Congratulations: you're top of the wisdom leader board
So I had a go at SuperMe, the Positive Psychology game designed by Pre-Loaded and Channel 4, which tries to teach British teens the principles of Positive Psychology via games, videos, tutorials etc. It basically tries to use the psychology of gaming to teach philosophy / pop psychology: so users can earn achievements, can see their progress from 'apprentice' to 'ninja', can share their scores on leader-boards and so on. Sound cool huh?
Yeah, kind of....except can you really measure 'wisdom' with brief and blindingly obvious questionnaires that ask you questions like 'Your friend is unhappy. Do you (a) try and make them feel better or (b) hit them in the face?' Er...B?
As I've said before, we're obsessed with measuring things, which definitely has its place in the quest for the Good Life, but I'm really sceptical about simplistic and primitive attempts to measure more spiritual qualities like Wisdom. Yet that's exactly what sites like SuperMe, Gravity Eight, LiveHappy and other Positive Psychology automated systems try to do: including the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness programme designed by Penn University for the US Army, which every US soldier has to use.
They try to give you a numerical score for your wisdom and spirituality, based on a few questionnaires, and then, in some instances, put you in a ranking table. It's that sort of scoring system that has allowed Positive Psychologists to declare that Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard is the 'happiest person in the world'.
It appears only about 2,000 kids in the entire country are playing SuperMe - hey, seems like the kids are smarter than we thought! But one kid, somewhere out there, is walking around thinking 'I'm the wisest teen in Britain. I must be. The website told me so.' Positive Psychology often tells us smugly to give up the Rat Race, to stop 'keeping up with the Joneses', to stop chasing after empty external achievements. But is it not in danger of creating its own, even more moronic Rat Race?