http://julianbaggini.blogspot.com/2011/10/politics-of-happiness-kingston-6.html
The very idea of using subjective criteria to judge our happiness is idiotic anyway. What are we to do? Give ourselves marks out of 10 every day and then average it out over a lifetime? But we lie to others and ourselves about how happy we are, Julian Baggini conceded.
I can imagine that even being confronted with the question may found enraging and depressing by some. We might find ourselves wanting to award minus points on a very bad day. Would this be allowed?
It is not too hard to imagine a law being passed whereby our happiness scores must be submitted to the government every day to be measured and averaged out over a lifetime so it can congratulate itself on how well it is doing and how caring it is about the happiness of those it governs.
What if the government decides it only wants to govern happy people? It could exterminate anyone who gives a happiness score of less than 5, because they would be deemed too unhappy to want to carry on living.
There is no reason to even think for one moment that Cameron would not do this if he thought it expedient. The philosophers of Britain so dumbed down now as to be actually incapable of seeing through an empty exercise when they see one, and are clearly foolish enough to burble excitedly over this latest wheeze in anticipation of being paid to do ever more nonsensical exercises of wasteful "research", ie giving silly answers to silly questions.
The best way to measure happiness is of course to measure unhappiness, and the way to measure unhappiness is to measure the crime rate, the divorce rate, the suicide rate, the unemployment rate, the death rate for road traffic accidents, as well as the percentage of population who are now illegitimate and will become the criminals and under-achievers of tomorrow.
If the bastards are not rioting, looting and overthrowing the government you are probably doing OK as a government.
The government is either taking this damn fool project seriously or just remembering to pretend that it cares about us. In reality, of course, governments are just interested in keeping quiescent turkeys voting for Xmas.
There is nothing inherently wrong in saying things to make people feel they are well governed, though it may very well be what is called PROPAGANDA.
One is reminded of Marx, who said "Religion is the opium of the masses."
Now, Sex and Shopping are the preferred intoxicants of Paedo Bastard Britain Slutland.
Now that we have run out of money, perhaps it is time to give the opiate of religion another go, so we can go back to being a society where most of the populace are not the illegitimate offspring of promiscuous women, before we became a matriarchal totalitarian communist nanny state suffering from advanced stages of dementia.
"Governments around the world are increasingly interested in increasing "gross domestic happiness" rather than simply wealth. Is this an entirely welcome development or is there something wrong about governments trying to affect the states of minds of their citizens? asks Julian Baggini. Is happiness the right objective to pursue, and can it be measured?"
The very idea of using subjective criteria to judge our happiness is idiotic anyway. What are we to do? Give ourselves marks out of 10 every day and then average it out over a lifetime? But we lie to others and ourselves about how happy we are, Julian Baggini conceded.
I can imagine that even being confronted with the question may found enraging and depressing by some. We might find ourselves wanting to award minus points on a very bad day. Would this be allowed?
It is not too hard to imagine a law being passed whereby our happiness scores must be submitted to the government every day to be measured and averaged out over a lifetime so it can congratulate itself on how well it is doing and how caring it is about the happiness of those it governs.
What if the government decides it only wants to govern happy people? It could exterminate anyone who gives a happiness score of less than 5, because they would be deemed too unhappy to want to carry on living.
There is no reason to even think for one moment that Cameron would not do this if he thought it expedient. The philosophers of Britain so dumbed down now as to be actually incapable of seeing through an empty exercise when they see one, and are clearly foolish enough to burble excitedly over this latest wheeze in anticipation of being paid to do ever more nonsensical exercises of wasteful "research", ie giving silly answers to silly questions.
The best way to measure happiness is of course to measure unhappiness, and the way to measure unhappiness is to measure the crime rate, the divorce rate, the suicide rate, the unemployment rate, the death rate for road traffic accidents, as well as the percentage of population who are now illegitimate and will become the criminals and under-achievers of tomorrow.
If the bastards are not rioting, looting and overthrowing the government you are probably doing OK as a government.
The government is either taking this damn fool project seriously or just remembering to pretend that it cares about us. In reality, of course, governments are just interested in keeping quiescent turkeys voting for Xmas.
There is nothing inherently wrong in saying things to make people feel they are well governed, though it may very well be what is called PROPAGANDA.
One is reminded of Marx, who said "Religion is the opium of the masses."
Now, Sex and Shopping are the preferred intoxicants of Paedo Bastard Britain Slutland.
Now that we have run out of money, perhaps it is time to give the opiate of religion another go, so we can go back to being a society where most of the populace are not the illegitimate offspring of promiscuous women, before we became a matriarchal totalitarian communist nanny state suffering from advanced stages of dementia.
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