HOW do you measure happiness? It’s a question that has confounded philosophers, baffled theologians, and eluded politicians. Whatever the source of that indefinable, intangible but instantly recognisable state of contentment and satisfaction, only one thing is sure: money is not at its root. Having so little that every day is a struggle is undoubtedly a source of angst and even misery, yet the pursuit of wealth and the status that comes with a super-inflated bank balance is, in the long run, almost as certain a road to discontent.

The merest glimpse of the lives of moguls, oligarchs and millionaires tells you that. Are the faces staring out from the pages of glossy magazines shining with wellbeing? They might be tanned, toned, and expensively exfoliated, but if any of these individuals has a heart full of joy, it is unlikely to be as a result of their lifestyle.

In a recent talk, Nicola Sturgeon made an appeal to commonsense, stating what, deep down, most of us already know. She claims that when calibrating a country’s standing and success, gross domestic product is not the most accurate measure. Not least among the misleading factors when using GDP as a guide is that its figures ignore unpaid carers’ work, yet put a value on illegal drug consumption. Just as worryingly, says Ms Sturgeon, “It values activity in the short term that boosts the economy even if that activity is hugely damaging to the sustainability of our planet in the longer term.”

The First Minister’s laudable aspiration is that “the objective of economic policy should be collective wellbeing – how happy and healthy a population is, not just how wealthy a population is.” Hoping to establish a fairer and truer scale of assessment, she is collaborating with the prime ministers of New Zealand and Iceland – women all, in charge of countries geographically on the fringes, who are prepared to challenge convention.

Cynics might, of course, say that Ms Sturgeon is simply laying the groundwork for another independence bid, in which those predicting dire financial consequences will be brushed off as old-fashioned and out of touch by placing too much emphasis on our economic prowess. Yet with Brexit, not just economists but rabid Leavers acknowledge that divorce from the EU will cause financial shockwaves. Clearly, this is a risk they think worth running. By the same token, idealists north of the Border, who want us to exit from the UK, often say that the possibility of diminished economic performance after independence would not in itself be a deal breaker. There are bigger issues at stake.

That argument is for another day. At this point, were Scotland to become a pioneer in putting a fairer society ahead of a more affluent one, this would represent nothing less than a second enlightenment. The inequalities in health and housing, education and attainment that are nakedly apparent all around us, are shaming for one of the wealthiest countries in the world. No matter how much those at the top make, or how vibrant our financial markets, poverty and desperate hardship for too many people persists. It’s tempting to think that those who see GDP and similar indices as telling the whole story have also embraced the biblical creed that the poor will always be with us – in other words, there is nothing we can do about their plight.

While the SNP has not been far-sighted or proactive enough to combat the recent shocking rise in drug-related deaths, many of them linked to deprivation and hopelessness, nevertheless Ms Sturgeon and the like-minded leaders with whom she is allied, have a strong social conscience. If the message that money is only part of the equation takes hold, it could potentially prove a turning point for the way all rich societies see, and regulate, themselves.

Naturally there’s a danger when writing disparagingly about high-income earners of appearing either green-eyed or preachy. Despite spending a childhood in the pews, hearing how the widow’s mite was as valuable as the millionaire’s cheque, and that those who are hard up today will be blessed with eternal treasures in the hereafter, I nevertheless know that no pair of rose-tinted spectacles can make a terrifying bill, an unattainable holiday or too-expensive winter coat, one bit easier to bear. As Mae West put it bluntly: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.”

When it comes to wellbeing, you don’t need a carbon monoxide monitor to recognise that the air in Stornoway or St Abbs is far better for us than that in the throbbing financial hearts of Edinburgh or Glasgow, or for that matter Tokyo and New York. Wellbeing consists of something way beyond liquidity, location, or assets. Those in their gated communities, who store their Cartier watches in a vault, have cut themselves off from the rest of society. Is that really enviable? This is not to say they might not be really decent, kind-hearted people who give generously to good causes. Perhaps some of them are. But no matter how open-handed they appear to be, money creates a spiralling gulf between the haves and the have-nots, and sometimes cause rifts much closer to home, as family lawyers will attest.

Far from solving the problem by capitalists’ pet theory of “trickle-down”, too much capital at the top of society actually entrenches inequality. Thus, the endless pursuit of higher incomes, pricier properties, competitive conspicuous consumption, whether at a personal or national level, is intrinsically unhealthy. Once you believe that the GDP graph should show an inexorable year-on-year increase, you become blinkered. This is as true, I suspect, for those running the country as for the individual.

Hunger for amassing hundreds of thousands of pounds, and the power that comes with it, is a recipe for potential disaster. It is psychologically and spiritually corrosive. Slowing the Gradgrind pursuit of ever-greater productivity, focusing on more nourishing and longer-lasting priorities, is a way of calling time on the fallacy that the bottom line is all that matters, and that cash is king. It is a way of taking an ethical stance, and saying enough is enough. How to calculate what constitutes enough, of course – be it income, savings, love, leisure, charity, you name it – is even harder than measuring happiness.

Read more: Scotland's history has lain in the British shadow for too long