Mismeasuring Our Lives: The Case Against Usefulness, Popularity, and the Desire to Influence Others

Abstract

Early in 2008, in the early throes of the coming worldwide financial crisis, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy established a commission, led by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen and French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, to study whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a valid measure of social and economic progress. In the Commission’s report, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up (Stiglitz, Sen, & Fitoussi, 2010), a new, alternative set of measures was proposed. This essay revisits the question of how we should measure the things that matter, at a time when we continue to mismeasure our lives, as we hold fast to the outworn myths of usefulness, popularity, and the desire to influence others. Three central, unquestioned presumptions have come to govern much of contemporary society, education, and the professions. They are: the high value placed on usefulness, on the passion to achieve popularity, and on the desire to influence others. In this essay, the psychologist-philosopher author makes the case against these presumptions, presumptions which lead to exclusionary commitments that stand in the way of human cultural development.