The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong [Hardcover]

Jennifer Michael Hecht (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2007

Historian Jennifer Michael Hecht looks at contemporary happiness advice, explains why much of it doesn't work, and why it drives us crazy and makes us miserable. Using a social/pop-culture look at the world, she begins her inquiry through the lens of today's most often perused paths towards attaining happiness - money, mood-managing drugs, knowledge, celebration, and bodies - and then reveals unsuspected insights about how these approaches have faired throughout history. We moderns think we're so scientific - but our happiness solutions today are just as quirky as any group in history. With a new-found historical perspective, Hecht liberates us from the scolding, quasi-scientific messages that insist there's only one way to care for our minds and bodies. Rich with anecdotes about both failed and successful paths to happiness, Hecht traces a common thread of advice she calls "sour charm wisdom" that we can still apply today to create authentic, lasting happiness.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

History teaches us, contrary to popular belief, that money can buy happiness, drugs are mostly good, low-fat diets may not prevent cancer or heart disease. For Hecht, the assumptions about happiness that guide our actions are distorted by myths, fantasies and "nonsensical" cultural biases. Taking a tour of historical and contemporary ideas of happiness, Hecht (Doubt: A History) demonstrates that women's clothes shopping is a celebratory act of freedom from the long nights their ancestors spent spinning, and that the shopping mall gives us back some of the social intimacy of group activity that consumerism wiped out of our lives. In the 1830s, Sylvester Graham encouraged Americans to identify whole-grain, home-baked bread with happiness, a notion still embodied today in myriad message-carrying birthday and anniversary cakes. Our love of sports and exercise stems from Southern slaveholders' need to distance themselves from heavy labor and its connotation of slavery, and from the Protestant equation of happiness with aggressive self-control and self-denial. American ambivalence about drugs reflects our fears about unproductive happiness and palliatives that numb us into complacency. Although the erudite Hecht (Doubt: A History) sometimes loses her audience in verbose, philosophical dissections, her energetic romp through the arbitrariness of history's ideas about happiness is eclectic and entertaining, providing ample perspective on the rituals that make us human. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Adding to the recent spate of happiness books, Hecht, author of Doubt: A History (2003), proves a beguiling writer blessed with a most agile mind. She skillfully confronts modern assumptions about what it means to be happy, investigating four factors frequently involved in happiness--drugs, money, bodies, and celebration--historically in sections on the wisdom of happiness through the ages, "good" and "bad" drugs and telling the difference, the relationship of money and happiness, the physicality of the body, and the ritual of celebration. There are three kinds of happiness, she maintains, those roused by a good day, by euphoria, and by a happy life. Not only different, they are often at odds. Her conclusions are often blunt (surprise! Money can buy happiness) and also practical. She offers suggestions that can conceivably help make a happier life, but her good judgment, common sense, and insightful commentary make the book a pleasure not only to read but also to ponder. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (April 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060813970
• ISBN-13: 978-0060813970
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,118,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get Happy, May 8, 2007

By 

viktor_57 "viktor_57" (Fairview, Your Favorite State, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong (Hardcover)

Historian, poet and philosopher, Jennifer Michael Hecht has written expansively on the history of doubt and examined atheism in the context of anthropology in late nineteenth and early twentieth century France. This skeptical theme continues with "The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong", as Hecht takes a long view of the subject to show that "the basic modern assumptions about how to be happy are nonsense."

What are those assumptions? In the chapter on drugs, Hecht reminds us of the widespread use of opiates to treat even the most common of maladies and asks us reconsider the benefits of mood-altering drugs, cautioning, of course, against debilitating addiction. Money, though not a guarantor of happiness, nonetheless stimulates shopping and the gathering of shoppers into malls so that it becomes the "central public pleasure" where we "communicate with each other in the symbolic associational meanings of our ever shifting wardrobes and possessions." Our "cult of the body" Hecht dismisses by observing that "in the context of most of human history, our idea that a good life includes a lot of physical exercise is bizarre." Some people might dismiss the public fascination with dead or missing females such as Princess Diana or Elizabeth Smart as obscene or exploitative, but Hecht, harkening back to the Demeter myth in ancient Greek festivals, counters that because of the lack of regular, public displays of mourning, "People show their mutual grief because they have mutual grief; they show it in these eruptions when there are insufficient ways to show it scheduled into the regular calendar."

Hecht's prescriptions for happiness extend from the "core, classic wisdom" which includes self-knowledge, moderation of desires, awareness of ones own worth, and an appreciation for mortality. Her practical advice, however, seems to center around trying new things and greater involvement in community and with others.

"The Happiness Myth" ranges widely not only in pursuit of happiness, recalling not only classic philosophers and great humanist thinkers, but also exposes ephemeral, past attempts at happiness by characters like John Harvey Kellogg and fads such as "fletcherizing". This long view allows for a refreshing perspective on our own cultural times and asks us to question whether the goods offered to us to make us happy really do so.

