Laugh Lines

happens in the United States,a sentence of more than a hundred years. Would this man,in any way,qualify for the adjective happy?

When Sissela Bok poses the question in her fascinating new book,Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science,she is not demanding an answer. It is one of the many examples she cites to take stock of the “scope and depth of human explorations of happiness”. These days we are accustomed to try and get a measure of our happiness — how can we not be,with annual reminders that there is such a thing as Gross National Happiness,which Bhutan routinely aces and which is being sought to be embedded in policy-making. Happiness is no longer seen as an indulgence,and is currently the subject of fine works of philosophy,science and literature (in the last category there is Richard Powers’ recent novel Generosity,about a woman genetically predisposed to happiness).

It is tricky terrain,as the Madoff example shows. For all that we can claim to read an incarcerated trickster’s mind — and that,as Bok explains elsewhere,is open to the deepest philosophical queries — he cannot score high on any happiness questionnaire. But what about the day before he realised that the fraud was up? He,as a self-made man,founder of a till then reputed Wall Street firm and feted philanthropist,“he might well have answered survey questions about subjective well-being [that is contentment in the most positive terms,as would friends and colleagues asked to evaluate his level of happiness”.

The question harks back to Aristotle’s insistence that happiness is a judgment call best left to others and that it be ideally made on the basis of an evaluation of a complete life. The debate still rages.

Bok also connects it to Robert Nozick’s thought experiment about an Experience Machine: “Suppose there were an experience machine that could give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuro-psychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel,or making a friend,or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be a floating in a tank,with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life,preprogramming your life’s experience?”

The thought experiment strips the realisation of happiness so entirely of its moral aspects that it shows there is more to what happiness than what feels like happiness. (Though Bok reminds us that in a survey of thousands of students by Ed Diener,the leading happiness researcher,5 per cent said they would opt for Nozick’s experience machine. That,as Tony Blair chattily also reminds us in his memoir,is near about the percentage of certain population samples that holds Elvis is still alive.)

So,what is happiness? A definition of happiness is like a Rorschach test,says Bok (“tell me how you define happiness and I’ll tell you who you are!”) and the quest has been with humankind since antiquity. What Bok,whose inquiry is about the attainment of happiness amidst moral awareness,suggests is that it’s not a question of stumbling upon happiness. It is instead trying to know what it is,its shape,texture and false alarms. It is about wrapping our minds around the idea by approaching it from many perspectives: “By seeking out accounts of the experience of happiness in its own right; by asking how it has been analysed by philosophers,theologians,and historians; and by considering the rich scientific resources now becoming available in fields such as psychology,economics,health care,genetics,and the brain sciences.” As she adds elsewhere: “Part of seeking to learn about the experience of happiness should involve asking ourselves how we come to perceive it more vividly in its many forms.”

And just as there are innumerable definitions of happiness,there are any number of guided paths. Again,Bok’s way of taking stock is to layer them,one upon the other. So,for instance,common sense tells us that a sunny disposition helps. There is even data to suggest that people with “positive illusions” about themselves tend to be more successful,happier and even rational. Then again: “Asking oneself what to do when one is uncertain of one’s moral duty requires countering the quick intuitive recourse to self-protective strategies such as seeing the silver lining of a problematic action,imagining that it has gone unnoticed or at any rate harmed no one.” By that count,Madoff would have flunked the happiness test long before he was found out. mini.kapoor@expressindia.com