Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Happiness Industry 20240622

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] hello everyone. Welcome to the powerhouse arena. This is your first time here i would like to say that this is the arena portion of our evening which is to say we have a great event for you tonight. We regularly have awesome events but we are very excited for this one, the book launch of the happiness industry with will davies and simon critchley. Neither program is going to feature a talk and then a q a session followed by a book signing and i do want to say if you do have a question when the time comes, raise your hand. I will come to you and you can talk into the microphone. If you havent noticed we have a few cameras rolling right now. If you dont lead the glamorous life like i do and you are not used to the cameras. I want to briefly introduce our author. Will davies is a sociologist and local economists. His writing is. And reviews prospect of Financial Times political quarterly and the daily beast. Hes an associate editor at renewal. He currently teaches at goldsmiths of london and a few words about our moderator simon critchley. We actually had a few words about how in accurate and nonsensical this bio i have of his is so he asked me not to read it but to make some witty remarks which i hopefully just did. Please put your hands together for william and simon. [applause] thank you very much and welcome to i hate people that do this when they begin events but im going to do it for a student of mine. Im very proud to be here and this is a fantastic look and you should buy it and read it and make money for those that are good people. Its clear, its acutely written and full of conspicuous analysis of contemporary ideology. I guess the first question i want to ask as we were talking in the coffee bar now a couple of minutes ago about the way this book came about and its relationship to the financial crisis so maybe we could begin talking about that. E my research for this book was focused on how economics influence these Public Policies and how economics can be a rationality for politics today. It was during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 that i like many people became very interested in how the regime was going to end and a new regime was going to emerge and many people at the time believed that its clearly an entire rationality and warm of political economy had reached its terminal endpoint. The bbb said the bbc said for capitalism and socialism. So i was watching closely how with this big transition play out and we now know that none of those forms of transition actually occurred. The crisis was not really a crisis at all in the sense of the turning point and i looked at what were the arguments that were being made within the economic profession and within the policy me can profession for how such a catastrophic failure could occur but in ways that didnt condemn the politics are the recreations and i began to notice this psychology and neuroscience were central to how the economics profession in policymaking establishment was interpreting this financial meltdown as we now know that cost as much as an entire world war would cost and they begin to make these arguments that Financial Traders were suffering from biases, that they were guilty of adopting the wrong behavioral habits and so on. The brainless guilty about misleading people about risks in these extraordinary arguments that completely left the state and capitalism off the hook. I think one of the things that runs through the book is psychology is often how society avoids looking in the mayor and since psychology has this capacity to support forms of capitalism where critique and blame and political attention is thrust upon the individual and upon their minds, brains body and their four diverse as a way. Thats what led me to start looking into the history of economic psychology and the rest of the book kicks off from this question of how has economics come to look at the minds the brains and behavior in the way that it has and the merging of economics and psychology into this new animal behavioral economics such was neuroscience. Lets talk about the happiness industry because in terms of this is something which is it new . The book is largely historical so maybe you can tell us about what the happiness industry is and where it emerged from. There something that happened in the last 20 years. There were areas historical ways to which you can trace the genealogy or the history. I think the last 20 years there has been a huge upsurge among neuroscientist marxist management theorists that we are now acquiring objective knowledge about human feelings Human Emotions emotions in particular and this is largely a result of breakthroughs in the neurosciences of the 1990s and this has unleashed an entire industry of narrow marketing which looks at how brands provide different emotional responses to the brain but equally other forms of eight tourists and scientific analysis things like facial scanning by Companies Like active after the anakin do this through computer webcam. There are Companies Like the on verbal which monetary motion and the boys within a or Something Like that so theres a kind of huge optimism among scientists and those that have businesses that its now possible to ultimately acquire object of knowledge about emotions, so emotions are becoming represented as objective on, now. We think about doing something so happen to us better a private matter that they are becoming rendered explicit, visible identifiable and thereby integrated into very various forms of business that issue also point out theres a much longer history of this as well because in many ways the concern is why would we even think that emotions in particular are things thatenable to forms of objective scientific knowledge in scientific knowledge of the firstplace . Why would we want to subject their feelings to this type of scientific analysis and thats where the book against in the late 18th century and for bentsen the problem of politics, the risk of politics Democratic Politics was that is what he called the tyranny of sounds language, political language involved the use of these dangerous words like justice or the Public Interest or the common good which didnt really refer to anything. They were the sort of flowery abstract terms on mike the language of the Natural Sciences that didnt refer to anything objective and to bentsen the sites of happiness for what is the most known for the greatest happiness in the greatest number in a philosophical sense meant in a scientific sense a calculable noble thing. So what happiness could do would be to rescue us from the tyranny of the sounds, the tyranny of people using language in these sorts of unscientific misleading ways and i think in many ways when you look whats going on today with the rise of Data Analytics Wearable Technology consulting Something Like an apple watch how am i doing today how much have i walked today . Whether my moods today which can be done by computers. In a way he means 21st century manifestation because it is holding up what i would basically argue is a utopia that are interstate is something that can be noble just