Ghanbari rejects happiness as the single objective of government. He favors a plural civilizational scorecard that includes welfare, freedom, longevity, knowledge, resilience and the capacity for future progress.
Why happiness attracts
Happiness appears humane and measurable. It corrects the mistake of treating economic output as the whole of life. Yet self-reported satisfaction adapts to conditions and can coexist with low ambition or restricted choice. A state could increase reported calm through sedation, censorship or reduced expectations—outcomes few would accept as a good society.
Longevity changes the horizon
Longer healthy lives increase the value of prevention, clean environments, medical research and stable institutions. The WHO’s healthy-ageing agenda emphasizes functional ability, not merely survival. Longevity as a public goal should therefore mean more healthy, autonomous years rather than maximizing biological duration regardless of quality.
Progress requires sacrifice—but not unlimited sacrifice
Scientific infrastructure, basic research and space systems demand resources whose benefits may be delayed. Ghanbari places unusually high value on these investments because they expand what civilization can solve. That priority still needs limits: present people cannot be treated merely as fuel for a distant technological future.
A dashboard, not one number
Future governance could publish a balanced set of indicators: healthy life expectancy, preventable suffering, rights protection, knowledge production, ecological resilience, infrastructure condition, innovation capacity and inequality of access. The indicators should expose conflict rather than merge everything into a convenient score.
The politics of weights
Even a plural dashboard requires weights when budgets are allocated. Those weights should be debated, tested and revised. AI can map the consequences of different priorities, but it cannot legitimately choose them in secret.
Can progress become a secular religion?
Technological progress can become self-justifying. More capability is not always better if it increases coercion, ecological damage or catastrophic risk. Progress must be evaluated by the futures it opens and closes.
Good governance should help people live well now while preserving the possibility of living better later. Happiness belongs in the objective function—but not alone, and never as an excuse to stop building the future.
QUESTIONS READERS ASK
Further questions
Should governments maximize happiness?
Happiness is important, but a single happiness metric can neglect rights, health, resilience, knowledge and future capability.
Why include longevity in public policy goals?
Healthy longevity reflects prevention, medical progress and the ability of people to remain capable and autonomous over longer lives.
EVIDENCE LAYER
Sources and further reading
- UN Decade of Healthy AgeingWorld Health Organization ↗
- Strategic ForesightOECD ↗
- AR6 Synthesis ReportIPCC ↗
Sources support factual context. Interpretive conclusions are presented as Meysam Ghanbari’s perspective, not as settled scientific fact.
