The Happiness of Living
Why endless growth is killing us and no one is happier for it
There’s no shortage of thinking already done on the ways in which we define, measure, and achieve happiness as humans (both in the individual and collective senses). Lots of great work has emerged over the last decade or so to really challenge the ways in which our dominant economic models1 have failed to capture a more holistic understanding of human happiness. Perhaps most importantly, we are seeing a shift away from a reliance on consumption and the relentless pursuit of more as the means to achieve happiness and wellbeing.
That said, I’m left wondering what I can possibly add to the conversation that might resonate with us here in our little corner of Ontario as we try to figure out what organizing, resisting, and imagining a better future looks like together. Bear with me as I try and thread a few pieces together.
Last month I was reading a book by Hannah Arendt2 for a course that I’m doing and she had a comment on happiness that really wormed its way into my brain. It’s in a section she is writing on labour, a realm of human action that she describes as being distinct from work and related to the cyclical nature of our survival. She writes,
“There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, and whatever throws this cycle out of balance — poverty and misery where exhaustion is followed by wretchedness instead of regeneration, or great riches and an entirely effortless life where boredom takes the place of exhaustion and where the mills of necessity, of consumption and digestion, grind an impotent human body mercilessly and barrenly to death — ruins the elemental happiness that comes from being alive.”
Read it a few times.
Arendt describes real, lasting happiness as being rooted in this cyclical aspect of labour; a pattern she refers to as painful exhaustion and then pleasurable regeneration. At first read, I had a hard time with that. How does exhaustion have anything to do with happiness? The pleasurable part of it made sense to me, but not pain. However, the more I (re)read and reflected, I think I started to get it. She’s talking about a fundamental balance in human behaviour. Look at how she describes the things that throw that cycle off: poverty and misery on one side and great riches and effortlessness on the other. Arendt suggests we need the balance of both to feel truly alive.
I had a prof who used to say ‘you can’t understand what it means to feast unless you understand what it means to fast.’
What’s fascinating to me is the relationship between happiness and sustainability. As capitalism has promised us a better life through the endless pursuit of more, our planet has struggled to keep up with our3 consumption rates. What’s even worse is that current studies suggests that beyond the meeting of essential needs there is no actual connection between increased income and a country’s wellbeing rising together.4 The point is that current research is confirming what the wisest amongst us have been saying throughout human history: that the satisfaction of our desires is not the way to lasting happiness.
The world itself is dependant on that same cycle of exhaustion and regeneration. Resources are not infinite and need time to replenish. Capitalism’s insistence that there is always more to be taken has stripped the earth of what it has left to give, breaking the balance of the cycle, and threatening our very survival.
Are we happy yet?
There is a way forward for us. Arendt’s definition of happiness echoes the very patterns needed for a sustainable future. It’s a cycle that invites us to resist the myth of endless growth and embrace the wisdom of limitations and moderation, patterns that are found all over the natural world. It’s a path connected to the core experience of simply being alive on this planet: painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration.
I believe in the possibility of change rippling out as people show others a different way. As I recently heard in a podcast, “everything large is made up of small parts.” We can affect the big picture by creating new patterns in the smaller areas within our reach. Maybe by changing the way we think about and pursue happiness in our own lives, our families, our friend groups and neighbours, our workplaces, schools, and communities, we might begin to challenge the hold that capitalism has on our culture.
Thanks for reading,
Weekly News Digest - “The Blowhole”
Here are some emerging stories that we think will have an impact on our region that we’re keeping our eye on.
Ontario has enough land for 2M homes without the Greenbelt. Despite the Ford government’s claim that removing part of the Greenbelt is necessary to meet the demands for housing, a new report by Environment Defence says this is not true.
Opposition parties wary of PCs' new bill to shortcut certain environmental assessments. This new bill could allow the government to shortcut certain environmental protections in the planning process for new infrastructure projects.
Mexican workers rescued from 'deplorable conditions' in York Region. Speaking of consumption, it’s easy to overlook the individual links in the supply chain that gets our food to our table. Here’s story close to home about human rights abuses and migrant workers.
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Like what we talk about and want to engage with our coalition more? We host weekly phone zaps and monthly online meetings to review key concerns across the region and take collective action. You can find out more about how to register for these events through Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition’s “Just Recovery Simcoe” initiative.
The best example of this is the work being done to challenge our reliance on the GDP as a means of measuring happiness. The trouble with economic models is that they tend to rely on certain assumptions about human behaviour that don’t always tell us the whole story. To learn more check out something like the World Happiness Report or the Happy Planet Index.
For those who don’t know, Arendt is a political theorist who rose to prominence in the aftermath of WWII and her work done on totalitarianism. She is probably most famous (in terms of passing familiarity) for her reflections on the trial of Adolf Eichmann and what she described as “the banality of evil.” She describes evil as being mundane, dutiful, and bureaucratic. It’s a brilliant look at the way in which systems that perpetuate injustice are held up by all sorts of people just obeying orders or doing their jobs.
I just want to acknowledge that our in this case is not referring to human beings as a whole. Consumption patterns are wildly unequal and a small percentage of people are doing the vast majority of the taking.
The Happy Planet Index, for example, ranks the world’s countries based on life expectancy, wellbeing, inequality, and ecological footprint. Most of the world’s most affluent countries don’t even rank in the top twenty.
The poet, Robert Bly, has an interesting take on something similar to this in his book, Iron John. He uses the old Greek word, "katabasis", to describe a process of digging, or doing the work, in order to plant or find something good.