“Give your feeling of happiness a score.” Audience members note their score in marker pen on a dry erase sheet and hold them up. Lucas de Man takes stock: the lowest score is a five, there's even a ten, and it's raining eights.

The Flemish theater maker and presenter worked with a team of creatives and thinkers to develop a series of four productions about our near future. One of these is about happiness, and it is this performance that, on this Wednesday evening, the audience in Luna's Corona Room has come to see. By no coincidence Studium Generale scheduled the show in the Dutch Happiness Week. De Man is sharing the stage with musician Michelle Samba and actress Isil Vos.

What we learn this evening is that we are lying through our teeth about our eights. It's just not possible that everyone is so happy. “Bullshit,” is De Man's pithy opinion. “Science tells us that half the people here are lying.” Why? Because more than a million Dutch people are taking antidepressants, and burn-outs are alarmingly common.

This is consistent with something called the paradox of happiness: the Netherlands sits firmly (together with the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland) in the top five of the happiest countries, but also makes it, every year without fail, into the top five of countries with the highest rate of depression.

Fun fact about happiness
In the list of the happiest places to live in the Netherlands, Eindhoven stands at number 38. Where are people happiest? In Ede.

Innate

And that lying about how happy we feel, why do we do it? We've been told that happiness is ours to make, says De Man. “We're ashamed: if you are unhappy, you are a loser.” But, in reality, happiness is only 40 percent within our own control.

Ten percent depends on circumstances you have no way of changing, like where you were born. And 50 percent is innate: a basic mood that you'll always return to however long it stays away, whether you've won the lottery or, at the other end of the spectrum, have had a really horrible experience.

Things that are within your control include your social environment, how healthy your lifestyle is and the education or job you're doing. But De Man adds the proviso that our control over these things is relative. “We are the first generation in a long time that isn't better off than the preceding generation.” Price rises are making it more difficult to make ends meet, and who knows whether you'll ever be able to buy a house?

Fun fact about happiness
Do you want to be happier? Give to others. Generosity is proven to boost a person's level of happiness.

Implants

In his research on our happiness in the near future, De Man puts the focus on the workplace. It's where we spend a large part of our life, after all, and, “85 percent feel no connection with their work, 60 percent feel lonely at work, and 40 percent feel they are doing a ‘bullshit job’”, a job that's senseless.

In the role of fictitious expert Robin Sharp, actress Isil Vos paints a picture of HR in a sci-fi-like future: a chip is implanted above the ear of every employee. Not only does this record how the person moves through the office, whether they spend a lot of time working with colleagues and what they buy in the canteen, it also reads their hormonal status and whether their flow of thoughts includes any red flags.

If there's any reason to be concerned about the employee's health and well-being, coaching can be given, but intervention can also be more direct. Personal dietary advice can be communicated straight to the canteen kitchen, so that the person is served a healthy lunch. A bad humor can be adjusted with a microdosis of hormones. And – conveniently – when a deadline is approaching, the whole team can be treated in this way, switching them into more focused and productive mode.

Fun fact about happiness
A salary raise makes people (in the rich West) most happy up to an annual income of 75,000 euros. After that, the increase in happiness levels off, and from upwards of 160,000 euros having yet more income no longer has any effect on the feeling of happiness. “So negotiate up to 160,000 euros – or give away any surplus you have,” De Man advises with a wink.

Unsettled

In the meantime the audience has become a little unsettled by Robin’s upbeat tone as she describes the scenario that, to her, seems only natural. Nor are they at all keen on the idea of these chips, with one exception, a woman who thinks it could be pretty useful, as added support “if anything happens that you can't figure out for yourself.” One man wonders what would happen if he had thoughts that didn't suit his employer, “like that I find my boss irritating”.

That is indeed the crux of the matter. “You're all looking at us like we're crazy, but believe it or not, all this stuff either already exists or will be released commercially in the coming years,” insists De Man. “And you can't stop this technology.”

So, above all, we need to ensure that organizations use this stuff wisely. That's his point. “Make no mistake: since corona, the number of employers that have put spyware on their employees' computers has risen from 35 to 56 percent.”

That's given the audience food for thought. Michelle Samba launches into another cheerful song, a sing-along to close to show, but the somber mood doesn't quite lift. As the auditorium empties, everyone is talking about the play.

Fun fact about happiness
For a long time, happiness was a fruit that you achieved only in the hereafter, after your lifetime on Earth. It wasn't until the eighteenth century that the pursuit of happiness was considered to be the right of every citizen. This was laid down in the Declaration of Independence of the United States.