Humankind's
Age of Happiness
by George Ortega
This short treatise will show how over the past 50
years, humanity has amassed a body of scientific
knowledge about happiness that our world can now use
to relatively easily and inexpensively lift our global
happiness from its current level of under 65% to a
much happier 85% or higher within a decade.
This achievement will be tantamount to the
creation of a new historic Age of Human Happiness.
Happiness studies date back as far as 1930 when
Goodwin Watson published a paper called "Happiness
Among Adult Students of Education," It was not until
1957, however, that a true science of happiness began. In that year,
Alden E. Wessman published his doctoral dissertation
titled "A Psychological Inquiry Into Satisfactions
and Happiness." An increasing number of published
studies on happiness followed throughout the 1960s
and 1970s.
In the mid '70s, Michael Fordyce, a professor from Fort Myers, Florida,
concluded that the science of happiness had
collected enough consistent data to justify a giant
leap forward. Predicting that individuals could be
taught to become much happier though classroom
instruction based on happiness research findings,
Fordyce conducted the world's first
happiness-increase experiment. His "Development of a
Program to Increase Personal Happiness," published
in 1977 in The Journal of Counseling Psychology,
demonstrated conclusively that by receiving a few
weeks of instruction, individuals could become much
happier.
Because of its significance to humankind's highest
goal of happiness, this pioneering study is destined
to rank among the most important scientific works of
all time. Michael Fordyce created a distinct field
of "Happiness-Increase Psychology" that is the most effective and direct
means humankind has yet developed to achieve what
English philosopher Jeremy Bentham described in 1769
as "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."
Thirty years after Fordyce developed his powerful
happiness-increase program, our world is
experiencing an historic epiphany regarding the
primacy happiness holds in our lives, both as
individuals and as a global society. In 1998, Martin
Seligman, then president of the American
Psychological Association, founded the Positive Psychology
movement whose research focus
revives a long dormant recognition
going back to the A.P.A.'s first president, Raymond
Dodge, that "happiness is an important, if not the
most important, aim of human endeavor." With this
enormously popular redirection in psychology, a new
generation of researchers led by Sonja Lyubomirsky
has emerged to advance the happiness-increase
interventions that Fordyce pioneered.
Recognizing that this renaissance in happiness
research was destined to create a wide consumer
demand for happiness, from 2003-05, Seligman and
his colleague, Ben Dean, trained about 1,000 individuals
to market one-to-one happiness coaching. Also
in 2003, the author of
this treatise created the world's first television
program entirely about happiness; The Happiness
Show. To disseminate happiness information as
widely as possible, he has made virtually all of its over 130 half-hour episodes available for free digital
download and free broadcast by television stations
throughout in the world.
Highlighting the public's new interest
in happiness, on January 17, 2005, Time
magazine published a cover story on "The New Science
of Happiness" that spanned 64 pages, and became
the magazine's most requested back issue. In a world
dominated by an insatiable quest for wealth, the
preeminent role of happiness in our lives is also
being forcefully promoted by top economists and
business leaders. In 2005, Sir Richard Layard,
founder of Europe's leading economic
institution, The London School of Economics' Centre for Economic
Performance, published a book titled Happiness
that strongly advocates a shift in our global
mindset from economics and materialism to the
happiness at the heart of those desires. Here we are in 2007, and
happiness seems to be reaching the critical mass
that Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book, The
Tipping Point, as presaging major changes in our
personal and societal landscapes.
An Age of Human Happiness is being born as people
all over the world experience the revelation that
behind all of the money, success,
prestige, knowledge, security and health, we strive
for lies the
singular goal of greater happiness. A
widening understanding that dramatic increases in happiness
are readily and inexpensively at hand by individuals
completing eight to twelve hours of happiness
instruction over the course of eight to twelve weeks
represents a second major component of, and catalyst
to,
an emerging worldwide happiness movement.
Happiness is now being seen as more than the goal of every product we buy,
but a product in its own right. The business
community is gearing up to meet a new consumer
market for greater happiness through scientifically
proven classroom and personal
training. As businesses begin to advertise
this new product through television commercials,
infomercials, and other venues, consumer demand for
greater happiness through training should grow
exponentially.
Other sectors of society are beginning to appreciate the
growing body of happiness research demonstrating
that as people become happier they become more
healthy, energetic, productive, creative,
cooperative, compassionate, etc. In 2006, the
most popular course at Harvard University was a
course on happiness. Happiness
instruction is beginning to be adopted by schools to
improve academic performance, and will be a part of
British public school curriculums beginning in 2008.
Ideas have their time, and the time for a global Age
of Happiness appears to be at hand. As
citizens of our world's rich countries
experience their happiness level rising from its
current 70% to a level of 85% and higher (Over 20%
of Americans are already at least 85% happy.),
something very wonderful should begin to happen.
Having achieved their cherished goal, happier
masses are likely to turn their attention to
the needs of the less fortunate.
One of the strongest findings in happiness research
is that above the poverty line money's ability to
create greater happiness is marginal. Below
that line, however, money to acquire basic needs is
far more instrumental to happiness. About one
billion people in our world live in an extreme
poverty that takes their children's lives at the
rate of 29,000 each day. As the international
community acknowledged more than 30 years ago, all
that is necessary to save the vast majority of those
lives is for the world's 22 richest countries to
devote one percent of their annual income to this
most urgent of humanity's problems.
Regrettably, those rich countries now collectively
devote less than one half of one percent of their income
each year to ending this needless suffering and
death.
Once their population's needs for shelter, clothing,
and food are met, and they are helped in creating
self-sustaining economies, the poorest countries in
our world will join the developed world in this
historic happiness revolution. When that
happens, our world will be rewarded for its
compassion with the most wonderful achievement of
all
humankind; A Global Age of Happiness. |