Happiness in Practical Wisdom
'Happy New Year!' The use of this phrase at the start of a new year reflects a secret about human beings - we crave happiness. However divergent our aims, the pursuit of happiness is common to us all.
This year, our pursuit of that goal takes place during commemorations across the English-speaking world to mark the fourth centennial of the King James Bible. The impact of that translation on the culture, language and beliefs of the Anglophone world is of such magnitude that the celebrations extend far beyond the religious sphere. They are a reminder that the Bible is today, as over the past 400 years, the world's best-selling book.
So does the world's most popular book have anything to say about the world's most popular pursuit? Indeed it does, but the Bible's insights on happiness call for a revision of today's standard version, which is deeply hedonistic. One such insight is that true happiness comes not through material prosperity, power or pleasure but from the practice of wisdom. Words from the King James translation set the tone: 'Happy is the man that findeth wisdom...for the merchandise of it is better than silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold' (Proverbs 3.13-14).
A master of 'merchandise' who grasped some of this is John Spedan Lewis (1885-1963), the founder of the John Lewis Partnership, who has been polled Britain's greatest business leader. Although not outwardly religious, his admiration for Quakers influenced his decision to relinquish his claim to an income greater than that of his entire workforce, and to introduce a profit-sharing scheme allowing employees to become partners.
Without external shareholders, this 'experiment in industrial democracy', as Lewis called it, now has 70,000 partners owning almost 300 stores. They subscribe to a constitution embodying his vision that 'the Partnership's ultimate purpose is the happiness of all its members'. Such happiness, Lewis explained, is to be understood 'in the broadest sense of that word' and requires 'a sense of all-round fairness, a sense of all-pervading justice'.
Politicians from both left and right are proposing the John Lewis Partnership as a model for public service provision. They are also emphasising the importance of happiness. Although unable to offer detailed policy prescriptions, the practical wisdom of scripture, not lost in translation, offers direction. The Bible resembles a compass, rather than roadmap. But on a journey through uncharted territory, that is exactly what you need.
Peter Heslam, Transforming Business, University of Cambridge
Links
The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible may be 400 years old but it is available in electronic form and can be read in its entirety online here...
A full-length history of the KJV is Alister McGrath's In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture (Hodder & Stoughton, 2001).
A brief overview of the history of the KJV is available here...
Thomas Nelson, the largest publisher of KJV Bibles, has organized a 400 day celebration of the fourth centennial of the KJV
A three hundred page history of the John Lewis Partnership has recently been published as Spedan's Partnership: The Story of John Lewis and Waitrose, by Peter Cox (Labatie Books, 2010).
A short biographical sketch of John Spedan Lewis is available here on the John Lewis Partnership website. The same page contains a link to a recording of an address Lewis delivered on the BBC in 1957 that sets out his vision for business.
The poll finding John Spedan Lewis to be Britain's greatest business leader was conducted in 2002 by the BBC. Andrew Carnegie, Joseph Rowntree and William Lever were runners-up (in that order). See here for a short BBC report.
Lambeth Council in London recently unveiled plans to become a 'John Lewis Council' as part of an effort to deliver public services more effectively. Read more here...
Happiness research is booming, most of its findings confirming that happiness has more to do with wisdom than with wealth. For discussions of happiness by academics in theology and ethics see The Practices of Happiness: Political Economy, Religion and Wellbeing, edited by John Atherton, Elaine Graham & Ian Steedman (Routledge 2011). One of the chapters is written by Peter Heslam.
The UK's coalition government has asked the Office of National Statistics to develop new ways of measuring people's happiness in terms of well-being. For a positive response to this initiative in the Guardian newspaper by the leaders of three Christian organisations, click here. The same organisations (Cafod, Tearfund and Theos) have produced a report on well-being entitled Wholly Living, available here...
Thanks! I have to say though, I have never met anyone whose ultimate goal is not happiness, of course everyone joins in the pursuit of happiness! Why then is it a "secret about human beings"? I would say it is one of the most out there and in your face things avavilable for all to see!
Date:
2011-01-07 15:25:46
Author:
Sami