A few weeks ago, the much awaited second part to the movie adaptation of Wicked was released. For my readers who don’t follow pop culture, Wicked is a highly regarded musical, loosely based on a book of the same name by Gregory Maguire. Maguire’s book is a parallel story to The Wizard of Oz, told from the perspective of Elphaba Thropp, the name he gives to the Wicked Witch of the West. Both the book and the musical explore the problem of evil, propaganda, and the debate between nature and nurture. All worthy themes in their own right, but today I want to focus on something else: happiness.
Glinda, the good witch, is the lead in the number “Thank Goodness.” Glinda lacks any real magical power, but is obsessed with being popular. When given the chance by the Wizard and his advisors to become a figurehead in their fight against Elphaba, she accepts the role of the Witch’s magical adversary.
“Thank Goodness” takes place as she is addressing the people of Oz, celebrating the completion of the yellow brick road, as well as announcing her engagement. The people are practically worshiping her, thanking her as the cause of all of their joy. In the number, there is a line that is repeated three times by Glinda:
Happy is what happens when all your dreams come true.
Each time, it is said differently. The first time, it is played straight — Glinda has the love of the people of Oz, a handsome and successful fiancé, and is the right hand of the Wizard. For a socialite like Glinda, all of her dreams have come true. In the second repetition, it is reflective, almost bitter. She presents a certain face to the public, but in reality, she’s not that girl. She isn’t actually a witch, her “enemy” is her best friend, and her fiancé is less and less into her every day. In the final repetition of the line, it’s back to positive and upbeat, but is entirely a play to the crowd, assuring them that yes, she really is happy, and by extension it’s possible for them to be also.
On a surface reading, the message — achieve your dreams, do everything you want to do, and you will still be dissatisfied — seems contrary to that found in many pieces of contemporary media. It’s not exactly the feel-good story of the year. But a deeper analysis reveals that it is actually extremely concordant with the solipsistic push in major media. The best indication of this is in the finale of part one of the movie adaptation. In the musical’s most famous number, “Defying Gravity”, the directors chose to modify the lead-up to the crescendo by having Elphaba belt “IT’S MEEEEE!” just as she masters the ability to fly. As she completes the number, Elphaba flies away with a satisfied look. Eventually Elphaba gets her very own happy ending in the arms of Glinda’s fiancé.
Wicked isn’t telling us that fulfilling our dreams won’t make us happy. It’s telling us that certain types of dreams, those that conform to traditional understandings of what makes us happy, won’t do the job. But only if we accept ourselves can we be happy. Don’t you see, it’s not the popular or powerful that are happy — it’s those who are able to embrace their self-expression, take pride in their identity and, of course, anyone who can find a suitable sexual partner.
This message explains the persistent popularity of Wicked since it hit Broadway. In my home country of the United States, the message of radical self-acceptance and enjoying yourself as much as possible is ubiquitous. This cultural narrative is the same across Western society. If you stop playing by the rules of someone else’s game and embrace yourself as much as possible, then you can dance through life.
No matter how trivial a topic, some academic somewhere is studying it. And this applies also to the least trivial of questions: what makes people happy. One benchmark used by researchers studying such a question is the World Happiness Report. This is an annual evaluation, performed by Gallup and the U.N., on how people are feeling about their lives. Statisticians then correlate the scores to certain economic, political and social factors.
If it is true that this self-expression and the mad dash to fulfill our every desire leads to lasting happiness, one would expect to find those countries that most embrace this idea to be the happiest and healthiest. There is, however, one issue that happiness researchers can’t consistently explain: those places with the highest scores have the most people committing suicide.
The happiness-suicide paradox describes the fact that, unexpectedly, the suicide rate rises with increased happiness scores. This effect works not just between countries, but also on smaller scales as well: U.S. states show the same pattern. A common explanation for the phenomenon is that if someone is unhappy, being around happy people makes their misery even more acute, their negative feelings even more intense, and ultimately increases the chance they will commit suicide. On the other hand, the theory goes, misery loves company. So if I am unhappy, but also surrounded by unhappy people, then it may lead to chronic sadness, but not the intense, acute suffering that precursors suicide.
But this theory also doesn’t survive contact with the data. If it is true that suicidality is a local effect — it depends on my interactions with those close to me — it should hold at any scale. However, this doesn’t happen. A 2017 study found that when U.S. counties are compared with each other, the happiness-suicide paradox breaks down, with no correlation whatsoever.
