Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

13 A Bubble for the Spirit Level: Metricophilia, Rhetoric and Philosophy 191
no increase in happiness is often referred to as the Easterlin paradox (see also, in
particular, Offer, 2006). Wilkinson and Pickett (2009, p. 3), to whom I return in
detail below, offer as good a summary as any:
It is a remarkable paradox that, at the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement,
we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us,
unsure of our friendships, driven to consume and with little or no community life.
Also familiar, I take it, are the studies that track the effects on children of this sad
state of affairs (see, for example, UNICEF, 2007). We thus start from the momentous
insight that wealth does not always bring happiness.
This is the context in which Richard Layard is committed to the project of measuring
happiness so that we can see what, if not wealth, brings happiness in its
train. This project of course commits him to the view that all kinds of pleasure, satisfaction,
flourishing, fulfilment, etc. are commensurable in terms of his favoured
common currency. If they were different they could not be compared and ranked.
A certain process of levelling, a flatness, a lack of diversity, is therefore implied.
A newspaper article written by Layard, from The Guardian, 13 September 2009, 2
has the title ‘This is the greatest good’, and its subtitle reads ‘We have only one
true yardstick with which to measure society’s progress: happiness’. Even the title
thus asserts that the problem is about just one quality, happiness, rather than showing
a willingness to explore the complexities of human well-being and flourishing.
We should note too that the claim that there is ‘only one true yardstick’ (for this is
clearly where the emphasis is to be placed) manages rhetorically to smuggle in the
assumption that there can indeed be a standard against which different kinds of happiness
can be measured and compared: ‘everyone takes this for granted’, the claim
seems to imply, ‘the only question is just which is the best standard or yardstick’.
Layard begins the article,
What is progress? That is the question President Sarkozy of France has posed to a distinguished
commission. It is exactly the right question, and the future of our culture depends
on the answer.
This is throughout a heavily rhetorical text, and we need to employ strategies that go
beyond the usual academic range in order to resist its spell. (Nietzsche (1990) recommends,
‘happy distrust, pleasure in mockery’ as signs of critical health (Beyond
Good and Evil, 4, p. 154).) A president, then, has asked a distinguished commission;
and his question, apparently consisting of three stark and simple words, has
the simplicity of innocence and authority at once. We see him, sombre perhaps in
his double-breasted suit, rising to ask his question of the balding and grey-headed
figures seated on three sides of a vast, polished table. ‘It is exactly the right question’,
Layard writes, and it is hard not to imagine the distinguished commissioners
nodding in agreement. The king in his simple wisdom, born of generations of
noble lineage, asks his deceptively simple question. We, the readers of the newspaper
article, know our humble place. We are in no position to disagree or criticise,
particularly since ‘the future of our culture depends on the answer’.
Layard tells us that ‘progress must be measured by the overall quality of people’s
lives’ and not by GDP (gross domestic product). We must focus on ‘how people
feel: are they happy and contented?’ This is the ‘overarching good’ that we need to