece nearly 2,500 years ago with Confucius, Buddha and Aristotle. In a world rent at its ethnic seams by mutual ignorance and suspicion, we need affective as well as intellectual education. We need to know the facts about our neighbours in the global village, but as much as we can, we need to put ourselves in their shoes. The best way we can share their dreams and aspirations is by learning more about the values that they treasure, particularly on personal growth and happiness, as well as their economic and political histories. If we do, we may discover that the intuitions of the great thinkers resonate in surprising ways with the discoveries of Positive Psychology.

The urgent task is to design lively, readable materials that deal with global perspectives on human happiness. The next step is to integrate these into high school and university curriculums.

In a society that spends more than $25 billion a year on psycho-pharmaceuticals (that's $85 per person) and untold billions dealing with family dysfunction, education on human well-being should take priority. n n