Slavoj!
The biggest achievement of the new cognitive-military complex is that direct and obvious oppression is no longer necessary: individuals are much better controlled and “nudged” in the desired direction when they continue to experience themselves as the free and autonomous agents of their own life… But all these are well-known facts, and we have to make a step further.
The predominant critique proceeds in the way of demystification: beneath the innocent-sounding research into happiness and welfare, it discerns a dark hidden gigantic complex of social control and manipulation exerted by the combined forces of private corporations and state agencies. But what is urgently needed is also the opposite move: instead of just asking what dark content is hidden beneath the form of scientific research into happiness, we should focus on the form itself. Is the topic of scientific research on human welfare and happiness (at least the way it is practiced today) really so innocent, or is it already in itself permeated by the stance of control and manipulation? What if the sciences are here not just misused? What if they find here precisely their proper use? We should put in question the recent rise of a new discipline, “happiness studies.” How is it that, in our era of spiritualized hedonism when the goal of life is directly defined as happiness, anxiety and depression are exploding? It is the enigma of this self-sabotaging of happiness and pleasure which makes Freud’s message more actual than ever.
We should risk here even a step further and inquire into the hidden side of the notion of happiness itself. When, exactly, can a people be said to be happy? In a country like Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s and 1980s, people in a way effectively were happy. Three fundamental conditions of happiness were fulfilled there. (1) Their material needs were basically satisfied, but not too satisfied, since the excess of consumption can in itself generate unhappiness. It is good to experience a brief shortage of some goods on he market from time to time (no coffee for a couple of days, then no beef, then no TV sets). These brief periods of shortage functioned as exceptions which reminded people that they should be glad that the goods were generally available; if everything is available all the time, people take this availability as an evident fact of life and no longer appreciate their luck. Life thus went on in a regular and predictable way, without any great efforts or shocks, and one was allowed to withdraw into one’s private niche. (2) A second extremely important feature: there was the Other (the Party) to be blamed for everything that went wrong, so that one did not feel really responsible. If there was a temporary shortage of some goods, even if stormy weather caused great damage, it was ‘their’ fault. (3) And, last but not least, there was an Other Place (the consummerist West) about which one was allowed to dream, and even visit sometimes. This place was just at the right distance, not too far, not too close. That fragile balance was disturbed – by what? By desire, precisely. Desire was the force which compelled the people to move on – and end up in a system in which a large majority is definitely less happy…
Happiness? No, Thanks! - The Philosophical Salon
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/happiness-no-thanks/