Manufacturing Happy Citizens: How the Science and Industry of Happiness Control our Lives

Reading this book was an extremely compelling experience. On the one hand, there is a frightening bleakness to the metastasizing and insidious doctrine of "positive psychology." On the other hand, there was a powerful catharsis to see my intuitions about the B.S. values in my society rigorously exposed and meticulously documented and argued. I would go as far as calling this book empowering--it truly exposes the misdirection and slight of hand that corporate magicians and management use to gain psychological control. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.If our perverted capitalist system can get us to obsessively look WITHIN, we do not look AROUND at the structural inequalities critically and see how rigged the game has become. All of the feel good slogans, mottoes, group exercises, MBSR, etc. are not in place at our jobs to make us happier--they are there to make us passive. They are there to make us productive and obedient workers in the face of increasing economic inequality. It reminds me a little of factory farming in a way. When animals are unhealthy and miserable in their dark factory prisons, they are injected with hormones to compensate. When humans are trapped into multiple jobs, longer hours, physically demanding and soul crushingly mundane tasks, they are injected with positivist psychology. Make no mistake, this "science" of happiness is an anesthetic and an inadequate bandaid--not a solution. The solutions are speaking truth to power, unionizing, exposing propaganda and methods of control, disengaging with social media, boycotting when possible, propping up independent journalism, voting for anti-establishment politicians, striking, and taking to the streets. In a word, the solution is revolution. For that reason I would recommend the work of Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Richard Wolff, Democracy Now, Krystal Ball and Abbey Martin as essential reading and viewing to complement this book.Make no mistake, this ideological propaganda has infected all of our minds. Why is the suicide rate so high? Why do we constantly feel that we never measure up? Along with what the authors refer to as the "emotional pornography" of social media, it would seem that the implicit message of positive psychology is also a large piece of this miserable capitalist puzzle: We are implicitly told ad nauseum that if you're unhappy, it's YOUR fault--pay no attention to the CEO behind the curtain.

I had high hopes for this book but it fell flat. It is strong in terms of the authors presenting an argument, many arguments. The notes section is robust and a fantastic source of further reading but there is no guidance, expertise, no perspective or opinion on how to move forward. As a reader you will spend time consuming what the authors present and believe is a significant problem and then you're left with "Ok. Now what?" Disappointing. Btw, no index? Maybe that was a publishing problem but a book like this needs an index...

The science and industry of happiness doesn’t control our lives. Some happiness psychologists may attempt to, but control is something we have power over.The attempts to discover secrets to happiness go back to at least the Greeks. Herodotus argues that you can’t count a man happy until he’s on his deathbed since what makes him happy can fall apart at any given time.The writers point out that measuring and constantly testing ourselves to measure our happiness can have a reverse effect.Given that what makes people happy varies from person to person, a formulaic means for determining happiness is destined to fail.The writers didn’t address whether or not some people can be basically happy, by nature, but sad about something, which doesn’t obviate a general disposition.Wanting to be happy is so basic. When I was less than five years old, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up and I said, “Happy”. There was so much sadness all around me that I made an effort, at a very young age, to be happy, which was a great goal, but created some havoc in my life.This book was densely written and oftentimes redundant and boring. If one is seeking happiness, there are many other books I could recommend.

The author bursts the neoliberal happiness bubble for what it is: an ideology; a commodity for sell; repertoires and techniques facilitating workers' acquiescence and conformity to corporate culture, exploiting positive emotions as productive assets for corporations; and happiness research has wormed itself into the very fabric of government, as an objective and measurable variable.The book itself is, of course ant against happiness; but against the reductionist view of the good life and the so-called science that happiness merchants preach.The book focuses on four main critical concepts: epistemological, sociological, phenomenological and moral.The author shows the movies, The Pursuit of Happiness, as a neoliberal propaganda film. This reader readily agrees with the author's assessments and his chapters are factually & logically presented; plus, easily understood.The author shows his readers that pleasure and the pursuit of happiness cannot trump reality and the pursuit of knowledge - critical thinking about ourselves and the surrounding world.He clearly demonstrates, time & again, that the happiness industry aims at controlling us. That it is knowledge and justice, rather than happiness, that remains the revolutionary moral purpose of our lives.

.. wird hier sehr differenziert beschrieben. Ich lese gerne kritische Bücher zur Glücksforschung (Barbara Ehrenreich, Colin Bear, Wilhelm Schmid ..), weil mir dieser Hype recht seltsam vorkommt - und hier wird sogar ein Zusammenhang mit Kapitalismus und Neoliberalismus hergestellt - hochinteressant!