The Happy Pessimist

I'm H.A.P.P.Y., I know I am, I'm sure I am.
Surely it is a mistake to suppose that happiness is the central and not just a central aspect of human nature? In fact, might it not be suggested that the concept is introduced at a particular historical juncture and with specific political motives and that it has, therefore, less to do with our nature than one at first might suspect? The insertion of life into the political realm is a decisive move; the concern for life, pleasure and pain and its calculus, the efficient management of growth, the 'standard of living', the discipline of the body, the normalizing of the population and the setting up of pleasure industries, utopian fantasy islands: all follow the rubric of biopolitics. But this, it might be suggested, is but the late flourish of a clever animal. Only we recognize that we are needy animals and are defined by what we lack.


Nietzsche’s wry comment: "happiness: only the Englishman seeks that" would indicate that happiness is not the universal, over-arching principle that it is made out to be. Furthermore, to believe that the motivation for pursuing 'meaning', art, beauty, or knowledge is our happiness is fundamentally wrong- even though these things may lead to it or accompany it. Are we really governed by this single motivating factor or might there be other things like duty, love, and compassion that move us to act? I think that one has to admit the obvious charm and benefits of reducing all moral issues to a clear-cut principle or common currency that apparently does away with conflict (as well as tragedy)-but one does so at significant detriment to our perception of ourselves. This one-dimensional, hollow man is travesty of all the best that we can imagine and even though the mind loves being absorbed by one thing it also needs to know the world in depth . A concept may lead to easier calculations or it may allow things to be more readily objectified in monetary terms, but that does not in-itself mean that it offers a surer method of evaluation.

It seems quite strange to make an argument for happiness from nature or evolution(as if our natures are such that we seek happiness because of its survival value) when others have thought of our natural purpose in quite different terms: namely, the good life that depends on the virtues or the perfection of the soul: indeed, happiness is only one such notion of the common good and to say, therefore, that we must start from man's nature "as it is" means starting with the assumption-and it is only an assumption-that the bourgeois, non-metaphysical individual is the best model we have and that he represents the true version of human nature. That this is a self-evident truth is surely contestable, to say the least. Can we now envisage a politics that stands outside the web of life, can we move back from the language of the markets to the language of justice, virtue, and does that depend on possessing a transcendental perspective?

Even within the utilitarian framework there are still some awkward questions: what about entrenched preferences (a happy slave or an extremely poor person may convince himself that he is happy with the help of religious consolations and notions of kismet and how many desperate housewives are there that adapt to a life of low expectations?) And what about the happiness that results from the fulfilment of frivolous desires (incidentally, weren’t such vain desires and the concern for status the motor of economic growth according to Adam Smith?) With regards the latter set of issues, it might be argued that we should distinguish between temporary and permanent happiness but most economists would suggest that temporary happiness, a quick fix, is merely a case of informational problems (in the sense that we do not realise that that happiness turns sour in the long run) or an irrational pursuit, the failure of the rational calculator to see and latch on to a happiness that doesn't fade. But does the recognition of this imply a move to human nature, not “as it is” but as it should be, an ideal self? If so, then happiness, on its own, is an inadequate guiding principle.

The problem is that we want a moral principle that can deal with such questions but that at the same time is sensitive to the charge of paternalism (who, for example, has the authority to oppose our democratic choices or, in another expression of this, what the market determines; indeed, why not ditch the classics or education altogether if in doing so one makes the greatest number happy?) The over-arching idea of happiness is really just a problematic version of universalism: as if to say that the existence of other values, other ‘forms of life,’ only indicate a deficiency with respect to the new (and universal) standard of happiness. Those in the developing countries must, according to this logic, be first made aware of how unhappy they are before they can enjoy the right to pursue a life of happiness.

There are equally troubling questions with the approach: its neglect of freedom. For example, would an educated person who'chooses' not to read have the same level of happiness as a person who is illiterate? Many would think that the former, with its greater range of opportunities, offers a better way of living. So, we either accept freedom as another source of value or we reduce it to a means to our utilitarian end. Of course, we are warned of the dangers of thinking of everything simply in terms of as a means to an end but if this is so the question remains: why then persist with happiness as the only end to which evolution moves? Might not freedom be explained in this way as well, so that nature evolves along degrees of freedom?

