A Reflection on Happiness

Yesterday was spent with two friends, driving to the Malaysian border city of Johor Baru and visiting the Farmers’ (and small entrepreneurs) Market that is held each Saturday morning in a vacant lot adjacent to the Johor Bahru Stadium.  My friends are a long-married Singaporean couple, whom I will call Chao (the man) and Lihua (the woman).  They know of my interest in Singapore and have kindly offered to help teach me.  The question “what can be learned about issues of city/regional level resilience and sustainability from a rigorous examination of Singapore’s post independence history?” is the focus of my current research.  However all three of us are also drawn to a more fundamental question that is the focus of “National Conversations” in Singapore.  The government initiated National Conversations are country-wide discussions about the long-term goals of the society and government’s appropriate role in achieving those goals.

Our discussion began with Chao’s reflections on reasons for his bi-weekly visits to Johor Bahru and to the Farmers Market. Apart from the opportunity to buy a wide selection of  economically priced fresh vegetables, he told us, he enjoys the less stressful pace of life that the vegetable farmer/merchants seem to enjoy.  He introduced me to several with whom he holds regular, sometimes lengthy, conversations on his bi-weekly visits. Occasionally he has visited their homes.   Chao’s appreciation of Johor Bahru’s slower-paced way of life is nuanced, however.  When I asked him if he might like to retire there, he said “no.”  He also values Singapore’s cleanliness, efficiency, safe streets and absence of corruption. But over coffee after leaving the market, we all wondered whether the drive to excel, long working hours and especially the monetization of all aspects of daily life were necessary accompaniments of the qualities that make Singapore a good place to live.

Lihua contributed examples to the discussion from her own experience.  She reflected on spiritually-based support groups in which members care for one another without any thought of monetary gain. She mentioned a caring counselor who, before his untimely death, would provide his services to needy patients at low cost or for free.  She spoke of peacefulness gained from a hectic, demanding daily-routine that walks in Singapore’s beautiful Botanic Gardens provided.  She mentioned the satisfaction she gains from empowering her staff members to work collegially together, maintain a positive attitude and think constructively about their futures.  As in other conversations, she also posed gentle but challenging questions about my research agenda, encouraging me to be more clear and specific about the questions I wished to investigate.

Our conversation lead me to reflect and share thoughts on happiness as a social goal that had crystallized as I rode a rapid transit (MRT) train in the early morning to meet-up with my friends.  As one walks through MRT stations and rides the trains, one encounters many posters with commercial messages.  Most have two qualities in common.  First, the attractive role-models featured are almost all smiling (usually broadly smiling).  The intended message is that they are happy.  Second, the reason for their happiness is some service or product they have purchased – a great dinner served by a smiling chef: an educational course of study; retirement insurance; a profitable stock portfolio; a can of “Pokka” green tea or a “luxurious” travel vacation.  If one walks along Singapore’s commercial strip, Orchard Road, one is further encouraged by joyfully beaming role-models (or sometimes haughty, disdainful ones) to believe that expensive watches and jewellery along with high fashion garments are sources of human happiness.

My professional craft is dynamic systems computer modeling.  Discovering “metrics” – quantitative measures of social life - is important to me.  Thus, as conversation with my friends progressed, a metric popped into mind.  If I were to count the total number of smiling (i.e. happy) role-models appearing on advertising posters that I see on my daily rounds and divide that number  by the total number of all role models the resultant per-centage would be near 100%.  (One rarely sees grumpy role-models promoting products.)  Purchasing the products being promoted is clearly being communicated as the path to happiness that the joyful, smiling role-models are experiencing.

Our conversation progressed and I was lead to reflect on a second metric, the number of smile-wreathed ordinary people (not professional role models) - students, maids, executives, construction workers, taxi drives hawker stand proprietors ad cleanup persons, etc.  – that I see on my daily rounds, divided by the total number of all individuals, both smiling and unsmiling, I encounter. 

I do see some smiles each day.  The security guards in my gated community often smile when we exchange greetings as do the staff members who greet me when I arrive at the office.  Mothers playing with their children in the Botanic Gardens and, sometimes, dog-owners walking their pets, look happy.  Since I say “good morning,” “good afternoon” or “good evening” to most people I encounter, I often receive a smile in return. In these circumstances and exchanges, no jewellery, upscale dinners, expensive jewellery, or luxury vacation is being purveyed.  But if I were to take the total number of smiling individuals I encounter each day and divide it by the total number of all  individuals I encounter, the per-centage would far smaller than that depicted by my advertising-poster metric.

Two messages I draw from these unsystematic observations, which are not intended to single-out Singapore, are clear. (These are not intended to Single-out Singapore or Malaysia of course).   First, there is, indeed, a significant happiness deficit in the world, as contrasted with the idyllic world depicted by the joyously smiling advertising-poster role-models.  Second, the remedy for this deficit is to work harder and to earn more money in order to be able to purchase more of the stuff that is producing the role-models “happiness.” 

