I was unable to make it past the first thirty-some pages of this ridiculous little book. Eric G. Wilson seems to confuse people’s behavior in public and in company with their innermost thoughts and private lives. Because people overwhelmingly try to be cheerful, impersonal good sports who make small talk around the water cooler at work, Wilson has written a book about how Americans have doped, numbed and otherwise blinded themselves to all the horrors of life, as well as the benefits of good old contemplative down time. Apparently, when someone says, “I’m fine,” Wilson takes them at their word, and assumes that’s all there is to them, and Against Happiness is written at about that level of understanding. I do think that American culture is overly averse to and avoidant of pain, so I was expecting to be the choir for this book, but the author’s observations of human behavior are entirely surface-level and generalized, and his arguments are condescending and shallow. Wilson writes as if he were a 14-year-old Goth. He also seems to have no sense of humor or self-awareness. To wit:
Look at what sort of people this culture is creating. I have seen them. You have too. They haunt the gaudy and garish spaces of the world and ignore the dark margins. They tilt their heads to the side, feign bemusement, and nod knowingly. They clinch their eyes in looks of concern. They blink a lot, bewildered.
In my experience, this is how people look when they’re hoping you’ll go away and leave them alone, so it doesn’t much surprise me that Wilson observes it in everyone.
Wilson cites a statistic saying that 85% of Americans say they are generally happy, which he takes as a further condemnation of our doped, forced cheeriness – particularly amusing to me, as usually you hear social criticism about how Americans are so entitled and dissatisfied that they are never happy with their lives, that no matter how much they get what they want, they are always wanting more.
“Aren’t some of us so smitten with the American dream that we have become brainwashed into believing that our sole purpose on this earth is to be happy?” asks Wilson in his introduction.
Well, no. Not really. I mean, I might say that we overvalue personal happiness. I would certainly say that we demand too much to make us happy (although, that 85% statistic makes me think twice). But I don’t think even my shallowest acquaintances would go so far as to say the purpose of life is to be happy. And anyway, what is meant by “happy” in that context? People say they just want to die happy, but I think they mean by that to die with a sense that they’ve lived fully, loved well, had some good times, and did the best work they could. Or whatever – they could mean anything, but Wilson doesn’t care what people mean, apparently. He’s constructed quite the chipper straw man for himself to lecture. Later, he himself describes truly experiencing sorrow as in itself “something akin to joy,” but apparently, he doesn’t credit other people who say they are “happy” with meaning anything beyond vapid, superficial cheer. What Wilson fails to acknowledge is that being content and happy with your life does not mean you don’t experience pain, suffering, heartbreak or existential struggle – those things are all a part of a good life, though it’s unlikely you’d bring them up much at a cocktail party.
He also contradicts himself constantly (at times within a single paragraph!), and often employs the royal ‘we.’ Frankly, I’m amazed I made it as far as I did.
Also, a request: could some psychiatrist please take aside all the thinkers and writers, pundits and journalists in America and explain to them that depression (even mild depression) is not the same as sadness, and that SSRIs are not uppers? It’s true we are an over-medicated country, which is undoubtedly harmful to our health (and certainly our pocketbooks), but antidepressants are not happy pills. They don’t make people high, or give them a boost, or make it to where they don’t feel pain or sorrow. The only thing more widespread than the prescribing of SSRIs is apparently a complete and total misunderstanding among the public of what they actually do, what they’re for and how they work. In fact, Wilson is careful to differentiate between (a) depression as an interchangeable term for melancholia and (b) clinical depression in his introduction, but he goes on to assume that the vast majority of those medicated for depression are simply blue. Well, possibly, but that’s a giant, sweeping assumption, and Wilson should provide some basis for it. Rather, he assumes everyone agrees that this is true and proceeds to mention ‘happy pills’ about five times a page. But antidepressants are not painkillers any more than they are uppers – they don’t work that way. You could argue that we drink too much, smoke too much weed, but Wilson doesn’t mention this (at least not in the first 40 pages). He specifically says that it’s not his intent to romanticize clinical depression, but then he rues the possible loss of “half-cracked geniuses.”
Now, look, obviously a lot of great artists, writers and the like have suffered (and usually, eventually died) from terrible psychological conditions, and it’s no new thing to muse over whether, had so-and-so been medicated, we would have been deprived of such-and-such great work of art or literature. But if it were a choice between a medicated Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway, the decision would be Virginia Woolf’s, not ours. She might have made a valid choice either way, but simply because she was capable of great writing does not mean that she owed it to us at the expense of her life. If she’d had the option to staunch her depression at the risk of blocking her creativity, that would be her choice and we couldn’t make it for her. And Wilson would be a real asshole to criticize Woolf if she chose her own health (and yes, happiness) over her productivity…unless he were similarly possessed of crippling depression and fervid genius and so knew whereof he spoke, but judging by this book, I doubt it’s a choice he’ll ever face.
