NPR: Arguing the Upside of Being Down

NPR reports ...

All Things Considered, February 11, 2008 · Author Eric G. Wilson has come to realize he was born to the blues, and he has made peace with his melancholy state.

But it took some time, as he writes in his new book, a polemic titled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.

At the behest of well-meaning friends, I have purchased books on how to be happy. I have tried to turn my chronic scowl into a bright smile. I have attempted to become more active, to get away from my dark house and away from my somber books and participate in the world of meaningful action. … I have contemplated getting a dog. I have started eating salads. I have tried to discipline myself in nodding knowingly. … I have undertaken yoga. I have stopped yoga and gone into tai chi. I have thought of going to psychiatrists and getting some drugs. I have quit all of this and then started again and then once more quit. Now I plan to stay quit. The road to hell is paved with happy plans.

Wilson has embraced his inner gloom, and he wishes more people would do the same.
The English professor at Wake Forest University wants to be clear that he is not "romanticizing" clinical depression and that he believes it is a serious condition that should be treated.

But he worries that today's cornucopia of antidepressants — used to treat even what he calls "mild to moderate sadness" — might make "sweet sorrow" a thing of the past.

"And if that happens, I wonder, what will the future hold? Will our culture become less vital? Will it become less creative?" he asks.

the rest of the story ... audio and links to excerpts from the book ...

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Newsweek again: Happiness: Enough Already

Newsweek reports ...

The push for ever-greater well-being is facing a backlash, fueled by research on the value of sadness.

By Sharon Begley NEWSWEEK

The plural of anecdote is not data, as scientists will tell you, but consider these snapshots of the emerging happiness debate anyway: Lately, Jerome Wakefield's students have been coming up to him after they break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, and not because they want him to recommend a therapist. Wakefield, a professor at New York University, coauthored the 2007 book "The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder," which argues that feeling down after your heart is broken—even so down that you meet the criteria for clinical depression— is normal and even salutary. But students tell him that their parents are pressuring them to seek counseling and other medical intervention—"some Zoloft, dear?"—for their sadness, and the kids want no part of it. "Can you talk to them for me?" they ask Wakefield. Rather than "listening to Prozac," they want to listen to their hearts, not have them chemically silenced.

University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener, who has studied happiness for a quarter century, was in Scotland recently, explaining to members of Parliament and business leaders the value of augmenting traditional measures of a country's wealth with a national index of happiness. Such an index would measure policies known to increase people's sense of well-being, such as democratic freedoms, access to health care and the rule of law. The Scots were all in favor of such things, but not because they make people happier. "They said too much happiness might not be such a good thing," says Diener. "They like being dour, and didn't appreciate being told they should be happier." (For one man's struggle with the pressure to pursue happiness, click here.)

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Newsweek:The Pursuit of Unhappiness

Newsweek reports ...

Misery is a rational response to the world, but sometimes you just have to feel good. Try not to get carried away.

By Jerry Adler Newsweek Web Exclusive

What is this happiness of which the poets speak? Beats me. I have glimpsed it fleetingly in the shreds and scraps of dreams that slip away with the dawn—evanescent, like life itself. The better life is, the sooner it will seem to be over, and the greater the regret at leaving it behind. In his 80s, William S. Paley, the immensely wealthy and powerful head of CBS, would wail to friends, "Why do I have to die?" I've never actually had cause to wonder about that, but I have to admit, if I had Paley's life I wouldn't want to die either.

At other times happiness steals over me in the stillness of a Sunday afternoon in springtime, with the warmth of the sun soaking me down to my bones, making me feel … well, that's the problem right there: it makes me feel awful about climate change. Unhappiness is the natural outcome of fine-tuning one's sensibilities to the awful truths about the world. With every breath I draw I am mentally counting carbon dioxide molecules. I feel the hunger of the polar bears as acutely as if I were stranded myself on an ice floe drifting out to sea. I pine for extinct species of salamanders on the other side of the globe as if they were my own kids.

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