Linking Sustainability and Happiness. What Kind of Happiness?
ORIGINAL PAPER Linking sustainability and happiness. What kind of happiness?
František Petrovič 1 — František Murgaš 2
1Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Nitra, Slovakia 2Department of Geography, Technical University in Liberec, Czechia [email protected]
Abstract Keywords Sustainability is part of the scientific mainstream; in the following paper we connect Sustainability, it with the phenomenon of happiness, which is becoming a discussed concept not only Happiness, among researchers but also amongst public. This is due to the fact that today’s society Quality of life, Consumer society, has become a consumer society. This knowledge has provoked criticism of the prevail- Sustainable ing lifestyle. The unprecedented growth of prosperity in the second half of the last cen- consumption, tury and at the beginning of the 21st century was achieved at the cost of environmental Good society devastation. This presented the urgent question of how to improve the quality of life or bring happiness to a growing number of people. At the same time, efforts to replace GDP as a general measure of development with quality of life began to grow. In connec- tion with happiness, it is important that it is defined in two ways: hedonic or eudaimonic. Received: The aim of the paper is to find out which form of happiness is sustainable on thebasis 30 April 2019 of the analysis of relevant works. Happiness is understood as part of the subjective di- Received in revised form: mension of quality of life, it represents the highest level of well-being. The combination 9 June 2020 of sustainability and quality of life or happiness is not new, some authors consider quality Accepted: of life as the fourth pillar of sustainability. A key criterion for assessing which happiness 15 June 2020 is sustainable and which is not is the following assumption: The happiness of us –con- temporaries − cannot be achieved at the expense of future generations. The knowledge -which of the forms is sustainable - is the result of the analysis of both forms of happiness.
Highlights for public administration, management and planning: • Theoretical foundation for nexus of sustainability and happiness is reviewed. • The concepts of hedonic and eudaimonic happiness are discussed, and the implica- tions of both for social, economic and environmental sustainability are outlined. • It is shown that eudaimonic happiness should stand as a backdrop for sustainability debate.
1 Introduction to have (Greve 2012). There is a growing interest in public debate and researchers’ interest in a part of the concept of quality of life, which deals with As society grows richer and transforms into a con- happiness. Happiness is identified with quality sumer´s society, there is growing interest in public of life, welfare, well-being. debate and researchers’ interest in a part of the con- Linking sustainability and happiness: What cept of quality of life, which is happiness personal is the meaningfulness of this connection? We pre- well-being or satisfaction with life (Veenhoven 1996, sume that this is a search for an answer to a question 2012; Layard 2005; Grove 2012; Haybron (2013); what type of happiness does it make sense to sus- Okulicz-Kozaryn 2015). Yet these terms cannot tain? Because happiness can exist as eudaimonic be considered synonyms. Quality of life contains (originates in experiences of meaning and purpose) affective and cognitive components, while happi- but also hedonic (originates in experiences of plea- ness consists of only affective one (Cummins 2014). sure and enjoyment). In the current society of mass Nowadays, happiness is considered to be something consumption hedonic happiness prevails, Accord- desirable, something that everyone has the right ing to Vinney (2020) „in American culture, hedonic
70 © Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem GeoScape 14(1) — 2020: 70—79 doi: 10.2478/geosc-2020-0007 Available online at content.sciendo.com happiness is often championed as the ultimate goal” yse approaches to a combination of sustainability The knowledge that happiness is not unitary but and happiness as a basis for deciding which hap- has two forms is the first and key point in formu- piness is sustainable. Eudaimonic or hedonic? We lating the answer to the question posed in the title explore this connection not only for theoretical rea- of the paper: what kind of happiness is sustainable?. sons but also attempt to explore findings that can At first glance, it may seem that sustainability be used in public policy making. and happiness nothing connects. The difference is that sustainability is focused on future, happi- ness at present. What meaning does this connec- 2 Initial state tion have? In spite of that connection sustainable happiness has its meaning, which is substantial. Although sustainability is being connected practi- Exploration of sustainability of happiness takes cally with everything including economic growth, place in context of the most serious challenges sustainable happiness is meaningful because it is that the humanity currently faces. The problem focused on people also being happy in future. is that there is no consensus about their acceptance, It means that happiness or quality of life is the real not to mention their solutions. According to the Pop- happiness or quality of life only when it is not at ulation Division UN the number of people on Earth the expense of the future. To put it bluntly, it comes will