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William Davies, The Happiness Industry:Free review copy. Imagine if a nicer Evgeny Morozov and a more theoretically oriented Barbara Ehrenreich (Bright-Sided) wrote a book about America’s culture of optimism and its relationship to technological solutionism: you’d get this engaging and often depressing book, full of sharp observations about our technologies and our selves.
Positive psychology, Davies argues, is being deployed as a substitute for economic security, as when “happiness consultants” advise people who are unemployed or losing their homes on how to move on emotionally. He traces current versions of the happiness industry—now often based in claims about the physical structures of the brain—through hundreds of years of theories about economics, bodies, and minds. Jeremy Bentham, for example, rejected the proposition that there are different types of goods/pleasures, trying to reduce it all to physical pleasure in order to compare and quantify the benefits of different social orders.
These are not apolitical theories. “In the long history of scientifically analysing the relationship between subjective feelings and external circumstances, there is always the tendency to see the ofrmer as more easily changeable than the latter.” Thus, he argues, the field is structurally biased towards trying to get people to accept (or possibly leave) bad circumstances rather than to change them for everyone.
Moreover, we subjectively understand our experiences to have different qualities: despair and sadness are different, even if both reflect disutility. Given that, appropriate responses thereto will differ even if the quantity of utility/disutility in negative emotions were in some sense equivalent. Trying to make someone who’s angry feel better may miss the point so profoundly as to be a deep insult. Yet instead of suggesting politics, the happiness industry tries to convince us that if we can only make ourselves happy, then well-being (and even money) will follow. (This is the argument also so ably made by Ehrenreich.) The result is to blame people for their own misery—and, as Davies points out, this orientation even changes the definition of happiness—now a “source of energy and resilience, but always directed towards goals other than being happy, such as status, power,” and so on. Taylorism was awful, he notes, but at least workers weren’t expected to like it.
One consequence of this dynamic is that happiness gurus can’t deliver on their promises. They can’t solve the problems that consumerism and late capitalism have caused; though our economy depends ever more on our psychological and emotional engagement “be it with work, with brands, [or] with our own health and wellbeing,” it’s increasingly unsustainable. While private suffering is only cognizable as economic harm (and the only escape from grinding work is often physical illness), such suffering is increasingly notable even on that metric. Not liking your work is now readily understood as a clinical disorder requiring management; to be healthy is to be happy is to be productive, and vice versa. Yet the response has been to try to make people more resilient, so we can tell them that they should be able to navigate a bewildering array of health care choices, instead of fixing the systems that hammer us down systematically and make work unlikable.
Ironically, Davies contends, behaviorism is actually deeply compatible with goo-goo mysticism, and invites it. If objectivity means measurability and utilitarianism, then the only thing left for subjectivity is passive experience. We’re led to constantly self-monitor, in “neurotic and paranoid” fashion, asking ourselves “am I really happy?” in a way that stifles coordinated political change and counterproductively destroys the possibility of happiness. Anyone who’s ever obsessively refreshed a social media feed has had the experience of chasing satisfaction in this way.
The final big piece of Davies’ argument is that technology has changed the nature of claims to understand the mind. As he points out, liberals touted the market as the best way to discover what people really wanted (and translating those wants into prices). But now, new technologies can purport to quantify feelings and extend even further into our lives than markets—think the Fitbit. Provocatively—and here’s where Morozov comes strongly to mind—Davies argues that in order to critique pervasive surveillance we now need to critique the maximization of “wellbeing,” “even at the risk of being less healthy, happy and wealthy.” Davies bolsters this conclusion by suggesting that behaviorism, or any anti-philosophical/anti-theoretical approach to humanity, requires an embrace of mass surveillance, since in the absence of a theoretical apparatus observation is the only way to really “know” things about people.
