The Healthy Resistance to Happiness

7/30/2019 The Healthy Resistance to Happiness

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The Healthy Resistance to Happiness

Clinton E. BettsAssistant Professor

School of Nursing,

Faculty of Health Sciences,McMaster University

I simply could not resist the urge to deal with some of the controversial issues ofhappiness and health which Dr. Delamothes brief Editorial (Happiness British Medical

Journal, 2005, 331, 1489-1490) does not even begin to address. Although I do not

consider the following to be anywhere near comprehensive or completely argued, I have

tried to present the more critically uncomfortable aspects of contemporary happiness andhealth which I believe are rarely addressed by scientists, researcher, teachers and

practitioners engaged in the happiness and health of others.

Truth, moral certitude, knowledge, the good and so on and now happiness anothermodern concept takes a postmodern turn of complexity? Imagine this, Delamothe (2005)

seems to be suggesting that happiness is not just about getting more. That is more wealth,more status, more things, more comfort, or in the language of economics theory (or

politics which seems to have become the same thing), more growth, more development,

more improvement (though perhaps I could just sum it all up as more Modern Progress).Of course philosophers, artists and poets have been seriously concerned about happiness

for most of civilization, or at any rate since the Greeks. However, whereas Aristotle

thought that happiness was something one reasoned toward (and certainly by no means asimple given, perhaps we might even say that he though it took discipline and hard

work), our modern notion of it is something which we can just possess by a rather routine

feat of social engineering. Indeed, in the same manner as we suppose that we canengineer and possess health:

Under [the] hypothesis of engineerability, health as possession has gained acceptancesince the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In the course of the nineteenth century, it

became commonsense to speak of my body and my health. modern-day health is

the fruit of possessive individualism. (Illich, 1990, p. 3)

Perhaps we can simply add in my happiness? How else do we explain Layards (2005)

vision of social engineering in Happiness: Lessons from a new science, in which heclaims, based on the enlightenment thought of Bentham (which if I am not mistaken was

at the very epicentre of the modern world), that the explicit purpose of public policy andhence socio- political organization ought to be the maximization of collective happinessusing good science. To be sure, what could be more conducive to health than happiness

(and vice versa). Moreover, what could be more effective for achieving it than science?

Surely it is at least problematic to contend that happiness is simply a matter of public

policy? Regarding our engineering ethos, one might suggest that it appears, in aprogressive sense, that we have historically made our way through the various forms of

human psycho-social species, from Homo religiosus and Homo faber through Homo


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economicus, Homo sociologicus, Homo civicus and Homo politicus to what we have now Homo engineericus, no doubt a close relation to what Grassie (1996), referring to the

work of Donna Haraway, calls Homo cyborg. (p. 290). That animal, who researches,

designs and implements the want of its will. As Mitcham (1998) put it engineers are

the unacknowledged philosophers of the postmodern world. ( 3). That is to say that we

can simply get what we want by designing the conditions for it. We live in the present,imagining that we can create our own rules of the game, borrowing from the past as we

see fit. (Woolfolk, 2003). After all arent we moderns, particularly those of us who dohealth and happiness for others, the very action of Progress in motion? Formerly, all the

world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink 'We have invented happiness,' say

the last men, and they blink." (Nietzsche, 1982, p. 130). To be sure, the last man wasNietzsches condescending reference to the modern human being who believes that his

(or her) own will to knowledge, reason and progress was all that was necessary for the

engineering of what is wanted. As Latour (1999) puts it What is at stake is mastery. Inmaking the world the product of individuals thoughts and fancies and in talking about

construction as though it involved the free play of fancy, modernists believe they make

the world in their image (p. 282). Yet when it comes to happiness, what is it thatstands between us and (the having of) it. As Kierkegaard (1965) once observed; the truthis a snare: you cannot have it without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a

way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you. (p. 133). Perhaps the

same can be said for happiness that is you cant have it, it has to have you somehow.Indeed, we could sum up Modern Progress in so many ways, though perhaps the simplest

and most notable is that what (we think) we are progressing toward is happiness, what

else could be the end goal of our efforts? Moreover, this edict seems to be ineluctablyassociated, for at least a few centuries now, with an increase in comfort, ease, and

effortlessness and we invariably see this as a good. Yet despite a few centuries of

Progress our happiness seems to be declining, perhaps even as a result, and maybe even

our health as well. Indeed, Choi, Hunter, Tsou and Sainbury (2005) have recently coinedthe phrase diseases of comfort the human race will be pushed toward a primary cause

of death from diseases of comfort (such as those chronic diseases caused by obesity and

physical inactivity), due to technological advance. (p. 1030), while Schwartz (2004) hascalled attention to the the paradox of choice the goal of maximizing is a source of

great dissatisfaction, that can make people miserable (p. 78). Furedi (2004a) refers to

a therapy culture that [cultivates] a powerful sense of vulnerability underminessubjectivity and the sense of human agency. (p. 414). As well as a Culture of Fear

(Furedi, 1997) that sees everything as risk(y). For some strange reason I was reminded of

Stockers (1976) Moral Schizophrenia while reading Delamothes commentary.

