Good afternoon. Our first item of business today is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader is Tim Maguire, a celebrant of the Humanist Society of Scotland.
Presiding Officer, thank you for inviting me to speak today.
Members of the Scottish Parliament, I hope you agree that the aims of politics and philosophy are the same: to increase happiness and wellbeing.
Happiness is a nebulous concept, but there are people who believe that they can measure it and, when the United Nations compiled its latest world happiness report, Scotland, as part of the United Kingdom, did not even make it into the top 20. That rather begs the question: would Scotland be happier in a different political landscape? You may say so; I couldn’t possibly comment.
However, one Scottish city is punching well above its weight in the happiness stakes. Two years ago, a survey found that Edinburgh was the happiest city in the UK and, only two months ago, Condé Nast Traveller said that it was one of the friendliest cities in the world.
Something has clearly changed. For generations, we were led to believe that life was a vale of tears and earthly happiness was a snare and a delusion. Happiness might be your reward in the next life, but only if you toed the line in this.
That began to change in 1776, when Thomas Jefferson—inspired by the writings of the enlightenment philosophers Francis Hutcheson and David Hume—enshrined “the pursuit of Happiness” in the American declaration of independence.
Since then, we have come to regard happiness as a universal human right, but—it pains me to say this—we Scots were not the first to conceive that radical idea because, almost 40 years earlier, halfway across the world in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the legal code decreed:
“if the Government cannot create happiness for its people, there is no purpose for the Government to exist”.
Bhutan remains one of the world’s poorest states but, for 40 years now, it has inspired Governments everywhere to look beyond gross domestic product as a measure of a nation’s health. In 1977, I think, Bhutan was the first country to measure gross national happiness, and now we are all doing it. Just last week, the Office for National Statistics revealed that the happiest place in the UK is Fermanagh, while Londoners remain among the most miserable people in the country.
The paradox of happiness is that we only find it by searching for something else. The 19th century humanist philosopher Robert Ingersoll put it best:
“happiness is the only good ... and the way to be happy is to make others so.”
Members of the Scottish Parliament, may you find happiness by making the people of Scotland happy. Thank you for listening.
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