Literally billions of dollars are being spent, each year, to convince us these two messages are true.

But is that really the case?

Four Priciples that May be Helpful to Those Seeking to Build and Use Dynamics Systems Models as Policy Aids

For the second Spring term in succession I am teaching “Dynamic Modeling of Public Policy Systems” at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.   This is a course in system dynamics modeling.  It is an approach to addressing problems of public policy (and other problems too) by simulating them.  Much to my surprise there are 37 students registered for the course, with an additional seven auditors.  The other night, as I was thinking about the course, principles came to me that, if followed, would be helpful to those seeking to build, use and communicate about these models.  The principles are these. 

1. Not all problems lend themselves to system dynamics modeling.
2. Not all problems that lend themselves to system dynamics modeling should be undertaken by students as their first independent modeling project.
3. It is easier to make a simple model more complex than to simplify a complex one
4. In working with policy makers, communicating lessons learned from the model is more important than communicating about the model.

Dormgrandpop's Holiday Newsletter

DORMGRANDPOP

Dormgrandpop.blogspot.com

Dear Family and Friends, Near and Far,

The local post office, within walking distance from home will soon be reverting to part-time status – it will be open only four hours each day and we have lost our Postmaster.  By sending holiday greetings and family news by email, I am contributing to its demise. 

Yesterday, I purchased an 8-foot plus fir from the local Boy Scout troop and resurrected lights and decorations from storage.  It now graces our high-ceilinged dinning-room/kitchen area, where it is the product of a late-afternoon decorative effort that can not only be enjoyed, but shared out-the-window by the three families of neighbors who are the only ones living close enough, in our rural setting, to view it.

While it might sound as if I have settled into rural bliss, post-retirement, that really is not the case. Earlier in the year, I was quite surprised that I had accumulated over 90,000 frequent flyer miles – which did not include my most recent Geneva, Balatonsemmes, Budapest, Singapore Sri Lanka round trip.  Earlier destinations included the System Dynamics conference in St. Gallen, Switzerland and a lovely trip to the Greek Island of Spetsis visit with my son and granddaughters.   Most time-consuming – and demanding - was six months spent in Singapore, dividing time between teaching system dynamics modeling at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Policy, a project to introduce system dynamics modeling at Singapore’s elite National University High School of Mathematics and Science and s “System Dynamics Initiative” project to broaden the reach of this approach to thinking, modeling and analysis, more generally.  Sadly, the latter lost its patron to a leadership transition at the Global Asia Institute, where I held a joint appointment.  However in early January, I will be returning to Singapore to continue research, teaching at the Lee Kuan Yew School and the secondary education project, while seeking new patrons, partners and funding.  For those interested, here is a link to the journal, Solutions, in which a recent co-authored article, “The Improbable Resilience of Singapore,” which appeared in September. [ http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com ].

Equally exciting, though less time-consuming is the ongoing translation project of my book Paradise Poisoned into sixteen small, inexpensive, widely available volumes – eight in Sinhala and eight in Tamil.  The value of this collaboration with the Social Science Association of Sri Lanka, as I see it, is that it provides an even-handed common text on the political-social-economy of Sri Lanka’s turbulent post independence history to readers of both local languages.  My efforts to propose similar projects, especially in other contentious regions, have not borne fruit (probably I have not given these sufficient time and energy) but I am hopeful the model will catch on in due course.  Another project that has lain too-long fallow is a proposal to create a trade book from my Dormgrandpop blog, which I hope to complete before leaving for Singapore for another long sojourn of teaching, research and program development on New Year’s day.  

My Washington DC Apartment, close by the AU Campus is working out well.  Even though it remains empty for about half the year, it is a welcome oasis of order and tranquility when I return from my travels and a wonderful work-environment where I spend my weekdays during the times I am in the US.  Like the Global Asia Institute, AU has experienced transitions in both the Center for Teaching Excellence (now the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research) and the School of International Service, reminding me of The Buddha’s message that impermanence begins from the moment that one is born or – in an organizational setting – from the moment seeks to create a new institution and institutional culture.  I still enjoy bike rides or walks to AU’s beautiful campus to visit friends. However as is fitting, I do not offer  my views in institutional issues except on very rare occasions when someone seeks them (and sometimes not even then).

My more-or-less daily meditation practice continues, but it would be dissembling to use the label “progress” to describe it.  The first goal of such a practice is “single pointed concentration” which is followed by “altruistic compassion,” then “wisdom,” which includes the realization of “emptiness” and, perhaps many lifetimes later, “enlightenment.”  However I realized there is a prior stage, “being mindful of the fact that one has not achieved single-pointed concentration,” except, perhaps, for fleeting moments.  

Accepting this reality, however, should not be an impediment to giving thanks for being alive and fully able to experience the joys – and tribulations – of the upcoming holiday season.  That is my wish for family, for friends near and far, and, were it only possible, for all sentient beings. 

With fond regards to all,

Dormgrandpop