Happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a
requirement and a duty. To fail to be happy is to fail utterly.
Happiness has become a religion--one whose smiley-faced god looks
down in rebuke upon everyone who hasn't yet attained the blessed
state of perpetual euphoria. How has a liberating principle of the
Enlightenment--the right to pursue happiness--become the
unavoidable and burdensome responsibility to be happy? How did we
become unhappy about not being happy--and what might we do to
escape this predicament? In "Perpetual Euphoria," Pascal Bruckner
takes up these questions with all his unconventional wit, force,
and brilliance, arguing that we might be happier if we simply
abandoned our mad pursuit of happiness.
Gripped by the twin illusions that we are responsible for being
happy or unhappy and that happiness can be produced by effort, many
of us are now martyring ourselves--sacrificing our time, fortunes,
health, and peace of mind--in the hope of entering an earthly
paradise. Much better, Bruckner argues, would be to accept that
happiness is an unbidden and fragile gift that arrives only by
grace and luck.
A stimulating and entertaining meditation on the unhappiness at
the heart of the modern cult of happiness, "Perpetual Euphoria" is
a book for everyone who has ever bristled at the command to "be
happy."
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