“When happiness has become championed and talked about incessantly, as it is today, the best we can hope for is that it raises other universal issues…”

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When happiness has become championed and talked about incessantly, as it is today, the best we can hope for is that it raises other universal issues — like equality, justice, truth and ethics, which we desperately need to discuss. The worst that can happen — and this is unfortunately already underway — is that happiness becomes a Trojan horse used to normalize inequality and oppression. Poor people may then be sent to happiness courses to improve their attitudes, or assigned personal life coaches, as Paul Ryan once proposed in his bizarre anti-poverty plan.

Carl Cederstrom, “The Dangers of Happiness”, The New York Times (19 July 2015), SR8.

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