The Greatest Happiness

proceed by simply summing the happiness of each individual. But it gets worse:

To measure happiness, we can ask a person how happy he is, or we can ask his friends or independent investigators. These reports yield similar results. The breakthrough has been in neuroscience. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin has identified an area in the left front of the brain where good feelings are experienced, and another in the right front where bad feelings are experienced. Activity in these brain areas alters sharply when people have good or bad experiences. Those who describe themselves as happy are more active on the left side than unhappy people, and less active on the right side. So the old behaviourist idea that we cannot know how other people feel is now under attack.

So, as Robert McHenry suggests, why not just implant electrodes in that good-feeling area and hand each of us a little button to push as often as we like? Or develop some new soma-like pills we can all ingest?

Layard thinks he’s battling individualism, but his whole approach simply reinforces it. Or, to put it another way, the whole emphasis on happiness is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It makes me unhappy just thinking about it.