Manufacturing Happy Citizens

This book explores how the wellness industry has built itself by telling us that we're not complete without whatever trick they have to offer. One of my favourite insights comes near the end where the author states that happiness doesn't fit into our lives now, we have to shape our lives around the ideas that happiness should be a capitalist consumer driven fulfilled life.

From debunking the myth that we should be happy all the time, to reminding us that the happiness sellers of the world want us to feel incomplete...so they can sell us stuff, Cabanas and Illouz draw back the curtain on how happiness culture needs us to be unhappy for it's gurus to survive.

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- [[The Pursuit of Happyness]] Pg 1
- we like this story b/c it masks that it's a huge exception to the rule of [[United States|American]] [[capitalist]] life Pg 4
- [[survivorship bias]]
- more often you get down on your luck and are in poverty and then that's where the story ends. You continue to struggle.

**Purpose**
- question the validity of the science of studying happiness. It is weak science and we can draw few conclusions from any of the results it purports to offer Pg 8
- to question the sociological conclusion that happiness is all in our hands and outside any societal systems. Pg 8,9

- those who don't manifest adversity into personal growth deserve the misfortune they get. Pg 10
- like [[Conspirituality - Julian Walker Matthew Remski Derek Beres]] thinking in wellness communities where you can "manifest" your health and don't need to rely on doctors and their institutional thinking

### Experts on your Well-Being

- [[Martin Seligman]] Pg 15
- [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 160920200724]] Pg 17
- [[Learned Optimism - Martin EP Seligman]] Pg 17
- [[The Power of Positive Thinking - Norman Vincent Peale]] Pg 24
- [[Flourish - Martin E P Seligman]] Pg 26

- [[positive psychology]] after 20 years and 64k studies has little hard evidence. It has scattered ambiguous contradicting results. Pg 29
- so does much of this research fall into the [[replication crisis]]

- [[Daniel Kahneman]] Pg 32
- [[Amos Tversky]] Pg 32

- [[Well-Being - Daniel Kahneman Edward Diener Norbert Schwarz]] Pg 34
- [[Thrive - Richard Layard David M Clark]] Pg 34
- [[Happiness Lessons From A New Science - Richard Layard]] Pg 37

- [[Facebook]] Pg 40
- specifically they referred to the study FB did to manipulate user moods see [[Everything We Know About Facebook’s Secret Mood-Manipulation Experiment - The Atlantic]]

- many measures of happiness lack the consistency needed to compare across an international basis. Pg 43
- culturally some countries value solo things, and other value collectivist things and they aren't really relatable
- plus many measures are focused on independent feelings

- [[happiness rhetoric]] lets you say poor people are inspired by seeing the success of the rich and get happiness from it. This is a [[capitalist]] lie. Pg 46
- this is how [[Tony Robbins]] justifies himself, people are inspired by his success

- [[meritocracy]] Pg 46

### 2 - Rekindling Individualism

- [[neoliberalism]] Pg 50
- much happiness science stresses personal responsibility and ignores any structural factors in society. Pg 53
- [[capitalism wants you to believe you picked your life]]
- [[Authentic Happiness - Martin E P Seligman]] Pg 56
- this supports key assumptions of [[positive psychology]]. That 90% of happiness is due to individual factors. That what happens to you matters less than how you perceive it. Pg 57
- this again is pushing personal responsibility over any type of systematic issues that advantage different people
- [[The How of Happiness - Sonja Lyubomirsky]] Pg 57
- [[Smile Or Die - Barbara (Y) Ehrenreich]] Pg 58
- this is a harsh critique of [[positive psychology]]
- [[meritocracy]] Pg 60

- when you convince people that the solution to their problems is chiefly a matter of personal effort you bypass all the talk of real social or political change. Pg 64
- similar to [[Puritan Work Ethic]] as they both hold effort/work as the best thing you can do with your life
- [[mindfulness]] Pg 66
- [[mindfulness]] relies on individual solutions to structural issues in society. It assumes that the root of many issues is inside you not outside. Pg 67
- [[The Buddha Pill - Miguel Farias Dr Catherine Wikholm]] Pg 67
- [[Crazy Like Us - Ethan Watters]] Pg 69
- it's more economical to work on the internal lives of students, hence [[mindfulness]] in schools than to address the structural issues like: increasing cost of education, disparity in school resources between rich/poor
- [[Sources/Books/The Case Against Education|The Case Against Education]]
- [[Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?]] Pg 79

