Ireland has the highest quality of life in the world, according to a new study. The reason, writes Dan O'Brien, is that society has managed modernity's arrival uniquely well.
What makes life good, and what causes discontent? The human soul's complexities make it impervious to definitive conclusion, but the growth industry of satisfaction studies offers some enlightenment.
Today, libraries of serious work exist which show that at societal level certain factors conclusively influence life satisfaction. The Economist Intelligence Unit has aggregated these to create a new quality-of-life index, published this week in The World in 2005.
The Republic comes out ahead of the other 110 countries surveyed because it enjoys the economic and political gifts of modernity - wealth, liberty, stability and security - while managing better than others to maintain the best of tradition, the civic virtues that keep communities together and the personal ones that make for strong supportive families.
Modernity first. Ireland is now one of the richest countries in the world by any measure. Though money does not guarantee happiness, it helps, and not only for material reasons. Everywhere, the well-heeled are happier than the down-at-heel because they feel more secure and more in control of their lives.
And because tigerish affluence has all but exorcised the twin Irish spectres of insecurity - joblessness and enforced emigration - satisfaction levels have jumped.
Politics matters, too. The awfulness of war, the risk of arbitrary arrest, the terror of human rights abuses and constraints on personal freedoms all make people miserable; one reason why brutish Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe comes bottom of our index.
The Republic is at the other extreme, enjoying social calm combined with civil and political liberties which, surveys show, are not bettered anywhere in the world.
In all wealth, security and freedom factors Ireland scores highly, but it is not these wonders alone that make it the most content of nations. The key to life satisfaction, it seems, is to have the best of both worlds: the good of the modern and the best of tradition, a trick that is notoriously difficult to pull off, because when the old stifling stuff is ditched (think dictatorial clergymen, arranged marriages and excessive deference) many good things seem to get lost as well.
Moral obligation, sense of duty and self-denial, the practice of which help to hold families together, all appear to wane as countries develop. Virtues that are society's cement - reciprocity, trust and altruism - also become less fashionable.
There are, too, down sides to personal choice and individual liberties. Freedom can loosen the ties that bind, and an abundance of choice makes it harder to put up with inevitably imperfect human arrangements (a spiceless marriage or a grumpy aged relative about the house, for instance).
While the prissy everywhere rail against vulgarity, venality and recreational sex as if they were the first generation to have to endure such horrors, it is true that genuinely bad things - incivility, yobbishness and drunken nihilistic violence - tend to become more prevalent in developed societies (and we notice them more because we don't have old worries, like famines and wars, anymore).
It is true, too, that there is more family breakdown, scarring more kids, and that social atomisation swells the ranks of angst-filled, live-alone Bridget Joneses.
These woes certainly afflict Ireland, but (and this is crucial) they do so less than in other developed countries. Divorce is on the rise, but is still below the rich-world average. Civic involvement has declined (as measured by trade-union membership and participative religion), but not as precipitously as elsewhere.
The European Social Values surveys support our findings. They show that trust in most public institutions is high compared to other countries and that social solidarity, concern for others and willingness to help them, remain unusually strong, as illustrated, for example, by the phenomenon of the Special Olympics last year.
But the index's findings are not all good news. Health, climate and gender inequality are three factors (of a total of nine) that determine contentment where Ireland falls below the rich-Europe average.
The first two will not surprise, as horror stories of a creaking health system abound and short grey winter days cause glumness. More eye-catching, though, given tough equality laws and rigorous enforcement, is that gender inequality remains higher in Ireland than elsewhere (pay differentials between the sexes is our proxy).
What about factors like education and income inequality that are often cited as important in assessing levels of development? These are socially important to be sure, but interestingly, research shows that neither influences life satisfaction. While education broadens horizons, it simultaneously raises expectations. The effects on contentment cancel each other out.
Relative income inequality doesn't matter either, as most people don't begrudge the better off their good fortune. And if this raises eyebrows, think how people vote across the world, Ireland included. Parties who promise to raise taxes for the super-rich and lower them for everyone else rarely make serious electoral headway, however irrational that may be of the majority. Envy politics, universally it seems, has little appeal.
That Ireland has topped our index will convince neither unworldly parochials who think Ireland is worst for everything nor determined gloomsters who believe that the country is fast going to the bad.
But thousands of returning emigrants and arriving immigrants who vote with their feet know that there are few better places in the world to live.
Dan O'Brien is senior European editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit