Happiness (2)

The problem with happiness

(Cabanas/Illouz)

• Happiness (pre-Enlightenment): connected to fate/circumstances/religion

• Now: a state engineered through willpower, a goal achieved through inner strength (Christopher Gardner, The Pursuit of Happiness)

• Happiness as an exemplary narrative of how to organize and mobilize the self

• both the ideal and the pursuit of happines is omnipresent in our lives

Happiness science/the happiness industry

• a flawed sience, relies on unfounded assumptions, theoretical inconsistency, methological shortfalls, unproven results, and ethnocentric and exaggerated generalizations

• legitimizes the assumption that wealth and poverty, success and failrure, health and illness are of our own making

• legitimizes the idea that there are no structural problems, only psychological shortages

• no such thing as society, only individuals: triumph of the personal society over the collectivist one

• not only obliges us to be happy, blames us for not leading more successful and fulfilling lives

• produces ‘happiness seekers’: obsessed with their personal transformation and betterment

Conclusion

- happiness industry: "fix your life" / optimize the self-messages in Social Media, self-help books, etc.; advertising selling ideas of happiness

- providing the illusion of control (achieve happiness!) when so many aspects of happiness can't be shaped by individual

- However: how powerful is the happiness industry? don't consumers shape their own interpretations of what happiness means?

- two extreme mindsets about how to achieve happiness: consumerism vs. mindfulness

- then again, these may combine in complex ways (even mindful paths to happiness involve consumption)

Happiness in Cultural Studies

• Happiness ideas constructed in advertising, popular culture, social media

• "individual happiness": a modern idea produced by discourses of self-improvement and self-optimization

• Pharrell Williams: "Happy": happiness as competition