Come On, Get Happy

Those are lofty goals for any nation. But, then again, no one said it would be easy. Which is exactly Andrew Guest’s point in Oregon Humanities. An associate professor of psychology at the University of Portland, Guest makes the case that “Being happy…is much more complicated than it sounds.” The modern science of happiness, Guest tells us, is known as “positive psychology” and it focuses not just on reducing suffering, but increasing happiness through psychology and psychiatry. But just how to do that is still anyone’s guess, with much of the measurement coming from the subjective perception of individuals through rating systems where they define their own happiness