The Despotism of Happiness
The arrogance
“In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords, it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures.”
Democracy in America (1835), Volume I, Chapter XIII, Alexis de Tocqueville.
Happiness is more than an abstract concept. It is something that we can name without delineating, and that we can feel or appreciate without necessarily being actively conscious when experiencing it. It is a sensible human experience of rare quietude and contentedness. It is a fragile and delicate area that Aristotle said was entirely up to us1. Happiness is, therefore, a state to be attained, perhaps to be also maintained. Unfortunately, it is now in the grip of the charlatans of laws, decrees, and government programs. Happiness is measured and tailored. Joy is displayed everywhere. Our conception of it changed and our appreciation of it, too. Life is no longer seen as a trajectory where the good cannot exist without the bad and the evil, but as a monotonous, boring, and unbearable ice cream truck jingle.
The dismaying part in all of this is not that people have to get assaulted by these almost pornographic joyful ads; the disturbing part is that our society has reached a point of great fetishization of happiness. We live in the cacophony of an entertained exhibitionism of smiles. Everything is supposed to be about “well-being”, “happiness”, and “joy”, and when it is not, we must act as if it will be. This is where one must denounce arrogance and hubris. Our human nature is not known to have modesty for virtue; but in this specific case, we have broken a new record. Indeed, what to answer to an intelligentsia that invented a branch such as happinomics2? What to say to organizations that think they have found the recipe for happiness? What to say? What to do, if not to look with amazement and perplexity at the reductionist and oversimplified reports on global well-being3?
Societies have entered the century of regulated happiness with pain in their hearts. Only those who are honest with themselves can truly reflect on this generalized kafkaesque alienation.
Everything must be done in joy; everything must “emit positive waves”, and no one rejected it; no one is outraged by this grotesque fetishization. The general submission to a materialized and soulless conception of happiness means that the causes of contemporary despairs are simply not dealt with. They are ignored and buried. “You are poor? Financial issues? Too stressed? Don’t worry, you need a dose of our new positive vibes package, and come join us at our next political meeting on why we are so proud of you!”
The questioning of the human condition has always been an uncomfortable task, but the current discomfort resides in the absurd inability to express any type of unease. Man is, therefore, guilty of not being happy; he is allowed to experience misfortune; but feeling misfortune is denied to him. “Smile first, the rest can wait”, is the slogan of our era, where the inversion of logos, the intrusion into intimate spaces, and the artificially stimulated joys are the new despots of the Great March to la-la land.
The technicity of sadness
“We never taste perfect joy: our happiest successes are always mingled with sadness.”
Le Cid (1636), Pierre Corneille
The slackening of the soul is no longer, as it was once thought, due to evil spirits being exorcised. It is mainly due today to spiritual autophagy, where everything is reduced, recycled, classified, even sadness. By that I mean the most elementary aspect of sadness. A kind of primary sadness that does not necessarily lead to creativity, unlike the melancholy of philosophers, but just feeling it brings us closer to our humanity.
Man, in his grandeur and splendid intelligence, many times finds the need to feel overwhelmed by events, and craves the experience of being small in the face of fate. Whether it is Ulysses or Gilgamesh, experiencing sadness and anger, knowing that we feel them and being open to it, is what makes us aware of our imperfection, vulnerability, and finitude.
What I am describing here is very different from what existentialist philosophers and writers have said. I am breaking away from them. I live fully my epoch, and what I am explaining is not the fear of modern man to exist in a world. But the fear for the man of knowing that he exists because he is more and more disconnected from what he is feeling. This disconnection is the result of the technical transformation of what constitutes man, and sadness is one of them.
The frantic race for happy progress has given birth to technically modifiable sadness. Nothing sadder than to bear witness to this regression of the spirit, and nothing more pathetic than to have to remind our contemporaries that sadness or what they call “bad feelings”, are important to live fully and totally. If I had to imagine hell, it would definitely be a world where weeping and screaming in sadness would be impossible for us to envision and imagine.
One should remind himself that there is something noble about not faking gaiety. The new nightmare is to be unable to have any; the new anguish is to not be able to feel it. The new man is an emotionally euthanized man.
Homo ēmōtus
“The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.”
Paris Spleen (1869), Charles Baudelaire.
The ancients wondered what differentiated man from animals; they indeed thought that we had something particular, unique, and often referred to our extreme and exuberant sensitivity. Indeed, we can express it not only by movements and gestures but also by language and speech, unlike animals. However, I wonder if we are now reduced to new creatures that can no longer express distress and unhappiness, not through speech, not through gestures. A certain type of domesticated beings. Domesticated in the sense that our being is in total denial, a self-denial; the denial of sensitivity and feelings. If Hannah Arendt expressed her fears regarding the degradation of the homo faber4, well, I am particularly frightened by what the future holds for the homo ēmōtus.
What to expect from a humanity that refuses sadness? It is a legitimate question, and the strong backlash against those who denounce the well-established happy imaginary narrative reflects the repudiation of emotions. There are now tolerated emotions, and inappropriate ones.
Nothing is more annoying than a botticellian angel who teaches you that unhappiness is as important as happiness, as it is where man discovers and examines himself. This is the difference with the devil who makes himself invisible and takes the form of joy; why renounce to a smiling and generous demon?
The denial of feelings will have consequences, and one of them is the massive production of domesticated beings, who will be out of touch with reality, and out of touch with themselves.
Notes
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle.
Herring, Angela, and Hillary Chabot. “'Happinomics': the science of money and emotion.” News @ Northeastern, 14 May 2012, https://news.northeastern.edu/2012/05/14/happinomics/. Accessed 21 December 2021.
“Well-Being Measurement – Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/health-happiness/research-new/positive-health/measurement-of-well-being/. Accessed 21 December 2021.
The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt, 1958.
Very interesting article. Food for thoughts.
You write quite brilliantly.