What is the secret to happiness and money? Follow these principles: 1) Buy more experiences and fewer objects. 2) Don't worry about insurance. 3) The frequency of happy events matters more than their intensity. Are happy people dumb? Shawn Achor investigates. Is GDP the right measure of wealth and well-being? Science closes in on the reason rich people are jerks. It is difficult to imagine a more ambitious philosophical project than the one which John Kekes pursues in his book The Human Condition. The corporate pursuit of happiness: A Stanford marketing professor is teaching her students — along with AOL, Facebook, and Adobe — how to find and export joy. Happiness studies, sometimes also called positive psychology, is very trendy in university social-science departments these days — but lately, “fear studies” would seem to be more appropriate. Is happiness overrated? Study finds physical benefits to some (not all) good feelings. A review of What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth by Wendell Berry. Mark Vernon on the return of virtue ethics: What is the good life, and how can we know? Psychologised Society: What do we gain and lose from emphasising the individual? The Happynomics of Life: The British case for measuring the happiness of a society, rather than G.D.P. alone, has become compelling. A review of Altruism in Humans by C. Daniel Batson. A review of The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life by Bettany Hughes (and more). Condemned to Joy: The Western cult of happiness is a mirthless enterprise. A review of Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People by Lynn A. Stout. A review of Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy by Pascal Bruckner (and more). Unhappy? Don’t blame the government, it’s probably your marriage.
