In order to guarantee the conceptual soundness of the would-be undertaken longitudinal study of the selected cohort of UCLA students (concerned with identifying/measuring the ‘factors of happiness’, throughout their lives), its theoretical premise must be consistent with the currently predominant socio-cultural discourse. Moreover, it must also be observant of what account for the driving forces behind the process of this discourse attaining ever more of the previously unheard-of qualitative characteristics. The validity of this suggestion can be illustrated, in regards to Vaillant’s observation that: “Societies are forever changing” (10). In its turn, this presupposes the continual alteration of the manner, in which people perceive the significance of such vaguely defined terms as ‘happiness’. Probably the primary discursive aspect of the discourse of post-modernity, which now encompasses the realities of a modern living in America, has to do with the fact that, unlike what it used to be the case even a few decades ago, the deployment of the positivist approach towards conceptualizing the notion of ‘society’ can no longer be considered thoroughly appropriate. The reason for this is apparent – in light of recent discoveries in the fields of sociology, biology and cybernetics, the overall quality of a particular human society is not merely summative of the qualities of its integral parts – it is something that creates the discursive realm of its own. As Uphoff and Krishna pointed out: “It (the notion of society) refers not to a single, homo­geneous thing which can be larger or smaller, stronger or weaker, but rather to networks of relationships between state institutions and the citizens within a society who are subject to state authority as well as among those citizens” (358). What it means is that, contrary to what the commissioners of the original Grant Study used to assume, the measure of the society members’ happiness is not something innately ego-centric/individualistic, which implies that it cannot be discussed in terms of a ‘thing in itself’. One of the major findings of the mentioned Study indirectly confirms the full soundness of such our point of view, in this respect: “Warm, intimate relationships are the most important contributing factor in the establishment of a good life” (Vaillant 37). After all, this particular finding indicates that it is specifically one’s ability to choose in favor of the socially integrated lifestyle, which is the most important predictor of his or her happiness. In its turn, this exposes the erroneousness of the Study’s initial premise (if assessed through the lenses of the discourse of post-modernity) that one’s happiness should be discussed in terms of ‘achievement’, rather than in terms of a ‘continuous process’. It is even more inappropriate to presume (as the original Study does) that a person’s likelihood to achieve a financial prosperity is being reflective of what happened to be the particulars of his or her racial background/social status. Due to being utterly euro-centric, this premise is profoundly inconsistent with the spirit of cultural relativism, emanated by the process of American society becoming increasingly multicultural, on one hand, and progressively less fond of the neo-Liberal