French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently made the case for using happiness as part of measuring France's economic well-being. Social Technologies has forecast and has been tracking the twin trends of the surging interest in happiness and the emergence of new metrics for measuring "success." Increasing interest in happiness reflects long-term shifts in values away from an achievement-at-tall-costs mentality to a more reflective approach about that questions what success is and probes more deeply into the meaning of life. One of the results of the shifts has been increased study of and research into happiness. Research has pretty clearly demonstrated that money does not buy happiness. Once our basic survival and minimal consumer needs are met (a high-end estimate puts this around US$10,000 per capita GDP), making more money does not increase happiness. Yet, we have designed the metrics of our economic systems around the assumption that economic growth is the route to happiness.
What we have here is a disconnect. And as futurists, we get excited about disconnects! They are seed-beds for change. Social change works slowly, but people eventually figure out that things are not making sense, and things need to change. If we want to be happy (and yes, even this is an assumption, but we'll leave that for another discussion), and we know that money and material success do not provide it beyond a certain minimal point, then we will look elsewhere. This pursuit is the nature of the postmodern "angst" and reflection behind the shift to postmodern values that many are experiencing. Eventually, we will look to change the systems that are reinforcing this disconnect, and recalibrate them to better assist our goals and purposes. The bottom line is that there will be a growing recognition that we are measuring the wrong things, and a quest to rethink those metrics - as evidenced by Sarkozy's comments.
The particularly good news about this post, for those who think this is a good thing, is that it provides a data point, albeit just a weak one at this point, that makes the case that these changes are gaining momentum. The current poster child for rethinking economic systems, Bhutan, has take these developments a step further in the creation of a Gross National Happiness measurement system. Alas, Bhutan is a small country, rather unique, and has experienced recent political turmoil. The fact that a G7 country is considering this metric adds credibility. .
Skeptics will see this as a move by France to explain away their lack of economic growth. But I'm reminded of the question raised several years ago by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, "Do we want to be an economy or a society?" This indicator suggests a small move toward "society."
These changes and other aspects of the changing consumer and changing consumer landscape will be tracked at our upcoming "New Dimensions of Consumer Life: Emerging Need States as the Seeds for Innovation" being held on November 10th in Washington DC. For more information, email Don Abraham at don.abraham@socialtechnologies.com.
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