Happiness is overrated and unproductive

During the J-term course on systems theory I made a passing comment in class about the current use of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications (over)prescribed in our culture. It was made during a moment of rabbit-chasing while we were talking about the concept of anxiety.

My rambling comments including the thought that a theory that has “anxiety” as a fundamental concept related to the human experience and the nature of relationships can become obsolete if we succeed in coming up with a pill for anxiety. I mentioned that when I was a hospice chaplain it was not the practice of our hospice to prescribe antidepressants. While our primary value was compassionate palliative care for our patients we held to the position that in patients with terminal illnesses the experience of depression was congruent to the experience and appropriate to the circumstance. To deny them what was a natural and necessary part of the experience of dying one’s own death would be hubris. We didn’t ignore depression in our patients, but we didn’t medicate it out of them either.

The other comment I made in passing was the notion, raised every once and again, that one consequence of denying people the angst of the human experience was to risk aborting its expression in high art. Who can deny that some (most?) of our greatest works of art, in any medium, were the expression, and result, of the creative force in the aftermath of depression, angst, and despair? As one who prefers the pathos of Lent over the happy anticipation of Advent the issue is not unimportant. After class one student shared that the previous day she’d heard an interview about that very argument. And the following day I received an e-mail from a former student who asked, “Is there a difference in being happy and being satisfied? Can you be one and not the other?” I’m not sure what’s behind the questions but they sound related to the issue at hand.

Eric G. Wilson wrote an interesting piece titled, “In Praise of Melancholy: American culture’s overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life” in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Jan. 18, 2008). He wrote:

We are eradicating a major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia.
….
I for one am afraid that American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society’s efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?

Why does that paragraph raise in me thoughts about the whole “praise service” thing? But, that’s a blog for another day . . .