At tonight’s Cafe Scientifique Daniel Nettle talked about happiness. Not in a hippy self-help way, but in a psychological, physiological, sociological, behavioural way.
Happiness, though tricky to measure, hasn’t increased since the ’50s despite the over-wehelming increase in wealth and health. There seems to be a distinction between wanting things and liking things, supported by the difference in our brains response to addictive drugs such as cocaine (want) and non-adictive pleasure drugs like ecstasy (like).
We learned a new concept tonight, that of Flow. We’re probably flow junkies, and not-coincidently (?) our snowboard bindings are made by a company called Flow. We also learned Switzerland (or possibly Norway) is the happiest country. Either way, they both have snow. 😀
”
We picked up a copy of his book: it has a happy yellow cover.