reach 10−12,5 billion and then the growth when happiness or quality of life are sustainable. stops and begins to fall slowly (UN 2019). Oth- In this article we deal with sustainability of happi- ers reject their expectation and say that the pop- ness, coming from assumption that not every hap- ulation will grow all the time. We consider the first piness is sustainable. The basic criteria of what opinion as more likely, relying on the study of de- happiness is sustainable in the context of Kantian mographic processes known as ‘the second demo- maxim are: our contemporary happiness cannot graphic transition’. With the rise in the standard be achieved at cost of future generations. of living, birth rates have fallen everywhere, in the While it might seem that environmental protec- West for decades under a conservation rate of 2.1 tion problems are being addressed and development children per woman. This is also the case for women is moving in the right direction, the reality is dif- from the category of countries classified by the UN ferent. There is a mismatch in acceptance of es- in the Human Development Index as ‘low level sential and enforceable decisions at country-level of development’. Their birth rates after moving that would mean a major slowing down of nega- to the West countries are significantly decreasing tive trends in environmental degradation. The first compared to birth rates in their native countries. encyclical Laudato si’, which was written by Pope Contemporary developments on a global scale bring Francis on this topic, has also testified on the seri- about a rise in the standard of living, which takes ousness of the problem of environmental pollution. the form of reducing the number of people living He considers air pollution and waste production as- in absolute poverty in the poorest countries to an un- sociated with ’throwaway’ culture as the biggest precedented growth in living standards of the ma- problem. Other problems are water, it lacks and pol- jority of the population in Western countries, which lution, loss of biodiversity and climate change becomes a hedonic consumer society. According as a global problem. We must ask, the Pope writes, to some researchers, the eventual increase of living what is the meaning of life on Earth, what key standards in developing countries to those currently values are and what our goal is. Without asking in place in Western countries would mean twenty these questions dealing with environmental issues times higher impact of human activity on the envi- will not yield the expected results. The solution ronment (Valerio 2016). This is beyond real imagi- is integral ecology, which in addition to environmen- nation. tal deals with human and social problems (Francis The British Joseph Rowntree Foundation calcu- 2015). lates the minimum income standards considered Our paper is based on an analysis of the relevant to be the lowest income in society, allowing a so- literature, we focused on the connection of sustain- cially acceptable quality of life (Bradshaw et al. ability and happiness, and the importance of its con- 2008). Druckman et al. (2011) dealt with the eco- tent. This association is not new as there have logical footprint of people with this minimum in- been many researchers studying the same, or sim- come standard, and they concluded that lowering ilar - the association of sustainability and quality revenue standards is needed to reduce the envi- of life, or well-being in the last decades (Chiras & ronmental footprint. Based on that Valerio (2016) Corson 1997). The aim of the article is to anal- states that economic growth is not necessary.
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Exploring the quality of life and related concepts of this paper, we will refer to the contemporary of well-being, happiness or satisfaction with life has society as the consumer society. Most Western- been flourishing on since the end of the 20th cen- ers, including post-transition countries in Central tury, happiness currently being the most popular and Eastern Europe, are experiencing unprece- phenomenon related to the quality of life in the dented welfare growth. There is an increase in the academic environment and in the public. The UN number of middle-class members not only in the in 2012 proclaimed the 20th March as the Inter- most populated countries of the world - China national Day of Happiness ”recognizing the rel- and India, but also in other developing countries. evance of happiness and well-being as universal Worldwide, the number of people living in abso- goals and aspirations in the lives of human beings lute poverty has declined; in all countries the av- around the world and the importance of their recog- erage life expectancy and the literacy rate are ris- nition in public policy objectives” (UN, Department ing, and the child mortality rate is decreasing. Res- of Economic and Social Affairs 2018). By bringing idents of countries at the top of the Human De- happiness to public debate, the concept has often velopment Index are content and happy. So, what been discussed, though without a clear grounding. is the problem? Despite this, the growth of prosper- The fact that we can be happy has incorporated hap- ity is not without problems. piness among social values (Greve 2012). Axiological knowledge based on the knowledge There is a consensus among scientists that sus- that ’the problem of happiness and quality of life tainability goals can only be achieved by changing is a problem of values’ (Rapley 