Are you happy?

What would it take to make you happy? A new car? A foreign holiday? A bigger house? These are all things we constantly work towards and it often seems that if we just had that little bit more money we've be just that little bit happier. It's the basis on which the entire success of a country is based. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is a purely monetary method of measuring success and it is constantly equated with happiness. Politicians are elected on the expectation that they'll keep GDP growing and our salaries along with it.

But is it possible that there's a basic flaw in this assumption? Is it true that more money equals more happiness?

If you compare life in Britain today with life as it was fifty or a hundred years ago there is no doubt that we're all wealthier than people were then. Even allowing for the difference in the value of money, we earn more, we're better housed and fed, we have more holidays and we live longer than people did then. So it must follow that we're all happier that they were.

But are we? If you look in the newspapers or watch the television news you'll see plenty of evidence of violence, disease and misery. A read through your average daily paper will usually convince you that there's just as much unhappiness around as there ever has been.

Undoubtedly, the newspapers paint an unnecessarily depressing picture, but the fact remains that we don't seem to be achieving greater happiness as we grow wealthier. Despite our increased wealth we constantly want more and are constantly dissatisfied.

One of the first people to notice this was the famous economist John Maynard Keynes. He lived from 1883 to 1946 and he noticed that throughout history the main preoccupation of mankind had been getting enough food and shelter. He also noticed how life had consistently improved through the ages and he forecast that, for the first time in history, there would come a point at which the vast majority of people would have somewhere comfortable to live and more than enough to eat. What engaged him was whether people would happy if they didn't have to toil all their waking hours.

Well, the future which Keynes foresaw has come to pass. With very few exceptions we all have enough to eat and somewhere to live. Even those who can't or won't work are not only housed and fed but given enough money for leisure items such as tobacco, alcohol and television. The struggle to survive is behind us. So we should all be happy?

Yet we seem to be no happier than people were when they had to struggle to keep body and soul together. These days, we can all live lives of luxury, getting fat on high-calorie processed food from fast food outlets and passing our leisure time listening to music or watching movies. Our lives today are comparable to those of only the monarchy of times past. So why do so many people suffer from depression? Why are there so many suicides each year? And how can we change things for the better?

Perhaps measuring success in monetary terms is no longer the answer. Already, most families own two cars and some own two houses. How much more do we need? And if we're not happy now, would we be happy with three houses and three cars? Probably not, yet that is exactly what is going to happen if we continue as we are.

If we continue as we are then by the end of this century we shall be considerably richer than we are now and yet no happier - possibly even less happy! If the economy grows at 2% throughout this century then, thanks to compounding, we shall be seven times wealthier than we are now. If it grows at 2.5% we shall be twelve times better off. We shall still have enough to eat and abundant leisure time but we'll have twelve times as much money to spend. In fact, we may not need to work at all yet we'll have greater wealth than we have now. Will we be happy?

Will we have twelve times as many cars and will there be any roads to drive them on? Will we have twelve times as many houses and will there be any land that isn't built on? And will we have twelve times as many holidays - and will there be anywhere to go that isn't already full of other people have their twelve times as many holidays?

Most important of all, will be twelve times as happy? It seems pretty certain that we won't. In fact on current performance we are likely to be more depressed, more angry and generally more dissatisfied than we are now.

Solving this problem looks like being the greatest challenge facing us in the next century and it will be very difficult to solve. It seems certain that measuring success in monetary terms has had its day and we must begin to look at what it is that actually makes us happy. It looks likely that governments in the future will have to design policies that increase people's feeling of well being rather than the amount of money in their pocket - but what these policies might be is anybody's guess.

One thing is certain and that is that the politicians and policy makers who will have to face this challenge are sitting in our schools right now. That little seven-year-old who looks to you to provide him with the tools he'll need as an adult may, in fifty years time, be Prime Minister or a member of an influential think-tank. It will be for him and his generation to come up with the solutions and it seems to many people that the acquisition of core skills driven by league tables won't fit the bill.

Difficult problems require creative solutions and the best way to equip today's children so that they can ensure not only a prosperous but also a happy future is to nurture their creativity and this is an area in which Logotron excels. Although the product range includes basic skills software such as Megamaths and Tomorrow's Promise, the heart of the company lies in its creative and problem solving software. Logo, the program which gave the company its name, is an open-ended tool which allows collaboration, co-operation and creativity - the very characteristics which may well lie at the heart of achieving happiness for us all.

Whatever solutions governments of the future come up with, it seems clear that learning to be creative and to work together with others on collaborative projects may well be the secret of finding that elusive ingredient that wealth alone does not provide.

Then again, perhaps human happiness is simply an impossible dream? After all, it has been said, if mankind were capable of being content we would all still live in caves.