According to Stockers famous thesis:

One mark of the good like is a harmony between ones motives and ones reasons, valuesand justifications. Not to be moved by what one values what one believes good, nice,

right, beautiful, and so on bespeaks a malady of the spirit. Such a malady, or such

maladies, can properly be called moral schizophrenia (p. 453-54).

If we take something of the reverse to be valid, that is, when ones (or even an entire

cultures) motives are not actually valued (or even values at all), yet still aggressively


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pursued (wealth, status, things, comfort, growth, development, improvement and soforth), perhaps we end up with a cultural schizophrenia of the kind Tarnas (1991)

characterizes in The Passion of The Western Mind. At any rate we are certainly witness

to a fundamental change in all things cultural. As Phillip Rieff (1987) put it in The

Triumph of the Therapeutic:

That a sense of well-being has become an end, rather than a by- product of striving aftersome superior communal end, announces a fundamental change of focus in the entire cast

of our culture toward a human condition about which there will be nothing further to

say in terms of the old style of despair and hope. (p. 261)

The key word in Rieffs claim seems to me to be striving. Thus it is understandable that

the banal striving for nothing more than more, more, more does not seem to make ushappy, but who among us can avoid the compulsion of consumptive progress? So what

do we do when we are not happy, for what ever reason, despite our best social

engineering efforts? Well clearly we need therapy The vocabulary of therapeutics no

longer refers to unusual problems or exotic states of mind. Terms like stress, anxiety,addiction compulsion, trauma, negative emotions, healing, syndrome, mid-life crisis, or

counselling refer to the normal episodes of daily life. They have become part of our

cultural imagination. (Furedi, 2004b, p. 1). When that therapy fails, or one fails to obtainit, or worst of all once the therapy is complete For decades we have all been striving for

the good life. Now that most of us have it, a large proportion of the population seems to

be dependent on medications and other substances to avoid falling into a more or lesspermanent state of anxiety, depression and despair. (Hamilton, 2003, p. 12). It would

seem then that happiness and health are somewhat related concepts. In fact, arent the two

grand meta-values of the postmodern era, which we seem to have inherited from themodern, health and happiness? Health certainly is: The valorization of health has been a

feature of secularized societies for a long time, but has become especially evident in

recent years. In the context of Western democracies, health today appears to be endorsed

as a kind of meta-value, and speaking in the name of health is one of the most powerfulrhetorical devices. (Greco, 2004, p. 1) As for happiness, Greaves (2000) once suggested,

referring to Richard Bentalls not so funny parody of psychiatry, a proposal to classify

happiness as a psychiatric disorder, He may have stumbled unwittingly, however, on amodern truth that the obsessive pursuit of happiness is a sort of madness to which our

society is particularly prone. (p. 1576). What is missing then, what is it that stands

between us and happiness? What are we, or ought we to be, striving for that happiness isa part of the equation? Put differently what is necessary, or even essential, for the striving

to involve happiness at some point along the way. Perhaps the answer was provided to us

by Nietzsche over a century ago resistance. By this I do not mean and certainly neither

did Nietzsche, that in order to be happy one needs to remove any resistance to it, butrather the converse, we can only be happy when we are up against some worthy

resistance:

Man does not seek pleasure and does not avoid displeasure Pleasure and displeasure

are mere consequences, mere epiphenomena what man wants, what every smallest partof a living organism wants, is an increase of power driven by that will it seeks


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resistance, it needs something that opposes it Displeasure, as an obstacle to its will topower, is therefore a normal fact man does not avoid it, he is rather in continual need

of it (Nietzsche, 1968, p. 373)

I certainly realize that Nietzsche is a controversial figure, especially among us non-

philosophers (scientists, researchers and practitioners of health and happiness). Inparticular The Will To Power, that Nietzsche spoke so much of, sounds today very muchlike something that we should have nothing to do with and perhaps for some very good

reasons. I do not suggest though that Nietzsche provides many answers for us (perhaps

none in fact). However, as an invaluable iconoclast, ironically against the iconoclasm ofmodernism, what he and those of his ilk did was to ask serious questions, think serious

thoughts and develop a serious critique of the human aspiration to utopia (which if we

remember More, means No-Place, or No-Where). Such thoughts, in my view, are

essential for us to once again take up. By us, I refer to those of us who claim to beresearchers, teachers, practitioners or what not of health and happiness. As Grant (2001),