Of course, today’s surveillance (harnessing narcissism “as research opportunity”) is part of a long tradition of hoping that measurement will become perfect, so that science can replace philosophy and ethics: “there is always the hope that it is possible to understand another human being wihtout talking to them.” To the technocrats who drive big companies and governments, our own perceptions, as deliberately reported by us, are unreliable; our heartbeats and our seemingly private conversations with other people on Facebook are by contrast “good hard data.” Big data analysis purports to substitute for confronting people in all their specificity and messiness, and the observer doesn’t have to risk being observed. (Davies is less concerned with whether the big data folks are right about their predictions: maybe we do behave differently than we aspire to behave, and we report the latter when specifically asked, and that probably does have implications for the best social policy in response. But how that interacts with democracy is an open question, since democracy depends on reasoned deliberation.) The political aim is “that individual activity might be diverted towards goals selected by elite powers, but without either naked coercion or democratic deliberation.”
Behavioralism and nudging, Davies argues, are fundamentally undemocratic. Responses in response might come from any entity, not just a person. And while new forms of social exchange outside of monetary markets could be politically liberating, they can also be incorporated into management—so when Facebook tries to make you more likely to vote by highlighting how many of your friends have voted, it’s asserting and naturalizing its own power while supposedly promoting yours. We’re now not regarded by institutions as individuals, but as means to alter the beliefs and behaviors of those around us. So our user-generated content may be fun and free, but, distributed by platforms with their own significant interest in shaping both what we produce and how we react, it is not freeing. It’s particularly notable, Davies suggests, how these new social relationships are promoted: giving to others freely is a good idea because it makes us feel happier. “The advice is to stop thinking so much of oneself—but the justification is ultimately a self-centred one.”
Further, in a society directed at maximizing wellbeing, “political authority lies with those who are most expert to measure and manage individuals,” and there’s no particular reason why those people ought to be in government instead of private corporations. Just as responsibility for individual wellbeing has become privatized to each individual, so can responsibility for shaping the systems of measurement and management that achieve desired results. (Desired by whom? Well, by the rich and powerful, of course.) Instead, he argues, we should return to the basic propositions of democratic discourse: ask people what they think, want, and mean, and believe them unless we have good reasons not to do so. Managerial elites don’t like this because it means that everyone’s thoughts are important, and not in an opinion poll/counting way but in the sense that other people would need to be convinced to assent to choices that affect large numbers of people. Listening, rather than watching, is what is needed in a democratic polity.
Positive psychology, Davies argues, is being deployed as a substitute for economic security, as when “happiness consultants” advise people who are unemployed or losing their homes on how to move on emotionally. He traces current versions of the happiness industry—now often based in claims about the physical structures of the brain—through hundreds of years of theories about economics, bodies, and minds. Jeremy Bentham, for example, rejected the proposition that there are different types of goods/pleasures, trying to reduce it all to physical pleasure in order to compare and quantify the benefits of different social orders.
These are not apolitical theories. “In the long history of scientifically analysing the relationship between subjective feelings and external circumstances, there is always the tendency to see the ofrmer as more easily changeable than the latter.” Thus, he argues, the field is structurally biased towards trying to get people to accept (or possibly leave) bad circumstances rather than to change them for everyone.
Moreover, we subjectively understand our experiences to have different qualities: despair and sadness are different, even if both reflect disutility. Given that, appropriate responses thereto will differ even if the quantity of utility/disutility in negative emotions were in some sense equivalent. Trying to make someone who’s angry feel better may miss the point so profoundly as to be a deep insult. Yet instead of suggesting politics, the happiness industry tries to convince us that if we can only make ourselves happy, then well-being (and even money) will follow. (This is the argument also so ably made by Ehrenreich.) The result is to blame people for their own misery—and, as Davies points out, this orientation even changes the definition of happiness—now a “source of energy and resilience, but always directed towards goals other than being happy, such as status, power,” and so on. Taylorism was awful, he notes, but at least workers weren’t expected to like it.
