Is Too Much Happiness a Bad Thing?
It often feels as if we are living in an age of almost perfect contentment. But are we missing out on something if we refuse to feel sad?
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A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost eighty-five percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least happy. The psychological world is now abuzz with a new field: “positive psychology,” devoted to finding ways to enhance happiness through pleasure, engagement, and meaning.
Psychologists practicing this brand of therapy are leaders in a novel sort of science, the science of happiness. Mainstream publishers are now learning from the self-help industry and printing thousands of books on how to be happy and on why we are happy. The self-help press itself still fills the shelves with step-by-step plans for satisfaction. Everywhere I see advertisements offering even more happiness: happiness on land or by sea, in a car or under the stars.
And now, probably for the first time in history, scientists are developing mood-altering drugs that might well, one day in the near future, remove sadness from the system once and for all. Truly, we might be on the verge of an age of almost perfect contentment, a brave new world of joy without pain.
But surely all of this happiness can’t be for real. Are we to believe that four out of every five Americans can be content amidst the terrible suffering of our world, the poverty and the violence, the war and failure? Are some people lying, or are they simply afraid to be honest in a culture in which the status quo is nothing short of manic bliss? Aren’t we suspicious of this statistic? Aren’t we further troubled by our culture’s overemphasis on happiness? Don’t we fear that this rabid focus on exuberance leads to a one-sided existence?
I, for one. am afraid that our American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. This was precisely the fear of John Keats, one of the greatest English poets. In April of 1819, Keats wrote the following question: “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?” Implied in this inquiry is this: a person can only become a fully formed human being through suffering and sorrow. In a country in which almost everyone claims to be happy, this notion surely seems quite strange, even deranged. Indeed, in light of our recent craze for happiness, we are likely to challenge Keats’ meditation outright, to condemn it as a dangerous, and dated, an affront to the modern American dream.
Let me be clear. I’m not questioning the quest for happiness in general. On the contrary, I’m thinking only of what I see as a specific American type of happiness: happiness as quick gratification, material comfort, a life mostly free of rough spots. Likewise, I’d like also to be definite about this: I’m not romanticizing clinical depression. I realize that there are many out there enduring an extremely pained existence. Obviously, these people should do whatever they can to escape their awful woe and attain peace.
I do wonder, however, if normal sadness — typical melancholy — is increasingly being viewed as a sickness, a state to be treated with medication. Of course, there is a fine line between normal melancholy and clinical depression. What separates the two, as far as I can tell, is degree of activity. Both are forms of sadness that lead to ongoing unease with how things are — persistent feelings that the world as it is, is not quite right. Depression (as I see it, at least) causes apathy in the face of this unease, lethargy approaching total paralysis, an inability to feel much of anything, one way or another. In contrast, melancholia (in my eyes) generates a deep feeling in regard to this same anxiety, a turbulence of heart that results in an active questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of being and seeing.
Our culture seems to confuse these two and thus treat melancholia as an aberrant state. This could be terribly dangerous. To treat normal sadness as a disease is to degrade an essential part of the human experience. Think of it: when we are sad, we are often yearning for a deeper relationship to the world, a more intimate connection to those around us. This desire frequently encourages us to explore parts of ourselves we never would have noticed if we had remained content. These new realms of our psyches often open into unrealized powers. These potentialities call us to grow, to imagine fresh and vital projects. In this light, melancholy leads to self-revelation and creativity.
In fleeing sadness, we rush toward blandness. The quest for untroubled enjoyment is a drive toward death. The American dream might become a nightmare.
Eric G. Wilson is Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University and the author of Against Hapiness: In Praise of Melancholy.
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13 Comments
hdgreene:I blame George Bush for 85 percent of the people falling into the Happiness Trap (that rises to 90 percent if you remove journalists from the survey). What society needs is to make journalist more happy (that will serve them right) and the rest of us sadder.
Fortunately, the solution is at hand. When the Democrats take over they will raise taxes and hyper regulate the economy. That will raise unemployment — excuse me, allow us all to spend more time with our families and take extended vacations.
Problem is, while we’ll have all the time in the world to take a vacation anywhere in the world, we won’t have money. So we’ll be stuck at home eating pork and beans. The journalist will get to report on it (they’ll be happy) and we’ll get to read about it or watch the parade of the pathetic across our TV screens (we’ll be sad). All will be told to buck-up. Problem solved.
Ah! The struggle!
May 19, 2008 - 5:57 am huxley:In fleeing sadness, we rush toward blandness. The quest for untroubled enjoyment is a drive toward death. The American dream might become a nightmare.
Leave it to an English professor to come up with such vague twaddle about what might become “dangerous” or a “nightmare” because too many Americans in Pritchard’s estimation report being very happy or happy.
May 19, 2008 - 6:21 am tanstaafl:As organisms, we’re going to experience “sadness” no matter what shallow and idiotic devices the culture continues to evolve to attempt to render us “happy”(usually, the real motive for getting us to engage in said happy making activities is profit) Any natural sadness will be seen as an aberration in the Brave New World, so we’ll fake happiness so as to hide our true selves, behavior already rather common.
