Happiness 101: Artificial Happiness

I recently watched a fascinating talk on TV given by Ronald Dworkin, author of the book 'Artificial Happiness'. In this talk, he describes how in today's society, true happiness is gradually being replaced by artificial forms of happiness.

In the olden days, as in pre-1910, doctors were closer to their patients. The primary practitioners of that era needed to be a master of all medical trades, they listened to their patient's personal problems, and frequently helped them both by prescribing medical cures and helping them feel better by listening and talking to them directly. Then this century a shift occured. Primary practitioners became more specialized, becoming less doctor and more engineer. The doctor - patient relationship became more cold, unfeeling. Then something unfortunate happened, 'unhappiness' got diagnosed as a disease that was cured just like any other illness. Doctors started prescribing anti-depressants, prozac, zoloft, to their patients at the slightest hint of unhappiness. Each patient wanted to be "happy", and here was the cure in pill form. Take a pill or drug, and feel happier with ease.

However, there was a big problem with this artificial happiness mentality. He gave an example of a woman in a bad relationship. Although she was unhappy in the relationship (she wanted to get married to her boyfriend, but he didn't seem to be the marrying kind), she nursed the feeling with prozac, and immediately felt better. So she continued the relationship for more than a year, although it felt like a dead-end. But she felt fine because of prozac. After a prolonged period of artificial happiness, she finally felt she could no longer go on with the relationship and broke it off. Had she not nursed her unhappiness in the first place, she probably would have ended it right away, but with the influence of antidepressants, she managed to waste a year of her life in a dead end relationship.

The author also goes on to describe how medicating unhappiness through obsessive fitness and exercise, as well as medicating it through fanatical adherence to organized religion is counterproductive as well. We want to believe that the roots of our depression can be cured by joining this religion, or going on a dedicated fitness program, when it actually only masks the problem. I know people who have gone on fitness binges, or turned to born-again Christianity as a result of a fairly traumatic experience. While this cures the problem temporarily, its long term effect is that you never achieve true happiness, instead always relying on quick fixes. Worse, you never address the roots of the unhappiness in the first place.

Same goes for people who resort to drinking, or other escapes from their current state. They go on shopping binges, or resort to other addictions or keep themselves busy to try to escape how they are really feeling deep inside. We feel guilty and worried when we are not happy and want a cure, right at this moment, because it's not normal.

The lesson of this is that depression and unhappiness has a purpose. It pushes us towards addressing the roots of this unhappiness by making changes and adjustments in our lives. By not resorting to quick fixes such as antidepressants, organized religion, or obsessive exercise, we learn to face the root of our problems head on. This can be a powerful force in changing our lives for the better.

It is important to be honest with ourselves and face the true reasons for how we feel. If I am unhappy with my relationship or marriage, perhaps the best cure is to end it. If I am unhappy with my job, no quick fix will be better than getting a new job I will be happier with. If I am depressed because of my weight, or because of how I feel when I get up in the morning, by all means, the best way to remove that feeling is to do something about it. We no longer resort to artificial forms of happiness but instead go for the real thing.

A side note - this is not to belittle the impact of true depression, the clinical kind. Of course this must be treated with medication as the results are more serious. But for most kinds of unhappiness, those nagging feelings we get every day, it is always better to seek the real cure and avoid quick fixes.

From my personal experience, those times when I was most unhappy, or most depressed turned out to be great turning points as it forced me to be honest with myself, and propelled me to do things I would never have done had I always been happy and content. Depression and happiness are powerful forces of change that force us to get our act together and make great strides towards good. I'm thankful that I was depressed because if I weren't, then maybe today I wouldn't be as happy.