How To Be Happy

The question is a bit of a hot topic. There have been recent books and TV series examining the question, and there has been a recent flurry of posts in the webworld.

Obviously I don't have the answer, but the question gets to the root of economics. The Freakonomics team, the Undercover Economist and Marginal Revolution have all considered the issue recently.

The traditional profit/utility maximising models are only useful up to a point, beyond that they are garbage, because many people are generally "satisfied" at a given level of a specific variable. A recent article in Spiked magazine dissed a couple of serious attempts to answer the question, both the "enoughism" of John Naish and the academic analysis of Oliver James were rejected as anti-consumer defeatism, though I think each has its merits.

The British Psychology Society offers plenty of theories, but I think the true answer is probably to be found in the relationship of mood-influencing chemicals to neural networks. Yes, you don't need to be a brain scientist to be happy, but you need to be a brain scientist to understand happiness.

But what a marketer might say is that a good brand can make you happy.

Astrolomy

There is no such word.

You could be amazed by the vastness and beauty of the universe, and wish to explore it further. You may think it wonderful that we can predict the development and motion of immense celestial bodies with simple heretical scientific rules. You may also think that observation and measurement of other systems may give us lessons to be learned about the very earliest steps in the evolution of stars, planets, and of life itself. Your predictions may be conservative or radical, but they are verified or rejected depending upon the evidence.

Or you could be so narrow minded as to think that the relative visual positions and brightness of stars and comets as seen from a small backwater planet will individually affect specific human beings in ways that only higher powers can understand. You are aware that the visual recognition system of the human mind looks for patterns that can be matched to known objects, but your desperate search for supernatural guidance means that you attribute personal meaning to these patterns. You cannot see massive black holes and dark matter so you dismiss them from your charts. Your predictions are either worthless platitudes or simply wrong.

The words do not mix. The worlds do not mix. You choose one or the other.

Flight of the Phoenix

We watched a movie this weekend. To be more precise, one of the freeview TV channels finally showed the 2004 remake of the classic 1965 film. The plot is familiar, a group of survivors crash land in the desert and build a new plane out of the wreckage.

And while watching, I asked myself: could I do that?

Now I don't think that I would survive many days in searing heat and biting cold with minimal food or water. However, given time and tools and materials, I think I could build a working flying machine.

After all, it's not rocket science.

Touching the Cloth

Joe Simpson was the climber who shattered his legs when he was dropped down a crevasse descending a peak in the Peruvian Andes. His story was the subject of the film Touching the Void. It was a miracle that he survived the fall, a miracle that he dragged himself out of the ravine, a miracle that he crawled all the way down the mountain, a miracle that he was able to walk again. But there he was on TV this weekend, describing how he had resumed climbing and even ascended the Eiger.

A man of the cloth is a term used for someone who is considered to be close to God, or at least someone who helps the rest of us to get closer to Him.

Mr Simpson was invited onto Desert Island Discs recently. I listened. The interviewer grilled him about those times when he was very close to fading out, when he genuinely thought he was about to die - did he ever think of God or a possible afterlife at those times? No, he replied. Never. Even faced with imminent death, the idea of such a crazy Thing did not even cross his mind.

In addition to your chosen records, the programme lets you take a little reading material onto the desert island. It assumes that everyone will take the Bible, and so many people wanted the complete works of Shakespeare that they started allowing that too. So two hefty books for free, and one more of your choice. Joe took the Shakespeare, but politely declined to take the Bible. Even as toilet paper.

The Pleasure of Hope

The title here is the opening sequence to a classic album by Pendragon. Another of the best albums ever recorded is the only release by a band that the genius Jim Steinman christened as Pandora's Box, so obviously hope was a main theme in there as well.

But though those are two of my all time favourites, neither of them are very well known, neither would appear on the top ten list for most people. However, when it comes to films, perhaps my taste is more universal. The Shawshank Redemption is a favourite for many others too.

But there is one little thing wrong with the movie. They bastardised the end. It is not just me who thinks that the main theme of the story was the title of this post, Stephen King himself sub-titled the original book with a similar sentiment. So the correct place to end the film would have been with Morgan Freeman on the bus. I hope that I will make it across the border. I hope that my friend is there. I hope.