Down time is a no no, and when we feel like going down, we’ll medicate to stay “up”. See how the cycle worked out for Heath Ledger, and so many people today.
Many of the devices or activities in which we participate that are supposed to engender happiness are immensely sad and shallow. In a 24/7 happiness cycle, it’s very hard (if not impossible) to sit back and take stock of your own life. Constant electronic stimulation means that the deep reflective potential of the human brain is getting short shrift and remaining undeveloped. A sad situation.
May 19, 2008 - 7:30 am Sue:I need a definitive definition of: happy! Your happy may be different from mine. But, I must agree that since the majority of Americans, according to polls are on the Left, it does appear that altering your reality has its benefits!!
May 19, 2008 - 7:58 am Believer:The author’s point is an excellent one.
Man has pretty much mastered self-medication. Alcoholics, drug addicts - even shopaholics - abound. We look to numb our feelings rather than explore the source of our discontent. And so we never heal. And far too often, we leave a trail of other lives destroyed as we go about avoiding the truth.
Instead of turning our thoughts inward and upward, searching for what might make sense of “what should not be” in our lives, we look for answers in the world or from our fellow fallen man. And it appears the scientist is once again stepping in to offer his solution.
There’s almost a shallowness to the sound of “happiness” - is the heart involved? Or is there a deep and abiding “joy” that we might have instead - no matter our circumstances.
May 19, 2008 - 7:59 am WhoStruckJohn:Huxley is right. This is fatuous at best. While adversity tests one’s character, that hardly makes rough patches something that we should look forward to.
If you’re sooooo worried about not having any rough patches, I’ll lend you mine! No charge!!
May 19, 2008 - 5:15 pm valle:you need to know sadness to know true happiness.
May 19, 2008 - 8:59 pm Gerald Arcuri:Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted as having said that injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. With all the suffering that there is in the world, I find it difficult to comprehend how anyone can truly enjoy unruffled “happiness”. Those fortunate enough to have been born into kind circumstances, whose health has been relatively unmarred, and who have never experienced major accidental trauma or organized political repression must nevertheless bear some psychological burden on behalf of those who have not been so fortunate. To expect to be able to live in unalloyed bliss while those who are only separated from us by accidents of space and time suffer unimaginably seems to me the height of denial and narcissism. The world just isn’t constructed in that way.
May 20, 2008 - 4:00 pm Dave:The author asks “Are we to believe that four out of every five Americans can be content amidst the terrible suffering of our world, the poverty and the violence, the war and failure?”
In short, the answer is yes.
Let me give you an example: this morning’s news headlined a situation in Florida where several men died when refrigerant leaked from a faulty container. Friends and family will grieve, others peripherally involved will be momentarily made aware of their own mortality. For the rest of the viewing audience the response was undoubtedly something on the order of “Damn that’s a shame… honey, have you seen my socks?”
That is as it should be. A rational human being knows that not every tragedy or injustice can be internalized, leastwise, not and retain one’s sanity. Life goes on, and just because someone died in Florida, or China, or some godforsaken hole in Africa, does not mean that we must feel guilty because we laugh and joke, or hold our grandchildren in our arms, and feel reasonably content with our lot.
May 20, 2008 - 6:09 pm Believer:Just as the body signals its distress, so the soul tells when it needs tending.
Rather than reject the pain, embrace it. Consider it a blessing.
Do the unthinkable. Trust the One who’s created you. The ultimate healer.
You’ll know His work. The heart changes. You become less and He becomes more. You count yourself less and your fellow man more.
And looking back, you’ll give thanks. That pain - a faint memory now - was a treasured gift from God.
May 20, 2008 - 10:12 pm tanstaafl:You might want to believe that the human soul was made for joy, not guilt, not suffering.
You might want to take a hint from a baby or a small child who knows nothing of the tragedies and travesties of the world.
It seems to me that those tragedies are more common today, either because they, in fact, are with the ongoing crowding of the planet (and can thus be expected to become moreso) or because the 24/7 news cycle constantly pounds them into our consciousness.
Focusing on negativity is not healthy state for a being designed to be joyful (if you accept that premise)
May 21, 2008 - 6:47 am Believer:I believe our Creator is continually reaching out to us. Trying to get our attention. He whispers to us at first, then more audibly if we ignore Him. Sometimes He must shout. Because He loves us.
Often it takes a real setback - a tragedy sometimes - for man to stop his advance toward destruction. For him to realize he is not God, and that his will should yield to His. But, sadly, some still refuse to hear.
If man would pause often enough in his life to hear His calling - to be taught by Him - he might avoid much sadness.
A life of faith is not one without trouble - for such is the product of imperfect man in an imperfect world - but it is one of joy, despite one’s circumstances. The healing has begun.
May 21, 2008 - 12:54 pm Believer:Eric Wilson quotes Keats:
“Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?”
This reflects an understanding of the words of One even greater:
“Blessed are you who weep and mourn…”
If you are hurting - and it makes no sense to you - put every effort into understanding this mystery. It is your very salvation.
May 21, 2008 - 2:25 pm