This may lead us to ask if the entire phenomenon is actually real. If we take a peek behind the curtain, will this supposed paradox be revealed to just be a statistical artifact?
But one can easily argue for the reality of this effect. While a person could make the case that it is possible for country-by-country correlation to be an artifact of differential reporting standards, it is harder to make that case between states in the same country, most of which must follow similar procedures and laws outlined by national accreditation bodies. So what is the explanation for this trend?
The first place we should start is to examine what this “happiness score” is actually measuring. To score a country, state or county, researchers ask a representative sample of the population to rate their life on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being the worst possible life imaginable, and ten being the best. They then correlate these scores with various demographic data and find that there are six determinants of happiness: real GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption.
This methodology is the first step in explaining the paradox. Simply put, the issue is this: the World Happiness Report doesn’t actually measure happiness. By asking people to rate their life on a decile scale, the pollsters are in actuality asking people to think about what would make them happy. However, what makes us happy and what we think would make us happy are not always the same thing.
As when Gatsby got Daisy or Faust attained the fruits of his bargain, people often finds that when they obtain everything they want, it’s not quite like they anticipated. In our scientific age, this phenomenon is known as the problem of affective forecasting. Psychologists are well aware that trying to predict how much we will enjoy something is almost always a fool’s errand. We just can’t seem to get it right. We tend to overestimate both the intensity of the happiness we will feel as well as its duration.
This inability to accurately predict what will make us happy makes the results of surveys, such as those that contribute to the World Happiness Report, highly suspect. Real outcomes are much more reliable as predictors of (un)happiness. Suicide rates, violence, and addictions are actual results, not faulty predictions. And these all tend to be positively correlated with the happiness values reported by researchers.
The nordic countries — Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland — have a reputation for doing something right. Often held up as proof of the superiority of social democracy, these five ice-bound paradises are presented as wonderful places to live, with high GDPs, a robust social safety net, and a society that values freedom and equality. The reality, however, is far from the media portrayal.
Finland has held the enviable title of happiest-country-in-the-world for the past eight years. However, if we look at the true indicators of unhappiness, they tell a different story. Suicide rates are among the highest in the world, and murder is among the highest in all of Western Europe. Most of this homicide is done in a drunken rage, following the country’s high rate of alcoholism. Not quite the picture that is usually presented of our jolly friends in the north.
As with most things, if we want to understand the reality, we should follow the data. If real markers of unhappiness follow wherever people obtain things they think will make them happy, it’s a pretty good indication that those things will not actually bring them joy. In fact, it’s probably just the opposite. And this conclusion can explain the above paradox.
If someone thinks something that he doesn’t have will make him happy, he’ll attempt to attain it. This provides hope for the future, a known protective factor against suicidality. On the other hand, if the same person has everything they think will make them happy, but still isn’t, then hopelessness is a common response.
What, then, is the solution? If the traditional means of fulfillment are unsatisfying, but also the contemporary culture of self-expression and hedonism leads to sadness, then are we left with nothing other than perpetual hopelessness? I think there is a better option. But to understand what will actually make us happy, we have to understand our true nature.
If we try to satisfy anything while working against its nature, the result will be failure. We can give a fish anything that he desires, but as long as he’s out of the water, none of it will matter. It is the nature of a fish to be aquatic, so even if we provide him with nice fish-food and everything else a fish might want, but do so on the land, he won’t be satisfied.
There is a large, and growing, body of evidence that contradicts the commonly held belief that our bodily, political and social identifications are what constitutes our identity. The science of reincarnation shows us that we have a fundamental essence that inhabits successive bodies. As is implied by this, our body isn’t our true identity. We can try to satisfy the body by traditional means such as fame and fortune, or by revolutionary means of self-expression and hedonism. But because that’s not us, we will inevitably end up being unhappy.
Some of my readers may be surprised to hear reincarnation referred to as a science. To many educated people, it is seen as no more than a fascinating doctrine of some exotic religions. However, the case for its reality can be made on purely scientific grounds — researchers, like Dr. Ian Stevenson and others, have used the scientific method to investigate the evidence, and reincarnation is the hypothesis that best explains their results.
Over the next few weeks, I am going to attempt to give an overview of this evidence, as well as some possible reasons that it is not more widely known. Hopefully, this will cause people to consider that perhaps try another way to find happiness, rather than the disproven methods of today or yesteryear.
And once we find it, we may finally be able to say a true and heartfelt “thank goodness.”
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