On the measurability of the quality of life.
Are you only able to evaluate things which we can measure?

Since the beginning of time mankind has tried to survive in a hostile environment – cold, heat, starvation, and other forces of nature. Like every living creature, he tries this in a way that gives him an advantage over his environment. In spite of his physical weakness, man, a “creature lacking basic things” (Arnold Gehlen), is able to survive, mainly thanks to his intelligence, which indeed gives him an edge over his fellow creatures.

His intelligence has ensured his survival – at least so far. His intelligence has given him the ability to explore his environment, to measure it, to test it and so on – and most of all to interfere.

In the meantime, he has perfected his exploring, measuring, testing and interfering to such an extent that these no longer only serve his survival; on the contrary, his “inventions” often harm him more than they do him good. The inventions which were meant to ensure his survival seem to have reached a point where the reverse is true.

It is high time that something truly revolutionary was invented. An invention that lets us measure luck, happiness and the quality of life.

But wanting to measure subjective perceptions is pretty utopian. How should one measure luck, happiness, or the quality of life? Although these are purely subjective feelings, we know exactly when they are missing, even without being able to measure them. It would be interesting now to be able to more precisely measure feelings and the events that trigger them on a scale from “bad” to “good” and all the steps in between. As said, pretty utopian, but perhaps this would show that neither power nor property can lead to positive feelings nor trigger happiness.

Cheerful atheists do not have any secret recipe for happiness. But they at least try to make the search for happiness a pleasant one.

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