Is Happiness an Individual Choice?
People’s well-being is the collective responsibility of the individual and society
“You and I don’t have as much control over our well-being as we might like to, and that can be hard for people in more individualistic cultures to hear.” (Jeremy Adam Smith, greatergood.berkeley.edu )
Popular psychology treats happiness as an easily achievable goal. It recommends certain practices and habits like meditation, mindfulness, writing a gratitude journal, performing random acts of kindness, etc.
This happiness package is useful, not in securing happiness but mitigating the harsh conditions of life in an unfair world. They prevent us from plunging into the bottomless pit of despair.
By making happiness a personal responsibility, many self-help books miss the wood for the trees. People are made to feel guilty if they feel unhappy as if they didn’t try harder.
Individuals are part of society. Their lives are heavily influenced by society’s structural forces like culture, family, law, economic inequality, gender and racial norms, etc.
How can individuals be happy in a society that doesn’t provide opportunities for leading a decent life, by which I mean a life with financial security, political freedom, social and economic equality, and affordable and accessible healthcare?
How can people, for example, be happy in a war-torn country, even if they meditated and wrote gratitude journals( if they had something to be grateful for)?
People living in social democracies like Finland and Iceland are happier than others because social welfare ensures a decent standard of living.
Well-being is more than a fleeting moment of pleasure or joy. Structural forces can undermine or enhance an individual’s well-being regardless of whether they are optimistic or pessimistic.
Our individual dispositions and attitudes play a role in influencing our well-being, but there are limits to how we can fake our happiness when hostile social forces constrain our personal growth through visible and invisible barriers.
People need the freedom to access opportunities without facing discrimination. They need social welfare to offset unforeseen calamities like job loss or homelessness or sickness. They need the rule of the law to live fearlessly.
The role of individual responsibility to secure our well-being, though valid up to a point, has been overstated.
Just and humane societies are the best guarantors of individual happiness.
Thanks for reading.