One consequence of this dynamic is that happiness gurus can’t deliver on their promises. They can’t solve the problems that consumerism and late capitalism have caused; though our economy depends ever more on our psychological and emotional engagement “be it with work, with brands, [or] with our own health and wellbeing,” it’s increasingly unsustainable. While private suffering is only cognizable as economic harm (and the only escape from grinding work is often physical illness), such suffering is increasingly notable even on that metric. Not liking your work is now readily understood as a clinical disorder requiring management; to be healthy is to be happy is to be productive, and vice versa. Yet the response has been to try to make people more resilient, so we can tell them that they should be able to navigate a bewildering array of health care choices, instead of fixing the systems that hammer us down systematically and make work unlikable.
Ironically, Davies contends, behaviorism is actually deeply compatible with goo-goo mysticism, and invites it. If objectivity means measurability and utilitarianism, then the only thing left for subjectivity is passive experience. We’re led to constantly self-monitor, in “neurotic and paranoid” fashion, asking ourselves “am I really happy?” in a way that stifles coordinated political change and counterproductively destroys the possibility of happiness. Anyone who’s ever obsessively refreshed a social media feed has had the experience of chasing satisfaction in this way.
The final big piece of Davies’ argument is that technology has changed the nature of claims to understand the mind. As he points out, liberals touted the market as the best way to discover what people really wanted (and translating those wants into prices). But now, new technologies can purport to quantify feelings and extend even further into our lives than markets—think the Fitbit. Provocatively—and here’s where Morozov comes strongly to mind—Davies argues that in order to critique pervasive surveillance we now need to critique the maximization of “wellbeing,” “even at the risk of being less healthy, happy and wealthy.” Davies bolsters this conclusion by suggesting that behaviorism, or any anti-philosophical/anti-theoretical approach to humanity, requires an embrace of mass surveillance, since in the absence of a theoretical apparatus observation is the only way to really “know” things about people.
Of course, today’s surveillance (harnessing narcissism “as research opportunity”) is part of a long tradition of hoping that measurement will become perfect, so that science can replace philosophy and ethics: “there is always the hope that it is possible to understand another human being wihtout talking to them.” To the technocrats who drive big companies and governments, our own perceptions, as deliberately reported by us, are unreliable; our heartbeats and our seemingly private conversations with other people on Facebook are by contrast “good hard data.” Big data analysis purports to substitute for confronting people in all their specificity and messiness, and the observer doesn’t have to risk being observed. (Davies is less concerned with whether the big data folks are right about their predictions: maybe we do behave differently than we aspire to behave, and we report the latter when specifically asked, and that probably does have implications for the best social policy in response. But how that interacts with democracy is an open question, since democracy depends on reasoned deliberation.) The political aim is “that individual activity might be diverted towards goals selected by elite powers, but without either naked coercion or democratic deliberation.”
Behavioralism and nudging, Davies argues, are fundamentally undemocratic. Responses in response might come from any entity, not just a person. And while new forms of social exchange outside of monetary markets could be politically liberating, they can also be incorporated into management—so when Facebook tries to make you more likely to vote by highlighting how many of your friends have voted, it’s asserting and naturalizing its own power while supposedly promoting yours. We’re now not regarded by institutions as individuals, but as means to alter the beliefs and behaviors of those around us. So our user-generated content may be fun and free, but, distributed by platforms with their own significant interest in shaping both what we produce and how we react, it is not freeing. It’s particularly notable, Davies suggests, how these new social relationships are promoted: giving to others freely is a good idea because it makes us feel happier. “The advice is to stop thinking so much of oneself—but the justification is ultimately a self-centred one.”
Further, in a society directed at maximizing wellbeing, “political authority lies with those who are most expert to measure and manage individuals,” and there’s no particular reason why those people ought to be in government instead of private corporations. Just as responsibility for individual wellbeing has become privatized to each individual, so can responsibility for shaping the systems of measurement and management that achieve desired results. (Desired by whom? Well, by the rich and powerful, of course.) Instead, he argues, we should return to the basic propositions of democratic discourse: ask people what they think, want, and mean, and believe them unless we have good reasons not to do so. Managerial elites don’t like this because it means that everyone’s thoughts are important, and not in an opinion poll/counting way but in the sense that other people would need to be convinced to assent to choices that affect large numbers of people. Listening, rather than watching, is what is needed in a democratic polity.
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