who was certainly no Nietzschean, put it Nietzsche thinks what it is to be a modern

man more comprehensively, more deeply, than any other thinker Therefore the firsttask of somebody trying to think is not to inoculate, but to think his thoughts. (p. 64),

or at any rate a similar line of reflection. I mean to suggest a serious critique of modernistassumptions, particularly in the health and happiness industry where we simply forge

ahead with the same old engineering agenda. And certainly something other than aprogress to pathological unhappiness, or what Allen (2002) referred to as a Banal Utopia

or Tragic Recompense modern technoscience is certainly taking us somewhere, but it is

more likely over a cliff than into Benthams promise land. (p. 36). As Latour (2003)cogently notes, the life of the moderns should become miserable, brutal and short

[yet] the moderns are simply falling back on business as usual. (p. 40). Seems

about right eh? Although we often refer to the current age as the postmodern, it isdoubtful that we are even in a postmodern phase of history. I find Ulrich Beck (Beck &

Lau, 2005) compelling in his explication of what he refers to as second, or reflective,

modernity, however there are certainly other possibilities, for example; hypermodernity

(Virilio, 1986), another modernity (Lash, 1999), high modernity (Giddens, 1993), latecapitalism (Jameson, 1984), or Latours (1993) audacious contention that we have never

been modern. In any case, we are probably still in the modern world and although this

may not be the enlightenment, we are still firmly commanded by modern assumptions(epistemology, materialism, truth, moral and otherwise, and to be sure Progress). And of

course, perhaps the flashing beacon of the modern world (en-lighten-ment) was above all

freedom. Yet as Latour (1999) recently pointed out, it might well be a destructivefreedom at that. No one ever had so much freedom. Freedom is precisely what permits

and justifies the iconoclasts strokes. But freedom from what? Freedom from caution and

care (p. 276). Add to this Hellers (2005) contention that freedom is indeed a paradox,perhaps the same kind that Schwatz alludes to regarding choice. Yet we are all likely a

little guilty of a lack of attentiveness to caution and care and it now seems as though

we are riding our modern successes into a new postmodern pathology, what Kaufman

(1989) called galloping consumption on virtually every front. The question is why, whichfew are asking, certainly those of the happiness and health industry are not. For most of

them it is (modern) business as usual, that is solve a problem with a problem and this


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despite Agnes Hellers (2005) admonition that, For we are far from dealing here withproblems that can be solved: we are dealing with social actors caught in the double bind,

and modern life any more than life in general is not a problem to be solved. (p. 74).

And yet, I suspect that we are becoming addicted to the solving of problems as a way of

Progress, as a means to happiness and indeed a way of life. Since medicalization

metaphors are all the rage these days, I offer one of my own here. We are addicted to anill-conceived, erroneous assumption the modern good life of tranquility and repose,

pleasure and satisfaction, acquisition and accumulation bad values as it were, two inparticular health and happiness. Indeed, we are given to speak of health and happiness

as universal rights, often without much needed qualification, that we are somehow

bequeathed by virtue of being born human. Moreover, we dont seem to realize that ourmethodology and procedure for accomplishing health and happiness for all is simply no

longer working (if indeed it ever was) and may in fact be causing some of the problems

that we have as side effects of the solutions to other problems (Beck & Lau, 2005;Latour, 2003)). And like all addictions (and those who are addicted) there is no caution

and care when the habit takes precedence. I do not mean to suggest that there is a single,

universal set of good values with which to combat the bad (such would simply be anotherunwarranted modern assertion), certainly the postmoderns, if they have accomplishedanything, have at least shown this to be fallacious. However, it seems to me to be a

sobering assertion that to be happy, whatever that means, we must we working against

something, work for something more than more, more, more and certainly for more thanless, that is less resistance, less travail, less effort, less discomfort and so on. As Bertrand

Russell once said to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of

happiness. (p. 27). I am not suggesting some manner of unbridled iconoclasm regardinghappiness and health, rather it is the opposite which I advocate. The continual, and to be

sure critical, exercise of caution and care in the trajectory of whatever direction our

culture is moving. As Nietzsche (1968) once remarked How is truth proved? By the

feeling of enhanced power by utility by indispensability in short, by advantagesBut that is a prejudice: a sign that truth is not involved at all. (p. 249-250). Perhaps we

might say something similar about health and happiness, if only to complicate the matter,

which seems to me necessary even urgent. Of course, I might be wrong.

Thanks For Your Time C. E. Betts

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Published January, 1 2006 as a Rapid Response to Delamothe, T. (2005). Happiness.

British Medical Journal, 331, 1489-1490. Available at:

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/331/7531/1489

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The Healthy Resistance to Happiness