What is the point of life?
My belief is that the point of life is the pursuit of happiness. I also believe that this should be the peak objective of governments, and that they should govern with the explicit intent to create the social and economic environment that allows humans to flourish.
When I started pondering this, I assumed that there would be an abundance of theory on how governments could do this. I was wrong.
It would be unfair to suggest that there is a complete void in this space. Many of the world's greatest philosophers, political theorists, and economists have grappled with the question. There is a meaningful number of governments, think tanks and academics actively working on wellbeing policies and programmes. The trouble is that, as best I can tell, the world is comprehensively failing to get it right. What seems to me to be missing is a convincing, comprehensive, and contemporary theory of what is required to create a social and economic system that maximises the potential for individuals to find happiness. A theory that works at the level required to turn the tide of falling happiness that seems to be enveloping the world.
In short, what would it take to lift the subjective wellbeing of Afghanistan to that of Finland?
This is what has led me to create this project, The Happiness of Nations.
My intent is to search for that missing theory, and for this website to be a channel to share that journey with others who may be asking the same question.
Welcome!
Where to Start
This is not a sequential series: more a tree. It is arranged as an introductory essay, five topic clusters, and a manifesto. Each of the topic clusters has an overarching essay, which is a discourse on the topic: a narrative that I hope provides a logical thread through the issues. The clusters also include elaboration essays, that do a deeper dive on selected issues. All of the essays stand alone, so feel free to start with whatever catches your interest.
Where to End
The project is a work in progress. The intent is to share my journey of trying to understand what is required for nations to systematically lift the happiness of their people. Essays will be added and revised as I pursue new pathways of thinking. So please do keep coming back.
Series Introduction
Why the Happiness of Nations?
An introduction to the project: why it matters, and what I am hoping to achieve.
Read the introduction →Cluster A
Happiness and its Origins
What happiness means as a governance objective, and how it is measured.
Cluster Discourse
What happiness means in this context, why it matters as a governance objective, and how — and how well — it can be measured.
Read the full essay →Cluster B
A World of Unhappiness
The evidence that the world is broadly failing to deliver on its promises.
Cluster Discourse
Rising incomes have not delivered the happiness or freedom they promised. An introduction to the cluster on why the world feels like it is going backwards.
Read the full essay →Cluster C
The Happy Society and its Enemies
The structural reasons the world struggles to fix what it can already see.
Cluster Discourse
The root causes of discontent and the structural barriers — elite capture, contested sovereignty, identity politics — to a system that genuinely fosters happiness.
Read the full essay →The Idols of the Theatre
Why governance systems everywhere have become structurally insufficient to the complexity of the challenges they face — and lack any mechanism to force adaptation.
The Sovereignty Fallacy
How the invocation of sovereignty routinely shields ruling elites rather than citizens, and why a small, careful cession of it could strengthen sovereignty more broadly.
The Politics of Belonging
On the structural failure of mainstream democratic politics to address the emotional and identity-based needs that drive a large share of political behaviour.
Reflections on the Rise of One Nation
Reading the polling rise of Australia's One Nation through this project's framework — and asking what it has to say back to the framework.
Cluster Discourse
Why democratic institutions resist adaptation, and what an institutional response capable of forcing reform might look like.
Read the full essay →Introducing Sovereigncy
On the structural limits of subsidiarity, and a proposed institution for the functions — security, climate, economic resilience — where scale is not optional.
Introducing Tribunacy
What happens when a governance system is captured by the people with the least interest in reforming it — and an institution designed to prevent it.
Design of a Sovereignate
The harder operational questions behind the Sovereigncy concept: governance mechanisms, distribution of power, and genuine enforcement capacity.
Cluster E
Governing for Happiness
A framework for how government should govern, and policy ideas to foster happiness.
Cluster Discourse
Not what is going wrong, but what governing for happiness would actually look like — at the level of framework and architecture.
Read the full essay →The Divided Executive
A question for deliberation rather than a fixed answer: whether the design of the executive deserves to be asked with more seriousness than democracies currently allow.
The Tolerant Society
If tolerant societies consistently flourish more, should liberalism and tolerance be treated as foundational values that governance should actively promote?