Happy Ever After: A Radical New Approach to Living Well

by Paul Dolan

There are countless stories about how we ought to live our lives. We are expected to be ambitious, to find everlasting love and to take good care of our health. The particularly dominant social narratives can serve to make our lives easier, by providing guidelines for behaviour, and they might sometimes make us happier too. But they are, at their heart, stories – and ones that may not have originated with present-day people in mind. As such, many of these stories end up creating a kind of social dissonance whereby, perversely, they cause more harm than good. They become what I will refer to as narrative traps, which together form the myth of the perfect life.

‘when you reach a certain level you have to modify your behaviour’.

Perhaps because it is a sign of a poor vocabulary and/or low intelligence, and yet no such correlations have ever been found.2 There is evidence, however, to suggest that students pay more attention to a teacher who swears, and are then encouraged to express their own opinions more freely.3 Swearing is only ever harmful when it is used in an aggressive or abusive way, and not when used as a means of conveying excitement and emphasis, which is only ever how I use it in the workplace. In these circumstances the evidence shows that it does more good than harm, so the idea that swearing is bad is a fucking stupid one.4

Social narratives make prescriptions about what people should want, do, think and feel. They

To be happier we need to move from a culture of ‘more please’ to one of ‘just enough’.

Debt is a clear cause of stress and misery, and we can get ourselves into trouble by trying to keep up with those around us.

Getting richer does not necessarily bring more happiness, partly because we upwardly adjust the people we compare ourselves to. Looking up to those richer than us could serve to motivate us and give us hope, but most of the time it just annoys and discourages us and we are less happy with our lot, particularly if we start from a position of envy.

There are three key elements to status-seeking consumption. First, the goods must be limited in supply: if everyone could get the same pair of Valentino trainers, it would be much harder for you to show off your uniquely enviable position as their owner. Second, the consumption must be visible: if no one notices your trainers, because they have a discreet or forgettable design, others couldn’t possibly know you were rich. Visibility can refer to physical visibility to other people and/or to social visibility, where our status is expressed in social cues. Going on holiday somewhere luxurious, for instance, is somewhat physically visible through a tan, but it is mostly socially visible. (I’m sure you have experienced a friend or colleague boring you to tears with stories of their adventure holiday, or endless photos of waterfalls and beaches.) The third element of status-seeking consumption is that there is a weak association between price and quality. If price goes up and quality remains unchanged and people still buy the article, they are buying it purely for the status it affords them. This is a fantastic marketing ploy that nearly all of us status-seeking humans seem to fall for; the relationship between price and quality is a lot weaker for lipsticks than it is for facial cleansers, for example.

If the benefits we derive from a good depend on what other people think about it, then its value is highly sensitive to shifts in narratives about what’s important.

The journey to riches for most people will be long, unpleasant and fruitless, so it makes a lot more sense to take the shorter path to ‘just enough’. This requires noticing when decisions to pursue more money are driven by social comparisons and status, as opposed to those borne of the wish to have better experiences.

My main proposal drawn from this chapter is that if you are not struggling to make ends meet, rein in the social narrative that encourages you to endlessly pursue more money. Invest your time and effort into doing all you can to ensure that those who are struggling are provided with the living conditions, wages and financial support that will help them to cover the costs of their living expenses.

A job that makes us miserable is not a good job, but we can convince ourselves it is if it has high status.

The higher up the social ladder you (think you) are, the less you care what’s going on around you.

One of the reasons why we might not see such a strong association between happiness and education is that working-class people, who might be thought of as having the most to gain from education, lose their social networks and identities as they become better educated. People from similar classes share values, but these values differ across classes. Someone who attempts to integrate into a given class but who fails to conform to its respective value system can face great difficulties. As a result of having to fit into a different world, people who are socially mobile are often at risk of losing some of their sense of identity on the way up the social ladder.13 Moreover, ‘moving up’ implies that there is something wrong with where they came from, and this can promote feelings of shame.14

‘Only in economics is endless expansion seen as a virtue. In biology, it is called cancer.’34