Condemned to Joy

[Marcus Bryant]

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_1_happiness.html

[Marcus Bryant]

Duration—holding on as long as possible—becomes an authoritative value, even if it must be achieved at the cost of terrible restrictions, depriving oneself of some of the best the world has to offer. From this point of view, the hunting down of smokers, now expelled from almost all public places, looks something like a collective exorcism, as if a whole society wished to absolve itself of having once found pleasure in cigarettes. In France, photos of Jean-Paul Sartre and the young Jacques Chirac holding cigarettes have been retouched to eliminate the offending objects—just as the Soviet empire used to do with banished leaders.

[Marcus Bryant]

The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.

[LnGrrrR]

I think the wholesale editing of pictures that show "offensive" items like cigarettes is frankly ridiculous.

Regarding the Cult of Happiness, it's probably because, moreso than any other time, people's basic "needs" are met. Therefore, there's not a widespread reason to be "unhappy", so being unhappy separates oneself from the norm.

[boutons_deux]

Repugs in several states are going to reduce tax on cigarettes, encouraging the profits of the cigarette companies and the sick-care system, has nothing to do with happiness of addicted smokers.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/statisticssnapshot

Smoking-related diseases, all self-inflicted diseases, are worth $100Bs per year. Self-inflicted disease is a major component of the UCA economy. That makes me really happy.

[boutons_deux]

The articles says that capitalism requires non-stop consumption of stupid shit to keep going.

The standard marketing ploy is to make you feel bad about yourself, to realize that you're unhappy, substandard, not good enough, etc. If you just buy our shit, you'll be happy, sexy, wealthy, loved, successful. And of course, it's all corporate bullshit, total lies.

The sinister side is that if you buy their shit and it doesn't work for you, it's ALL YOUR FAULT. So you gotta keep buying their shit until YOU succeed.

I never have felt any pressure from any of my friends to be happy. ALL of that pressure comes from corporate marketing and the completely fake, denatured ethos they create to get consumers to empty their pockets.