2003) and of ’eco- values, as was already stated in Meadows et al. logical ethics’ (Kohák 2006) can be used to solve (1972) in ‘Limits to the Growth’. Values play a key the problems posed by the growth of prosperity. In- role in understanding and anticipating human be- glehart (2016) describes postmaterialism as a value haviour (Rohan 2000). The issue of values appears orientation of people who prefer intangible values, to be very important in the analysis of sustainabil- including quality of life, over material values, repre- ity and happiness. The reason is that the problem sented primarily by prosperity. Murgaš (2012) deals of sustainability and the quality of life is a problem with the problem of axiology of quality of life. of values (Rapley 2006). Kohák (2006) calls the eco- It is in the fact that modern society has not reached logical theory as environmental ethics. the level of saturation of material needs and does New trends in development do not only emerge not want more because it does not need it more, but in psychology, but also naturally in exploring qual- according to the hedonic principle treadmill wants ity of life and related sustainability and nature more and more. Miles (1998) captured the real- protection. These include accepting its cross- ity at the end of the 20th century in the title of his cultural or cultural-geographical dimension in phi- work: ‘Consumerism: As a Way of Life’. The emer- losophy and religion (Ambrozy et al. 2019; Zalec gence of consumerism is closely related to the fact & Pavlíková 2019), strategic environmental assess- that in the context of the prosperity growth of most ment and decision support for planning (Belčáková Westerners, a function of ´a consumer‘ has ap- 2016; Slámová & Belčáková, 2019), landscape peared for the first time in history in the 1960s. planning (Bezák et al 2017; Izakovičová 2000; A major critic of the consumer society Bauman Pechanec et al. 2015; Petrovič & Muchová 2013), (2008, 2010) understands the present as liquid land ownership (Muchová & Raškovič 2020; Mu- modernity, of which consumerism is the core, cul- chová & Tárniková 2018), landscape development ture based on the need to buy ever-increasing trends (Boltižiar et al. 2016; Druga et al. 2015; amounts of goods. The only phenomena that are ris- Michaeli & Boltižiar 2010) or landscape revitaliza- ing with the growth of well-being are the phenom- tion (Chrastina et al. 2019; Klusáček et al. 2018). ena of social pathology. The feeling of unspecified uncertainty, omnipresent, and thus more depressing and dispiriting (Bauman 2008) is also increasing. 3 Contemporary consumer society According Murgaš and Klobučník (2016a) contem- porary society of mass consumption is dominated We consider the period of late modernity from by value-free understanding of quality of life, which the 1990’s as present. Many adjectives can in the short term can mean ’sunny side of quality be given to contemporary society, e.g. information, of life‘ in which life is joyful and beautiful. We no knowledge, expertise, or creative society, Podzimek longer live our lives, but we enjoy it, we wish each (2019) considers it a narcissistic society. Other other to ’enjoy it’. Of course, life is so often like characteristics of contemporary society are pre- that in many corners of the Earth. But the sole ori- sented by Petrusek (2007). Along with the aims entation on such a life that can only be enjoyed,
72 © Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem GeoScape 14(1) — 2020: 70—79 doi: 10.2478/geosc-2020-0007 Available online at content.sciendo.com but not lived through, is heading into empty, val- 4 Sustainability and sustainable ueless living. In today’s consumer society, the de- consumption sire for good, quality life is replaced by the desire for happiness (Bauman 2008). Buying something necessary, which brought buyers satisfaction and, Sustainability is currently mutually interchangeable in the case of more expensive items, was only possi- with sustainable development. Sustainability is de- ble after a shorter or longer saving, has changed fined as ”availability and continuity of a certain for a large part of the contemporary society into quality of life” or ”the quality of being able to con- shopping based on debt. “The idea of happiness tinue over a period of time” (Cambridge Dictionary, is imperceptibly shifting from the expected bliss online). after buying towards the actual act of shopping – We agree with O’Brien (2010) in his understand- which is an action that is bursting with joyful antic- ing of the meaning of sustainable happiness which ipation, joyful for the original, unblemished and in- is „happiness that contributes to individual, commu- cessant hope” (Bauman 2010: 19). nity or global well-being and does not exploit other Kohák (2006: 65) is also critical of consumer soci- people, the environment, or future generations”. ety, according to him “adore consumption in con- According to Ayers (2017) „the objective of sustain- temporary consumer society takes the form of af- able development is therefore to increase quality fluenza epidemic, a deadly epidemic of excess. of life by improving all of the components of human It is the idea that the only purpose of life and al- well-being”. Some researchers connect sustainabil- most a moral duty to citizens is to accumulate ity and quality of life in one concept sustainability and consume more and more tangible assets. Is and quality of life (Chiras & Corson 1997). it the desire for ´more‘ natural? No, but it satis- One