THE PERPETUAL EUPHORIA

According to Pascal Bruckner, a new collective intoxicant has invaded Western societies: the cult of happiness. The command is: Be happy! It's a terrible imposition that's difficult to escape precisely because it purports to be for the good of all. How, then, do we know if we are happy? And what should we say to those who lamentably confess, "I can't do it"? Should we recommend wellness therapies like Buddhism, consumerism, and other happiness techniques? What has happened to humankind's relationship with pain in a world where sex and health have become their despots? For Bruckner, the duty of happiness is the ideology that forces us to evaluate everything through the lens of pleasure and discomfort, the injunction to euphoria that casts ignominy or malaise upon those who don't embrace it. As a consequence, unhappiness and suffering are considered outlawed, at risk of being lived anonymously, of resurfacing where no one expects them. Our time tells a strange tale: that of a society dedicated to hedonism, for which everything becomes irritation and torment.