Britain has suddenly become obsessed with happiness. A whole new ‘happiness industry’ has boomed, with politicians, psychologists, analysts, and even economists falling over themselves to tell us that what we need is not more money, but more well-being.

Thus David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, told a zeitgeist conference (whatever the hell that is) last year that: “it's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being”. Right on Dave!

The Labour government is right up there with the Conservatives in searching for the feel-good factor. Geoff Mulgan, head of the government’s strategy unit, has written several essays and articles searching for the mystic key to happiness, and what the government can do to promote it.

Economists have also been joining the hunt. A professor called Andrew Oswald has authored several papers arguing that rising GDP makes us happy up to a point, but after that point, it doesn’t make us much happier, so Britain should now concentrate on other goals. Like pottery, perhaps.

And an emeritus professor at the LSE called Lord Layard has published a government report into mental illness, which says Britain is facing an epidemic of depression and anxiety, and that the government should spend millions of pounds on making cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) more available to us miserable Brits.

The latest addition to this debate is a book by the popular psychologist Oliver James, called Affluenza. I mention it here because it compares the UK to Russia and – guess what – decides that us British actually have a lot to learn from you Russkie in the obscure art of happiness.

James starts off with the troubling statistic that people in English-speaking countries are more likely to be depressed or anxious than people in mainland Europe. The solution…speak less English of course!

No, the solution is to follow a more continental model of capitalism, he says. You see, the reason us English-speakers are so likely to be miserable is that the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand have all followed an economic policy known as Anglo-Saxon capitalism, or advanced neo-liberalism, and this has ‘infected’ us with its insidious values.

As a result, we are more likely to worry about money, about status, about our appearance in others’ eyes, we’re more likely to work like slaves, to have a bad family life, to look for escapism in consumerism, drugs, alcohol. We may be richer than the rest of the world, but we’re actually worse of in emotional terms.

His book is full, therefore, of unhappy and fucked up millionaire stock-brokers and real estate brokers. It reads rather like a Brett Easton Ellis novel.

He contrasts the woeful Anglo-Saxons he meets with happy and well-rounded people from the rest of the world, particularly Denmark, who are happier, he suggests, because they haven’t caught affluenza from the ‘Selfish Capitalism’ of the English-speaking world.

Which brings us to Russia. James travels to Moscow and interviews various people, from whom he draws the conclusion that Russians are on the whole not infected with affluenza, with the exception of some of the elite.

He concludes this because he associates affluenza quite closely with American values, and he notes that Russia seems to be quite anti-American. There isn’t any Starbucks in Russia, he notes sagaciously, and also Russians don’t buy many American CDs or DVDs. We could point out that this is because a Russian stole the Starbucks trademark, and because Russians buy pirate copies of American DVDs and CDs. But we’ll let it go.

He takes Russian women to be a great example of the authenticity of the non-English-speaking world. American and British women, he tells us, are very worried about their appearance in the eyes of men. They spend massive amounts of money on make-up, brand clothing and even plastic surgery. They behave like commodities, only valuing themselves according to how much male attention they elicit.

Russian girls, by contrast, see fashion and beauty as a form of self-expression, to be done for its own sake, not for the sake of men.

He meets a 24-year-old, Janna, who tells him: “Most of us like to make our own clothes or adapt ordinary purchases to create our own appearance. We are more concerned with expressing ourselves than being clothes horses for designers. We like to do it for fun or to invent something which is lovely-looking, but more for ourselves than for men. You don’t bother what men think, or other women, come to that.”

He says none of the Russian women he met tried to ingratiate themselves with him with charm or flirting.

Well, I think everyone who’s lived in Russia can agree with James on how independent, authentic, alternative and, yes, feminist Russian women are. I only wish English girls could worry a little less about their appearance and try to dress down a bit, or be a bit more punk in their appearance, like their Russian sisters.

OK, enough sarcasm. It’s nonsense, of course. Hilarious nonsense. Russian girls can be very independent, strong, unconventional women. But they can also, quite often, be exceptionally conventional and material in their values, their behaviour, their dress etc. Did James not notice Fashion TV playing in every bar he went into? Didn’t he notice how the menus in restaurants featured the amount of calories of each tiny piece of sushi?

He must be seriously ugly, or rather poor, if no Russian girl tried to flirt with him. Russian women are world champions at flirting!

Later, he admits that a study shows Russian women actually have far lower levels of self-esteem than American women, while also believing appearance is more important. But he somehow ignores this. We should be more like Russian women.

Anyway, it’s a pretty dumb book. I wouldn’t suggest reading it. If it shows anything, it’s that British and American societies are wondering where they should go now. They’ve lost their aim, as I’ve said. I think most British people I know expect the world to get worse. They expect it to get more violent, more environmentally devastated, more divided.

Russians, by contrast, expect the world to get better. Or at least, they expect Russia to get more powerful and them to get richer. The Chinese expect the same. These countries have the feel-good factor, because ordinary people are enjoying things they have never enjoyed before, such as digital cameras, new apartments, holidays abroad.

It’s only when they get bored of these things that they’ll start worrying about things like the environment, humanitarianism or personal growth. In fact, we’re already seeing that phenomenon in Russia, with the popularity of books like Soulless and films like The Island.

And eventually, when Russia and China run the world and all Russians are rich and have a plasma screen in every room, then they’ll also bring out Russian self-help books moaning that they are now rich and powerful, but hey, they’re still miserable. And then they’ll probably say, if only we were poor but happy, like the British…

Jules Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.

March 9, 2007