of the principles of sustainability is to priori- fies the conditions of the consumer society, which tize the intensive development of a society, focused fashionable thinkers like to refer to as ´postmod- on improving the quality of life over in the past ern‘ - a distracted, fickle society that still hungers predominantly extensive development of the soci- for something new, and now again only in the con- ety, orientated on the growth of living standards. text of the assessment of good and evil”. Another principle of sustainability is the effort The analysis of the works of the cited authors shows of decoupling, i.e. the separation of improvement that a significant characteristic of today’s society of quality of life and economic growth from nega- is consumer society. This is the second point in find- tive impact on environment. Decupling is the fourth ing an answer to the question posed in the title point important for answering the question: what of the paper: what kind of happiness is sustainable?. kind of happiness is sustainable?. In response to the problem of the unsustainability Dasgupta (2005) calls the current level that is of the described consumer life, the need for a fun- needed to maintain sustainable society principles damental change arose in the form of sustainable ‘productive base’ and measures it as an indicator consumption. Its definition was adopted at the Oslo of the wealth of society. It consists of industrial Symposium in 1994: “the use of services and related assets, human capital in the form of education, products, which respond to basic needs and bring human capital in the form of health, the natural a better quality of life while minimizing the use capital of ecosystems and institutions (government of natural resources and toxic materials as well and civil society). According to the previous eco- as the emissions of waste and pollutants over the life nomic mainstream, the GDP per capita in purchas- cycle of the service or product so as not to jeop- ing power parity indicator represented the level ardize the needs of further generations” (UN, Di- at that time. Later, a more comprehensive Human vision for Sustainable Development Goals, on line). Development Index was added. Currently, these In an effort to approach the issue of sustainable con- measurements are known – the Economist Intel- sumption, Earth Overshoot Day is being celebrated, ligence Unit’s Where-to-be-born Index, the OECD a day when we are pumping out sustainable natural Better Life Index, the Legatum prosperity Index, resources that can be restored to Earth. The Global the World Happiness Report or the ecologically fo- Footprint Network calculates it based on the eco- cused Happy Planet Index. It follows from the above logical footprint. In 1990 the day was December that the conformity on what represent a measure 1, in 2019 it was July 29 (Global Footprint Net- of the achieved development is not even approxi- work). The third point in constructing the answer mate. to the question “what kind of happiness is sustain- Two facts are obvious - happiness and quality of life able?” is knowledge of the concept of sustainable are not expressed in GDP per capita, the sec- consumption. ond is the need for measurement at the global
© Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem 73 Available online at content.sciendo.com GeoScape 14(1) — 2020: 70—79 doi: 10.2478/geosc-2020-0007 level, therefore the measurement of only one group as subjective quality of life or economic well- of countries, such as OECD or European Social Sur- being. Analysis of the relationship between sus- vey is not applicable. The most valid results come tainability and happiness requires first to explore from the worldwide measurements of the American the relationship of happiness and quality of life institutions Pew (Poushter 2017) or Gallup (Clifton as well as happiness and related phenomena of well- 2017). being and satisfaction with life. In public de- Consumption factor is an important part of sus- bates and among researchers, this relationship tainable development, statisticians publish data is not clear, the concepts of quality of life, well- on the country’s economic growth based on house- being, satisfaction, and happiness are considered hold consumption. In the context of sustain- interchangeable, or one superior, without explain- ability, this logically raises the question of how ing what superiority relies on. to change current consumption to be more sustain- The key to understanding the relationship between able? There are two possible solutions - the first quality of life and happiness is the knowledge is a top-down approach, i.e. in the form of reg- that the quality of life includes cognitive compo- ulations and ordinances. An example of this nents, but happiness has only affective component approach is the European Union or the Office (Cummins 2014). The quality of life and happiness of the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden, cannot be the same because quality of life is an as- which published in 2016 a Strategy-for-sustainable- sessment and is cognitive. Happiness is a positive consumption (Government Office of Sweden). Its emotion (Seligman 2002) and is affective. In con- focus is on food, transport and housing. The sec- trast, McMahan and Estes (2010 in Greve 2012) ond is a bottom-up approach, based on the change state that happiness has a cognitive component fo- of the hedonic way of life of a large part of society cused on life satisfaction and an affective compo- to the eudaimonial way. Its axiology is based on eco- nent. The fact that the quality of life and hap- logical ethics (Kohák 2006). Part of the bottom-up piness cannot be the same, empirically confirms approach is the spontaneously emerging movement measurements within the European Social Survey. of people living in voluntary modesty. This approach “Hedonism (happiness) and eudemonia (flourishing) to life is a response to the vanity lifestyle found are both important components of individual wellbe- in much of Western society. ing and are present to varying degrees across Eu- We identified sustainable consumption as the third rope” (Vanhoutte 2013: 5). In nearly all measured point in constructing the answer to the question countries, the quality of life and happiness reach dif- “what kind of happiness is sustainable?”