Threlbert Crustacean

...this is a spurious link to your entry but at a time when we all seem to be looking through the co-production prism I might as well flag this one up.

http://www.biopsychiatry.com/happiness/happycountry.html

It's an article from the New Scientist published last October about happiness and leans heavily on David Halpern's strategy unit paper ?Life Satisfaction; the state of knowledge and its implications for government?. It discusses relative national levels of satisfaction throughout the world and suggests that rather than there being one route to happiness, it comes from adhering to different cultural standards specific to different nations??

?In the US, satisfaction comes from personal success, self-expression, pride, a high sense of self-esteem and a distinct sense of self. In Japan, on the other hand, it comes from fulfilling the expectations of your family, meeting your social responsibilities, self-discipline, cooperation and friendliness. So while in the US it is perfectly appropriate to pursue your own happiness, in Japan you are more likely to find happiness by not directly pursuing it.?

If you take it as a given that all societies seek happiness and the way to realise this is adherence to standards, it follows that our challenge is to influence ?standards? to the point that we have a model whereby one person?s happiness does not impinge on another?s.

Presumably co-production slots in here rather nicely. Or is that just stating the blindingly obvious?