On what grounds, for example, should society prevent a change or, say, a fair process of exchange that leads to a small minority becoming significantly better off at the expense of a lot of people becoming only slightly worse off or, in a variant of this, on what basis would society rule out an increase in utility of large sections of society at the expense of seeing a few members having their fundamental rights infringed upon or their utility dropping to extremely low levels? If on a theory of rights are we, then, to move away from the utilitarian framework? To put it more starkly: can we invoke a moral theory that doesn't talk about intentions or sacrifice or restraint or any actions that go beyond our own happiness. One can only talk about these things tautologically: we accept limitations because we choose to do so, because doing so makes us happier. It is the point at which explanation can go no further.

The central problem with this analysis is that it just doesn't take on board the whole gamut of human motivations and ends (this being, of course, the familiar complaint that homo economicus is a very 'thin'concept) ; for example, religion, civic virtues or the pursuit of knowledge are not simply or exclusively about enhancing one's happiness or forwarding our self-interest. Perhaps the pessimistic Romantics would have had a thing or two to say about happiness and its embodiment of a 'sun-and-wheat-consciousness' (Lawrence) and wouldn’t the Freudians say that this constant search for perfect happiness is a form of neurosis? Deep down we have the sneaking suspicion that a life singularly devoted to happiness is a shallow and trivial one.

But is it perfection, bliss, stillness that we really seek? Would we be happy by having attained our heart's desire? There is the bonum honestum, accompanied by an interior joy, and the bonum delectabile, which is a pleasure that becomes an end in itself. Happiness, in this sense, is a shadow of desire for the garden, a utopian longing for the end of longing, the desire for a land of plenty where we are not defined by what we lack.

If we accept that there are certain things that are of intrinsic importance-and this is a concept that economics has banished a long time ago-then we are already well on the way of thinking about human motivations and ends in a more pluralistic (and more complicated) way. This would be a radical departure for economics because for centuries we’ve been brought up with the idea that something is valued because it is desired, that desires can make pushpin as good as poetry (Bentham), and that our subjective experiences are not to be snuffed at. Is the content, soothed animal the best picture, the truest depiction, we have of ourselves?


In the end, might it not be the case that our fixation with the idea of man as a 'constantly moving happiness machine' has in part-and quite tragically-led us to being so unhappy? Coming on the back of a century devoted to the happiness of the self, the American dream, the American pastoral, perhaps we could do worse than turn to Philip Roth for his descriptions of how perfect, happy lives unravel. We are left wondering how much loneliness, depression and indifference lies behind the shiny surfaces of the happy life. And the disturbing possibility that, as one of Roth’s characters says, “it was as though while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn’t wait to dispose their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down to that other self…”

Perhaps there is more.
" Psychoanalytically, any form of life will tend to generate a fantasy of what it is to get outside that life". In that sense, true happiness is achieved by not achieving it, by being a happy pessimist. "Anything can be endured but the succession of fine days". Capitalism and consumerism would never have such a hold on us unless it held up the possibility of endless expansion, of unlimitedness itself (Marx would say that the growth of productive forces allows for a breaking out of the ghetto, the limited but narrow perfection of the ancients for the unlimited, multi-faceted, alienated individual); insofar as we are modern we must reject the Greeks and the closed medieval world; infinity can no longer be located along a vertical axis, as it were.

And so, the best thing about being human is that have the ability not to be human, to step outside te natural necessities from which the animals derive satisfaction, happiness. This is what Hannah called the unnatural growth of the natural. Ours is a troubled happiness, something that we want to and do not want to name, to find and to lose. "Only mortals pursue ends that come to an end, we dream of a deathless activity."

Modern happiness is, therefore, a discourse on how to escape the ordinary, finitude. It is not an attempt, contrary to first appearances, to weigh ourselves down with so many goods and trinkets but, rather, a desire for lightness. But there is a lightness that comes from profundity, and a lightness of being that is unbearable. By detaching our pleasures from 'the good' , from the world, we have thought that we could be free to find our own infinites. The moderns, in their inwardness, are the true ascetics! One only needs to reflect on how many of our freedoms have turned to obsessions, compulsive behaviours, to realise that maybe, just maybe, we are not as sure as to whether we really know what happiness is any more.

(citations from J. Lear and Goethe)