Mostafa Malekian's Introduction to The Politics of Happiness

Mostafa Malekian's Introduction to The Politics of Happiness

"Everything for the Human Being, Even Politics"

The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-being, by Derek Bok, translated by Narges Salahshour, first edition, Nashr-e No, 2020, 383 pp.

As far as I know, the book The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-being, by Derek Curtis Bok, whose fine Persian translation by Narges Salahshour has now been published under the title The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-being, is not only the first work with this title, but the first work on this subject to be published in the West. This book, in fact, comprises a recommendation and a research report. The recommendation is that governments should orient the process of governance and governmental behaviors toward a product called "citizens' happiness" and, therefore, when judging the success/failure or goodness/badness of a governmental system and comparing governmental systems with one another, the criterion, standard, measure, and yardstick should be the breadth and depth of citizens' happiness. The report of the empirical, field, and statistical research conducted is that the happiness of the citizens of any government or society depends entirely on seven important factors, such that this happiness can be considered a function of these seven variables. These seven factors are: 1) each person's inherited temperament; 2) marriage: as opposed to singlehood, loss of a spouse, separation from a spouse, and cohabitation without formal marriage; 3) having social relationships, such as friendship and companionship, participation in social groups, and performing charitable and voluntary work; 4) having job-professional satisfaction, as opposed to lacking satisfaction with one's job and profession and losing one's job and profession, whether this job loss results from the mass dismissal of a group of employees, including that specific citizen (in the common, incorrect term, resulting from workforce reduction) or from the dismissal of only that citizen, for a specific reason; 5) the person's own perception of the nature and quality of their physical and bodily health, as opposed to the perception that doctors have of this matter; 6) having religious faith and belief or, at least, having a personal ideal that gives a person mental and psychological strength and fortitude more or less equivalent to religious faith and belief, such as the ideal of peace and friendship with the environment and the ideal of voluntary simple living; and 7) having a democratic governmental system, committed and bound to the political, economic, and cultural-social freedoms of citizens, fully adhering to the constitution and other laws of the country, efficient and problem-solving, with the least amount of violence, with the least amount of corruption, enjoying the full trust of citizens (especially the police and the judiciary), and responsible and accountable. Of course, each of these seven factors has its own constraints, conditions, limits, and boundaries, the details and explanations of which are provided in the book's chapters.

I do not intend here to summarize the contents of this book, at least for the reason that the book is written in such a concise and condensed manner that summarizing it is neither feasible nor possible for me, and, to learn about its contents, there is apparently no way but to study it.

Instead, I want to mention the most important presuppositions of the book's main recommendation. This recommendation that every government should target the happiness of its citizens and consider all its policies, guidelines, arrangements, and regulations as means to achieve this goal has presuppositions, the most important of which are as follows:

1) The government, in its relations and dealings with other social institutions, possesses the power of compulsion and/or the power of deterrence. Human happiness, as even the report presented in this book on the studies and research conducted makes clear, depends on matters that flow within social institutions such as the family, the economy, science, technology, and art, ethics, religion and creed, and education. If the institution of government lacks the power of intervention and appropriation in these other institutions—whether a positive, compelling power or a negative, deterring power—how can it make decisions and implement them in a way that secures the factors influencing happiness?

2) Human happiness depends either exclusively or primarily on their external, objective, and outward circumstances. The reach of governmental actions, including both decisions and their implementation, is the external and objective circumstances of citizens. They can, with the aid of various techniques, including engineering, medical, and economic management techniques, create positive changes in nature, the human body, and the living conditions of humans—including food and drink, clothing, fuel, housing, work, leisure, rest, travel, and recreation—that are aligned with happiness; that is, they can improve their external and objective circumstances. However, if a thinker claims that human happiness depends either exclusively or primarily on their internal, inward, and subjective circumstances—that is, on their own attitude and perspective—and, consequently, that improving their external and objective circumstances either has no effect on their happiness or only a slight effect, then one cannot demand the happiness of its citizens from the government. Great thinkers such as the Buddha, the Stoics, and Spinoza, and even Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, have made such a claim and, in more or less different forms and with varying degrees of emphasis on perspectivism—and that everything in the human world and social life ultimately revolves around the individual's attitude and perspective toward the world, not the world itself—have insisted upon it.

3) All humans, or at least all citizens of a society, have a more or less common list of desires, meaning their desires do not multiply into the plurality of social groups or the multiplicity, plurality, and diversity of individuals. If such multiplicity, plurality, and diversity exist, then, again, demanding the happiness of citizens from the government is to demand an impossibility.

4) Human desires, ultimately, do not conflict or clash with their needs. The conflict and clash between desire and need, or between the pleasant/unpleasant and the beneficial/harmful, or between short-term benefit and ultimate, long-term benefit, is a very common and frequent phenomenon during our childhood. Our body needs a certain food, but we do not want that food. It does not need another food, and eating it even harms the body, yet we want it. Because we have fallen ill due to a cold, we need a specific pill, capsule, syrup, or injection and detest it, while we strongly desire ice cream or chocolate, which is not in the ultimate, long-term benefit and interest of our body. In such situations, of course, our parents prefer our need over our desire and our benefit over our pleasure, and they are right to do so. From what point onward does our situation, in this respect, differ from our situation in childhood? From what point onward are we certain that our desire is aligned and harmonious with our need and that they do not conflict or clash? From when onward do we want everything we need and not want everything we do not need, and everything we want is what we need and everything we do not want is what we do not need? If we cannot determine such a time, which marks the boundary between our childhood and our rational and moral maturity, we must accept that we are always at risk of sacrificing our need for our desire and preferring our pleasure over our benefit. And, in this case, what should be expected of the government? The expectation to secure desires or to secure needs? In other words, if the equation “what humans want = what humans ought to want” does not hold, what should citizens demand from the government?

To dispel any misunderstanding, I must emphasize that the identification of human needs should not be sought from any ideology, whether religious or non-religious. Just as, today, the nutritional sciences have advanced to the point where a nutrition specialist can tell each of us, based on our age, sex, weight, and height, how much protein, calcium, vitamins, calories, and so forth we need each day, our other physical, mental, and psychological needs must also be determined by specialists in the various human sciences, and not by any other authority or source.

5) The human sciences and knowledge have progressed to a point where they can discern two things: one, human needs, and the other, the conflict/non-conflict of human desires with their needs.

6. The government itself does not have desires and/or needs that conflict with the desires and/or needs of its citizens. It is evident that if such a conflict exists or arises, realism dictates that we should not expect the government to sacrifice its own desires and/or needs for those of its citizens. Is such an expectation not contrary to the historical experience of humankind and contrary to the inner intuition of every human individual?

My intention was merely to present the most important presuppositions of the politics of happiness, not to critique or reject any of them. On the contrary, for my part, I am very pleased that a thinker like Derek Bok, who is one of the greatest legal scholars and education specialists in America and served for many years as president of Harvard University, has shown such concern for this important issue.

I strongly recommend reading this book.

Mostafa Malekian

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Related Content:

Mostafa Malekian's Speech at the Unveiling of the Book The Politics of Happiness (26 December 2017 – House of Humanities Thinkers)

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