The happiness delusion | Aaron Bastani, Paul Dolan, Joanna Kavenna
56Aaron Bastani, Paul Dolan, Joanna Kavenna discuss happiness.
Is our focus on happiness making us unhappy?
Watch the full debate at https://iai.tv/video/the-happiness-delusion?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description
"Oh happiness! Our being’s end and aim!” wrote Alexander Pope. Now, a few centuries later, it's not just smiling faces on billboards: some governments have made happiness measures a central goal. 89% of young people in their twenties think life has no purpose other than happiness. But might this be a fundamental error? Income in the West has gone up threefold since the 1950's, but the number of people who say they are unhappy has not fallen; instead it is up 50%. Countries, like New Zealand, that target a happiness index have some of the highest rates of depression and suicide.
Should we see happiness not as the goal, but as the outcome of other actions and focus instead on purpose and achievement, both individual and collective? Or is the notion of an end or purpose to life, be it happiness or anything else, the fundamental mistake?
#happiness #eudaimonia #hedonism
0:11 Introduction
0:25 Aaron Bastani
3:30 Paul Dolan
5:50 Joanna Kavenna
Aaron Bastani is co-founder of Novara Media, an independent, self-described radical left-wing alternative media organisation. He is also the author ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’.
Paul Dolan is a behavioural scientist and author of the bestselling book ‘Happiness By Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life.’
Joanna Kavenna is a multi-award-winning writer. She was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists for her ground-breaking novels including A Field Guide to Reality and Zed.
Regular presenter of Night Waves and writer for the Financial Times, History Today, and the London Review of Books, Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at Oxford.
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