Despite a vast increase in wealth and consumption, according to the 2007 Year Book Australia " various surveys conducted since the 1950s have produced results within a fairly narrow range, that is average life satisfaction of around 6.5 to 7.5 on a scale of one to ten, indicating general satisfaction with their lives." (sorry URL too long to include)

This German study http://darp.lse.ac.uk/papersDB/Ferrer-i-Carbonell_(JPubE05).pdf finds that "the larger an individual’s own income is in comparison with the income of the reference group, the happier the individual is" and also "that poorer individuals’ well-being is negatively influenced by the fact that their income is lower than that of their reference group, while richer individuals do not get happier from having an income above the average."

This all suggests to me that it is not income level that makes people happy or unhappy (unles you're living in real poverty). Rather it is income disparity that causes dissatisfaction. And guess what? Australia is becoming a more unequal (and presumably more dissatisfied) place. Average wage-earners may be better off, but they've seen executive salaries boosted into the stratosphere. The ultimate irony is that this doesn't even make the rich any happier, tt just makes those left behind feel worse....

There is an industry built around those who don't like what's happening in the world around them. They take as many steps and make as much noise as possible to make life miserable for others.

Cassandra, if you read these comments, you might care to look at the effects of participatory democracy at school. With respect to the brilliant Declaration of Independence, a book was published last year that reflected the outcomes of a study of alumni of the Sudbury Valley School (SVS) in the USA. It's title reflected the moods and hindsight views of life by its former Students - "The Pursuit of Happiness". Along with sister Schools in other countries, SVS found its past Students have different approaches and attitudes to many aspects and challenges in life, most of it very positive and uplifting, partly because they are independent, self-directed, self-motivated people who can overcome failure. They know about democratic values including freedom, because they prepared for life experiencing those things at School. They don't rely on governments. They follow their own interests, are self-fulfilled as a result, in the full gamut of professions and occupations.

Our School failed in Australia because, like other cultural differences that we have with the USA, the State can't handle the fact that some people want to be truly independent and can self-manage their affairs, through participatory democracy. Governments and the odd political party maintain a practice of meddling and interfering in people's lives. They are intolerable intrusions. Government meddling and every new regulation erodes our freedom, including our choices, and individuality. There are now generations who believe that to be happy you must rely on government, their props, their controls, our redistributed money. They don't realise that only freedom and independence will provide self-fulfillment and happiness.

We have realised that in order to seek self-managed, self-determining independence and freedom is by becoming a self-funded independent (not just non-state) School. We'll write our own Declaration of Independence. It'll be interesting to see the roadblocks that are put in our path, and what measures we'll use to overcome them.

Johnj
The survey you quote reports that “When asked about how they felt about their lives as a whole, 76% of Australian adults indicated they were delighted, pleased or mostly satisfied with their lives. Less than 6% of people indicated that they felt mostly dissatisfied, unhappy or terrible about their lives”.

It also reports that Australia has amongst the highest happiness scores in international studies:
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0e5fa1cc95cd093c4a2568110007852b/0D4CB6F07133EA5DCA2572360002FAA3?opendocument

Doesn’t this, and the fact that measured life satisfaction has been pretty stable despite huge economic and social change, suggest that the doomsayers on this thread are wrong, and that there’s no evidence either that we’re utterly miserably, or that we suffer growing dissatisfaction because of income disparities (on which the evidence is also pretty mixed – see http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/6523.02003-04?OpenDocument.

I’m not surprised that Australians are showing up on surveys as happy little Vegemites. As a rule, Westerners in general don’t like to admit to being unhappy because, as inheritors of an Enlightenment culture that is driven by the pursuit of happiness, such an admission carries the stigma of failure. If formally asked, the average Westerner will tend to say that they are happy, regardless of their reality, because it is the socially desirable response.

Add to this the fact that Australians, in particular, are drip-fed through the media and popular culture to believe that we are a happy-go-lucky, sun-blessed, sport-mad, fresh-faced lot who have inherited a ‘lucky country’ whose freedoms were bravely defended by a bunch of plucky little Anzacs who died in their thousands a century ago on the other side of the world.

With all of this happiness pressure being thrown at us on a daily basis, only the terminally contrary would dare to admit to not feeling all that good about life.

The reality that I see in my friends and family, and the people I meet every day, is that Australians are generally over-worked, over-mortgaged, over-governed, over-educated, over-alert/alarmed and over-stressed by the pressure to meet the minimum requirements of living in this user-pays society that has been carefully designed for us by successive governments over the last 25 years.

Derek@Booroobin,

‘Our School failed in Australia because, like other cultural differences that we have with the USA, the State can't handle the fact that some people want to be truly independent and can self-manage their affairs, through participatory democracy.’

My children went to a very similar school to Sudbury – as you are probably aware, there are a handful of these truly democratic, independent community schools dotted around Australia, even though they may not be entirely identical to the Sudbury philosophy.

What I found during the years that my children attended this school was that, deep down, many potential school parents – and very occasionally, children – did not really want to be ‘truly independent’ or to ‘self-manage their affairs through participatory democracy’. Usually, on visiting the school initially, they would be inspired at all the creativity and confidence in the children, but by about 6 months after enrolment, they would be tearing their hair out because their little Johnny was not at the same reading or maths level as their neighbours’/friends’/sisters’/brothers’ children in the mainstream system. Sadly, these people would invariably give up and leave, often in a blaze of recrimination.

For those who stayed, however, the rewards were extraordinary. Now teenagers, my children still thank me on almost a weekly basis for the privilege of going to a school in which they were given the awesome responsibility of directing their own learning and making their own rules. Whether this will make them self-directed adults, only time will tell - but I think they got a good start.

No society in the modern world has been able to provide this sense of individual responsibility for their citizens, but sooner or later, one will successfully break through and set a powerful precedent. There are tentative signs that the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela may beat the odds and get a genuine, self-directed, grassroots democracy up and running. Again, only time will tell.

Hi MLK,

Over 8 years of operation of a non-state school demonstrated, until our admission processes evolved in response, that many people, particularly parents knew what they didn't want from Schools, but very, very few knew what they actually wanted. In other words, few people had taken the time to know what they actually wanted out of education or in life for their children. It was a completely different experience during the period of 2.5 years that a self-funded Democratic Centre of Learning operated. The removal of the shackles of coercive government funding was almost a relief, and people were more aware and focussed. It became more of a learning community than ever before. But then in July 2006 the day to day operation was suspended on the basis of legal advice, following destructive intimidatory threats of criminal action and fines by the State Education Minister.

For those people who did know what they wanted, they wanted for their children the kind of freedom, with responsibility, and a deep personal philosophy, knowledge, experience and most of all day to day practice of democratic values, that few others know.

Unfortunately in the authoritarian, bureaucratic, hierarchical mainstream education system that most young people are compelled to attend for between 12,000 and 15,000 hours of their lives, they are actually prepared for the type of existence which leads to unhappiness because they're only accustomed to external authority figures, and not their intrinsic abilities, for approval and authority. When they don't get the support from authority that they expect, or authority figures don't respond as they expect, they look for someone to blame, not accepting their own personal responsibility.

Like Booroobin Graduates and Graduates of democratic previously (and hopefully future) sister Schools around the world, I'm pleased that your children appreciate their democratic education experiences. Sudbury Graduates are prepared for life as independent effective adults in an open, civil democratic society. Democratic education is a truly awe inspiring experience for those involved and also those who witness the outcomes of the young people who stay for the long term.