For all its wit, erudition and skepticism, "The Happiness Myth" barely stops to question the worth of the pursuit itself or the many, varied levels of happiness, which Hecht simply defines as "feeling good." I have felt good and not been happy, and I have been happy and not felt good. True happiness, for a fully moral and responsible individual, might include actions and states of being which include pain and suffering, but are nonetheless consistent within the ethical framework and self-idealization of the individual. Conversely, to indulge in happiness at the expense of ones most aspired self must, in the long run, bring conflict and dissatisfaction. But perhaps that is a discussion for Hecht's next book.

42 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars not rigorous, not well thought-out, August 13, 2007

By 

Mark_a_reader (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong (Hardcover)

On the good side, Hecht is an excellent writer and has an entertaining way of mixing "high" and "low" culture. She has interesting - and for this reader, novel - things to say on several of the subjects. In particular, for me, her section on drugs was very interesting.

So why only 2 stars?
Frankly, I found this book very painful in various ways. There are many ways of approaching the subject of happiness. Instead of examining any one of the ways of looking at this question in depth, Hecht skims the surface.

This is particularly evident in the way that she handles the modern scientific studies of happiness. It's fine to criticize these studies and it's fine to ignore them (depending on context). Instead, Hecht just "sort of" engages with the studies. In the chapter on Money, she references the large body of work indicating that past a certain point, more money does not equal more happiness. Then, she argues that this is wrong. OK, I'm with her... but she just launches some cheap, small attacks on a small number of the studies. Then she uses "common sense" arguments to imply that the studies are wrong.

Well, the "big deal" with these studies is that our commonsense ideas about happiness are wrong. But Hecht doesn't seem to want to really grapple with these studies - she wants to mention them and just then dismiss them. It's not real intellectual argumentation.

Similarly, she bizarrely writes at length about how the links between diet and cancer now seem very weak. Well, what about heart disease (the leading killer in the USA of men)? Here, the links seem much, much stronger. So maybe diet matters... but wait a minute, how did we get to discussing this instead of the larger idea of how health and happiness are linked (to what extent, in what ways...)? There are a lot of digressions in this book, and I didn't find them very helpful usually.

So, in the end, I give it two stars because the rigor is just lacking. It's just not a clear-minded or sober examination of the issues. The arguments seem weak (last example: criticizing the concept of hedonic treadmill by talking about food consumption - what a ridiculous comparison - we need food to survive, but I sure don't need to get a better automobile to survive to next year...).

There is a lot to say from the perspective that Hecht brings, but she doesn't seem to want to honestly "get into it".

So... I'd recommend:
"Happiness" by Layard and "Stumbling on Happiness" by Gilbert. To my mind, these books make a strong argument that the "let's just reason about happiness" approach has deep problems.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a treat for the initiated, or at least open-minded, reader, October 15, 2007

By 

fCh "fCh" (GMT-5, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong (Hardcover)

Upon a superficial, incomplete, or dogmatic reading of this book, it's easy to dismiss it as yet another issuance of the NY-chattering class. Indeed, its colloquial style, the quick traversals from end-to-end of various facets concepts related the happiness, and the brief pondering of the center (read: moderation) from the left on several issues concerning happiness, make for as many reasons to discount this book.

However, should you look for a concise history of our take on happiness, and in effect how happiness is often a rather socially constructed path to whatever ends, then you'll be drawn into reading this book with great interest. Jennifer Michael Hecht (JMH) lines up many a view on happiness round concepts such a s wisdom, drugs, money, bodies, and celebration, from the ancient times to contemporaneity. Along the book, JMF hints only briefly at what might be viewed as her views/position on the above concepts. Some of the post-modern tools (e.g. irony) may even get in the way of any constructivist path to happiness, but this is just a sign of the times and intellectual debts of the author. Be patient though for the [C]onclusion chapter, titled "The Triumph of Experience" shows JMF's share of wisdom about happiness, which I dare summarize as moderation in experience. At a different level, the author seems to indicate that happiness and truth go hand in hand, and even though we may not learn the truth we should definitely be skeptical about the abounding lies that make some happy for a while. In other words, enduring happiness is rather the effect of wisdom.

Those seeking a new religion (of happiness, that is), some self-help bullet-point list to happiness, or a survey of the scientific literature on happiness (those studies revealing the increase of some hormone in 10 mice under whatever lab-conditions), and especially those with preconceived ideas on happiness, will be in for a huge disappointment for the author does little to programmatically meet such expectations.

All in all, a must read/have book. For the initiated reader (in Stoicism, say), this book is a healthy desert. For the open minded one, this may well be the first step to lasting happiness.