### 3 Positivity at Work

- [[Abraham Maslow]] Pg 87
- [[Maslows Hierarchy of Needs]] Pg 87
- [[neoliberalism]] Pg 88
- [[positive psychology]] inverts [[Maslows Hierarchy of Needs]] putting happiness (self-actualization) as the first thing you need to do. Then if you find it all the other stuff like safety and food will come. Pg 92
- this is good for a boss because they can replace job security with pool tables and "fun stuff" and tell you that it's a good job
- [[Readwise/Books/The Happiness Advantage]] Pg 93
- [[Sources/Books/The Happiness Advantage]] Pg 93
- [[Happiness at Work - Jessica Pryce-Jones]] Pg 95
- this book says that if you question structural issues at work then you're being "negative" and hindering your own performance
- all the job perks like laundry and meals sound good, but are really there so you work more hours without getting paid extra. Pg 98
- [[Positive Psychology Coaching - Robert Biswas-Diener Ben Dean]] Pg 99
- companies want you to view your job as a "great opportunity" because they don't want you to think about the primary reason for a job, to eat in a [[capitalist]] society so that you have shelter over your head. Pg 99
- we emphasize the individual need to be [[Tags/resilience|resilience]] in the face of changing/hard job market bypassing the need for employer wages to keep up with [[inflation]] or [[Income gap]] between workers and C-Suite Pg 102
- again, this is good for business because it puts it on you, not on expecting more from them
- [[Resilience at Work - Salvatore R MADDI Deborah M KHOSHABA]] Pg 104
- pushed resilience no matter what work throws at you.
- [[Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing - Chris Horst Peter Greer]] Pg 105

### 4 Happy Selves on the Market's Shelves

- the narrative of finding happiness/success lacks specifics because that lets the story being told fit anyone all the time. Pg 114
- and being vague also means if it doesn't work, you can always find something they "didn't" do thus it doesn't work
- see also [[universe juice]]
- happiness is now viewed as a continually improving state. This feeds into [[consumption]] and [[consumerism]] and [[keeping up with the Joneses]] so you keep striving for a bit more. Pg 114
- see [[The Day the World Stops Shopping - JB MacKinnon]] for less consumerism ideas
- apps that get you to track your happiness is participating in [[surveillance capitalism]] for the profit of some other company. Pg 127
- [[On Becoming a Person - Carl Ransom Rogers]] Pg 127
- [[Motivation And Personality - A H Maslow]] Pg 128
- [[consumerism]] pushes authenticity via our purchases "representing" who we really are. Pg 130
- thus, buying stuff is showing you to everyone and worthy
- [[Marketization and the Recasting of the Professional Self - The Rhetoric and Ethics of Personal Branding]] Pg 132
- [[The Happiness Effect - Donna Freitas]] Pg 133
- [[social media]] claims to want authenticity but only if it's positive stuff. Showing negativity is stigmatized by people around you. Pg 134
- [[Flourish - Martin E P Seligman]] Pg 136

> Incessant incompleteness is one of the central "knots" of the flourishing narrative... Pg 139
- thus we always need advice (and often to pay for the advice) to be happy

- [[Desperately Seeking Self-improvement - Carl Cederström André Spicer]] Pg 140
- [[stoic]] Pg 143

### 5 Happy is the New Normal

- [[The Happiness Project - Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun 202201110923]] Pg 147
- culture has come to equate being happy with being a good person. If you're sad you must be a bad person. Pg 149
- like [[Puritan Work Ethic|Protestant Work Ethic]] saying work is godliness
- we must remember that "bad" emotions such as hatred spawn good things. Like social change because black communities hated how they were treated and protested that treatment. Pg 160
- [[learned helplessness]] Pg 162
- [[A Child Called It - Dave Pelzer]] Pg 166
- a story of triumph over massive adversity as an example that some people are [[Tags/resilience|resilience]] no matter the circumstances
- [[Mans Search for Meaning 100820200620]] Pg 166

- [[positive psychology]] says that no matter what happens you can choose your attitude. Pg 171
- how does this square with the fact that [[scarcity captures the mind 180920201045]] when there is scarcity happening you can't help but think about the thing you're missing.
- when you have less scarcity you have more [[mental bandwidth]], see [[universal basic income|basic income]] ideas that you can then think about more things and make better decisions without income scarcity

### Conclusion

- our obsession with [[time]] has turned it from being our servant to it being the master of all our days. Page 176
- happiness today doesn't fit into our lives, we must fit our lives into the ideas of happiness pushed by [[capitalist]] [[consumerism]] culture. Pg 177