A lot of things make us unhappy, including the things we thought would make us happy.

What does it mean to be happy? And, perhaps more importantly, who gets to decide what happiness should look like? Those questions were at the heart of an unusual debate between economist Lord Richard Layard and psychiatrist Dr. Raj Persaud, broadcast by ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing on August 14, 2005. Their disagreement went beyond the familiar question of whether money can buy happiness. It touched something much more fundamental: whether happiness is a personal responsibility, a social condition, or even something governments should try to provide.

Lord Layard argued that happiness should be taken seriously as a goal of public policy. If governments measure economic growth, unemployment, poverty and other indicators of social health, why shouldn’t they also consider how people actually feel about their lives? His argument was not that the State could manufacture happiness, but that governments inevitably shape the conditions in which people live. Employment, education, social security, mental-health services and the strength of human relationships all have consequences for wellbeing.

Layard pointed to an important paradox. Once people reach a reasonable level of income, additional money does remarkably little to improve their happiness. Yet poverty and hardship remain among the greatest sources of unhappiness. Unemployment, he noted, can be profoundly damaging—not simply because of lost income, but because work provides purpose, identity and connection with other people. The Scandinavian countries and Switzerland, which consistently ranked highly in happiness surveys, offered another lesson: trust, social relationships and relative equality appeared to matter more than simply having more money.

Persaud agreed with much of the evidence, but he was considerably more skeptical about turning happiness into a governmental objective. Happiness, he argued, is complicated, subjective and often misunderstood even by the people experiencing it. We can want something intensely, obtain it, and discover that it doesn’t make us nearly as happy as we imagined. Desire and enjoyment, he suggested, are not necessarily the same thing.

He also distinguished between short-lived pleasure and a deeper, more durable sense of contentment. A pleasurable meal or an entertaining film may produce an intense burst of happiness, but it soon disappears. A sense of accomplishment or satisfaction with the direction of one’s life may be less dramatic but much more enduring. Persaud suggested that sustainable wellbeing might have more to do with accepting ordinary contentment than constantly pursuing moments of ecstatic happiness.

And then there was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Persaud’s use of Huxley’s dystopian society made the debate considerably more unsettling. In Huxley’s world, unhappiness has essentially been eliminated through comfort, distraction and the drug Soma. But the price of universal happiness is enormous: freedom, art, scientific inquiry, individuality and the right to experience the full range of human emotions have been sacrificed. The character John the Savage ultimately insists upon his right not merely to be happy, but to suffer, struggle, choose and remain human.

The debate also exposed one of the great ironies of modern life: people continually pursue things they believe will make them happy, even when experience repeatedly tells them otherwise. Studies discussed during the program suggested that our judgments about happiness can be surprisingly unreliable. Even a tiny, unexpected event—a dime found on a photocopier—could temporarily alter someone’s assessment of how happy their entire life had been.

Perhaps that is the most revealing lesson of Being Human, Being Unhappy. Happiness is real, measurable and important, but it is not a commodity that can simply be distributed. Money can relieve misery when there isn’t enough of it, but beyond basic security, wealth offers diminishing returns. Relationships, meaningful work, purpose, freedom and a sense of participation in life appear to matter considerably more.

Layard and Persaud ultimately disagreed over how much responsibility society should assume for creating those conditions. But their debate arrived at an intriguing middle ground: perhaps the goal isn’t to create a permanently happy population at all. Perhaps a healthy society is one that gives people a reasonable opportunity to pursue happiness for themselves—including the freedom to be unhappy from time to time.

After all, being human has never meant being happy all the time. It means having the freedom to experience the whole complicated collection of emotions that makes a life a life.

Here is that episode of ABC Radio National Australia’s Background Briefing: Being Human, Being unhappy from August 14, 2005.