. There ferent values (Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2013). are two ways to change current consumption to sus- Another reason for refusing to identify happiness tainable – a top-down and bottom-up approach. and quality of life is that happiness does not have This is the fifth point in finding the answer to aques- an objective, spatial dimension, but the quality tion in the title of the paper. We believe that the in- of life does. Okulicz-Kozaryn (2015) strictly formu- tention to change current consumption to sus- lated his disagreement with identifying happiness tainable will be successful only if it is identified and quality of life: ”happiness is not the quality by most of humanity and the bottom-up approach of life”. Another group of the authors considers hap- will be taken on its own. Regulation as a top-down piness to be part of satisfaction with life (Layard approach will only be an add-on. 2006). On the other hand, it makes no sense ei- We believe that the intention to change current con- ther to separate the quality of life and happiness, sumption to sustainable one will be successful only because like yin and yang together create a circle, if it is identified by most of the humanity andthe so well-being and ill-being, happiness and misery, bottom-up approach will be taken for its own. Reg- joy and suffering together create life. In this chap- ulation will only be an add-on. ter, in line with many other authors (Bartram 2012; Seligman 2002; Okulicz-Kozaryn 2015), we consider happiness to be part of the quality of life, represent- 5 Happiness and related concepts ing the highest degree of well-being. of quality of life, satisfaction with Murgaš and Klobučník (2016c) consider quality life, and well-being of life as a multidimensional concept which can ex- press emotional and cognitive assessment of life on a good — bad scale. The researchers agree In addition to the notion of quality of life, peo- that the quality of life is made of two dimensions — ple use the terms of well-being, happiness, or life subjective, by psychologist called well-being and ob- satisfaction to which they add different attributes jective, for which Murgaš and Klobučník (2016b)
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Table 1 Structure of quality of life and its measurement
QUALITY OF LIFE Concept (Satisfaction with life)
SUBJECTIVE OBJECTIVE Dimensions Personal Quality of place
Domains WELL-BEING ILL-BEING AMENITIES
10 — Happiness EDUCATION
9 EMPLOYMENT 8 Measuring 7 of subjective ENVIRONMENT quality of life 6 on Cantril´s scale 5 - neither wellbeing nor ill-being HEALTH 0-10 (x) 4
3 RELIGIOSITY 2
1 SAFETY 0 — Suffering (x) Measurement on a 5- or 7-point Likert scale is based on a similar principle. There are many measurements of the objective dimension of quality of life, some described by Stimson and Marans (2011). use the term quality of place. Each of the dimen- happiness is experiencing a boom at the present sions is made up of indicators, which are quantifi- time, the claim that a person is doing everything able variables and domains formed by a grouping toward personal happiness is twenty-four centuries of indicators. The position of happiness in the struc- old, as written by Aristotle (2009). Happiness, ture of quality of life and its measurement is in Ta- in the traditional understanding of the translation ble 1. of the word eudaimonia from ancient Greek, means When considering conceptualization of quality a good life. Aristotle distinguished between hap- of life, we proceed from the fact that when we find piness as experienced joy, which he called hedonic the quality of life, we find satisfaction with it. Qual- and the happiness in the form of living well, which ity of life and satisfaction with life are therefore syn- he called eudaimonia. English philosopher Jeremy onyms. Expression of life satisfaction is well-being, Bentham, who lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th expressing dissatisfaction is ill-being. century, formulated the idea of securing the great- A specific view of happiness was brought est happiness of the greatest number of people. by the King Jigme Singye Wangchuk, who in 1972 Happiness has been considered a virtue in the past, set a Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a goal which was reflected in a good life, at present itis of policy in his country, based on the idea that hap- an umbrella term for all manifestations of joy in life. piness is more than GDP.The GNH domains are psy- The boom of interest in happiness has been demon- chological well-being, health, time use, education, strated in recent decades in the social sciences cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, not only by the growing number of published sci- community vitality, ecological diversity and re- entific outputs, but also by its association withnew silience, and living standards. The ideas of GNH terms such as ‘economy of happiness’ (Frey 2018) gradually entered the agenda of some countries or ‘sustainable happiness’ (O’Brien 2010). and were accepted by the UN. In developed coun- The fact that we can be happy has incorporated hap- tries, Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir piness among social values (Greve 2012). Happi- is the leader in bringing happiness to the political ness has become something that can be achieved agenda, and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon here and now, so everyone wants to be happy. and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern The problem with today’s society is the approach are also active in this sector. to the desire to be happy. People are controlled Interest in the phenomenon of happiness is archety- by the idea that they have the right to be happy, pal, Ballas and Dorling (2012) place its beginnings and the duty of the state is to secure this for them. in the Far East in the 6th century BC. Although
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Happiness is - as well as quality of life — hardly cause it is by-product of a well-lived life. Eu- objectively describable, nor does it have a defini- daimonic happiness is the ”goal of human be- tion that would be generally accepted. Some au- ing” (Frey 2018). thors think that happiness cannot be defined (Hay- bron 2013). The consensus is at least in that hap- • Happiness can only be related to an individual, piness is based on a subjective perception of man not to society. There is no happy society (or un- rather than an objective assessment. In his World happy), there are only happy people in society Database of Happiness Ruut Veenhoven under- (Veenhoven et al. 1996). stands happiness as „the degree to which an in- • Differences in perceived happiness are forty dividual judge the overall quality of his/her own to sixty percent determined by genetic inheri- life favourably”. In other words, how much one tance (Frey 2018). likes the life one leads (Veenhoven 2012). These definitions make it clear that for Veenhoven happi- • Happiness is a part of well-being; it represents ness is a degree. While Haybron (2013) considers its highest value (as misery is a part of ill- it a state of mind, in my opinion, both are true, hap- being). piness is the emotion expressing the highest level of satisfaction with life, meaning so, a state of mind that can be measured. 6 Discussion According to Oishi and Diener (2001) there are dif- ferent types of happiness, which are preferred by different nations, depending on whether they In order to answer the question of what kind of hap- are collectivists or individualists. According piness is sustainable, we analysed the relevant re- to the authors, the collectivist nations prefer quiet sources devoted to happiness and sustainability. happiness, in contrast, people from Western, in- The paper is based on the basic premise: The happi- dividualist nations mostly prefer heightened state ness of us − contemporaries − cannot be achieved of happiness. at the expense of future generations. The following Great discussions with contradictory results are be- basic statements emerged from the analyses: ing held about the topic of the effect of money on happiness (Murgaš & Böhm 2015). Seligman 1. Happiness is not unitary but has two opposing (2002) states that money affects experienced hap- and complementary forms — hedonic and eu- piness to the extent that they are important to us. damonic From the conceptualization of happiness one that is 2. The term sustainability is future-oriented, well known is Seligman´s, who described his con- the term happiness refers to the present. Com- cept in his work Authentic Happiness (Seligman bining sustainable happiness makes sense be- 2002). The concept of authentic happiness is based cause it focuses on making people happy in the on three theories– hedonism theory, desire the- future. ory and objective list theory. „Happiness, based on Seligman´s interpretation of hedonism, is a mat- 3. A distinctive characteristic of today’s society ter of maximizing feelings of pleasure and mini- is that it is a consumer society. mizing feelings of pain. Hedonism has its mod- ern conceptual roots in Bentham´s utilitarianism 4. In response to the previous statement, the con- and its manifestation in American consumerism“ cept of sustainable consumption arose. (Sirgy & Wu 2013). Di Martino et al. (2017) provide 5. One of the principles of sustainability is the ef- an overview of theories and models of happiness. fort to decouple, i.e. the separation of improv- The short conceptual framework of happiness ing the quality of life and economic growth is made up of the following statement: from the negative impacts on the environment. • Happiness is an emotion, forming an affective component of quality of life. We define it as the 6. There are two ways to change current con- highest achievable satisfaction with life. sumption to sustainable − a top-down ap- proach and a bottom-up approach. • Happiness can be hedonic, short-lived, or eu- daimonic, long-lasting, usually associated with The analysis of the basic premise and assumptions life wisdom. Hedonic happiness is often ac- gives a clear answer to the question posed in the companied by external manifestations, such title of the paper: sustainable happiness is eudai- as cries or waving hands. Eudaimonic hap- monic happiness. A hedonic form of happiness piness cannot be obtained by pursuing it, be- offering a never-fulfilled desire for more, better
76 © Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem GeoScape 14(1) — 2020: 70—79 doi: 10.2478/geosc-2020-0007 Available online at content.sciendo.com and nicer products has turned people into con- ity to replace GDP as a measure of human devel- sumers and society into individualistic and vain. He- opment by measuring the quality of life and this donian happiness is therefore not sustainable. was accepted. So, as Freedom Day became known This article focuses on linking sustainability widely, Earth Overshoot Day, which is calculated and happiness, the meaning of this link is the an- by the Global Footprint Network, should be known. swer to the question of what happiness makes sense The media all over the world mention when the UN to sustain? A large part of the society in the post- annually issues the Human Development Index, transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe there is a number of links to TED talks on sustain- connects happiness with the sudden acquisition able happiness on the Internet. of a large amount of money and quality of life with The problem of sustainable development and the a high standard of living, an ownership of luxury problem of sustainable happiness are not isolated living, status objects and holidays in distant parts problems. They are part of a process that is ’above’ of the world. They consider recycling their waste or ’behind’, and this is the process of creating good as their contribution to environmental protection. societies (Christofersen et al. 2014) as a purpose As we have already described, happiness is short- of public policy. The goal of public policy should term, hedonic, and long-lasting, eudaimonic, with be to create conditions for a content, sometimes hedonistic, unsustainable happiness largely preva- happy, long and sustainable life, lived in health. lent. How do we achieve the change towards We identify with Aristotle (2009) in his definition the predominant eudaimonic happiness? In gen- of good society, according to which it is a society eral, there are two options — to order the change that allows a good life. and to change it by changing the way people think. In the Aristotelian sense, it is a sustainable happi- Directing change happens by regulations, at inter- ness that comes as an added value to a well-spent national level, in the form of a ban on smoking, life. Better focus on happiness would be to focus a ban on disposable plastic trays, cutlery, or a ban on the sustainability of quality of life, as the concept on the production of diesel cars. At the local level, of quality of life better meets the need for sustain- it takes place in the form of a ban on the entry of mo- ability as a phenomenon of happiness. Sustainable tor vehicles into city centres or the ban on the sale quality of life should not have a hedonic form of ’at of pod coffee machines. any price’ (Pol et al. 2016) but it should with its em- Managing change in thinking towards eudaimonic phasis on the socio-economic and ecological quality happiness may seem beyond human power, but of the place (Murgaš & Klobučník 2016a) contribute it can be achieved by education, accompanied to a good life in good society. by other measures. Kohák (2006) sees change in the classification of ecology between values and the cre- ation of environmental ethics. Pope Francis consid- 7 Conclusion ers the goal of integral ecology, dealing with not only environmental but also human and social problems (Francis 2015). This is in line with the identification The aim of the article was formulated as an analy- of three parts of sustainable development − ecolog- sis of approaches to linking sustainability and hap- ical, social and economic. piness as a basis for a decision what happiness We know examples of cities or entire civilizations is sustainable. Happiness is a part of the qual- from the past that have disappeared because they ity of life, representing the highest degree of well- have lost the ability to provide people with basic being, and therefore, like the quality of life, it has its needs in the form of food, water and shelter. How- hedonic and eudaimonic form. In the current con- ever, all the old civilizations did not perish, some sumer society, there is a desire for hedonistic hap- have been able to respond to the threat of ecocide. piness that is unsustainable. The need for a funda- We have proven that only the eudaimonic form mental change in the form of sustainable consump- of happiness is sustainable. On the contrary, tion came about in response to the problem of un- the other, hedonistic form of happiness, is a part sustainability of consumer life. This can be achieved of processes of devastation of the human environ- through a top-down approach, in the form of reg- ment. The application dimension of this knowl- ulations and bans by the decision-making sphere, edge lies in providing valid information to support or by a bottom-up approach based on the accep- decision-making at all levels of public policy, as well tance of sustainability values by society. Acceptance as in informing the public on the part of scien- of sustainability values must be accompanied by up- tists. The world known report of the Stiglitz Com- bringing. mission (Stiglitz et al. 2010) named the inevitabil-
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