like her Blood Pressure or the temperature of the weather outside and inner sensations are no no different from any other types of objective phenomena and can be known in that way. There some remark you made early on which is an incredibly suggestive and you say one of the foundational in favor of the markets was that it served as a fast device capturing opinions. Its possible you then say that the cost of the new course postneoliberal era in which the market is no longer the primary tool for the capture of mass sentiment. So perhaps for the benefit of the Radio Audience in the room and the wider audience you can talk about neoliberal is neoliberalism and its relationship to the market and how this what new form is emerging for the happiness industry. Is that what you are suggesting . One of the foundational texts is high x. The use of knowledge in society in 1945 and what i got from that article is that experts can never know enough about society in order to take good policy decisions whereas the market is a scientific device. The market is not something where we have our needs met or periods traces in interest and so on. Its actually a way of discovering things. Its a prime device for discovering what is on peoples minds effectively. So we have this kind of psychological function for neoliberal thinkers such as hayek because as the quotes indicate its a way of like opinion polling. Unlike opinion polling it can happen in real time. They can happen in a constant emerging involving science of what people want to feel, hope come at desire, whatever it might be. This requires elements of the market that prices rise and fall of this is indicator of what people are feeling from one moment to the next and people of tried to use this to do polling and Prediction Markets and elections and that kind of thing. What im suggesting is a possibility is that once you can monitor people in real time through using twitter or an apple watch and there have been suggestions of conducting realtime facial analysis using cameras. This actually happened two years ago in britain. They conduct did realtime emotional analytics studying peoples faces through cameras. You are no longer dependent on the market in the same way because these technologies are flooding our private lives in the form of Wearable Technology and social media. They are flooding our work cases where Wearable Technology is now becoming integrated into things like Human Resources and so on but potentially they also can monitor public activity that in a way is the promise that has been referred to the idea that everything we do in our public lives is leaving a trail in that trail is amenable to a form of devaluation, measurement judgment and so on. So that is in a way i think the promise of the current idealism of Silicon Valley is that we might be able to move to a postneoliberal age where the market starts to look rather lowtech and old hat in old hat in some ways. C this is a mutation within capitalism and one way of thinking about this and this is where i want to get into before we open it up to the audience is one way of thinking about where we are is this is a kind of prison that we are constructing for ourselves which makes a classical vision of capitalism seem rather hopeful and optimistic and rather nice. Every aspect about our lives are socalled inner core is capture bull marketable and can be played back to us as a form of appetizer. So you have this great line where you talk about what we are moving towards is a single index for human optimization, single index for human optimization and thats the target of the book and what that does to human beings and to talk about the happiness, the science of happiness as critique turned inwards and maybe you could talk about that. What we are going to douse the critical side of the book. Can you explain what you mean by the happiness industry as critique and how we can turn away from that . E. When i say critique turned inward what i mean is in situations where there is human suffering the target of social science but also of lyrical critique is shifted away from the outside world in a way that someone like karl marx with material realities towards subjective responses to material realities so Something Like psychology may not condemn people. It may not actually say you are a loser but it suggested people they are mistaken in some of their responses to their situations and they need to learn different kinds of responses. So not just combining things like psychotherapy but also in the workplace. Instead of employees making a demand on management by at trade union or whatever in some ways the agenda for making employees happier which is a huge part of this and we can talk about it that but its a huge productivity agenda to get people more engaged in their work to espy lets talk about that. C thats a lot of Economic Research on this and theres a figure ice in the book that comes from the Polling Company gallup that the cost of to the u. S. Economy of psychological disengagement is 500 billion a year which is i dont know how they calculate that but obviously ive wondered millions dollars of gains are veiled available you can imagine how seriously that will be taken. So managers and work vices have a huge concern in our happiness and making us happier. In some ways its very problematic for critique and politics because we cant really be against work that is fulfilling. Its difficult to say that i want work to be on for filling or oppressive. You want to be on the side of the tragic celebration of alienation or i dont anyway but the problem in terms of the point of tiegs is rather than saying what would a workplace look like or what would a business look like with governance ownership, relationships to nonwork and how many hours you work in the day and that sort of thing. Instead of asking those questions critiquing outwards, the question is how can we influence peoples experiences in their work so they find their work more rewarding and they are happier and i did an event in philadelphia couple of days ago where someone asked a question of the audience saying he worked in a business where people were obliged that Pharrell Williams is happy. This is a slightly absurd of the happiness industry but the sense that our relationships are something that can be changed is a key feature of the happiness industry. I say one doesnt want to be against happiness. In a way and some of your work you have commented on that. Im absolutely against happiness. The truth is you seem to have a choice. Call me oldfashioned but there you go. But look in relation to that point think about work actresses what we have seen our various kinds of people who work on organizations corporations and the last two years have documented and we see ourselves. An extraordinary and formalization of work. This could be research and some of you might yet work. You get up in the morning and you start to read your even now and its not work so there is this and formalization of work. We no longer know where the limits of work and nonwork are and that raises the question well because the future we are meant to have in the past was a future of endless legend that all the free time in the question in the future is how do we fill this free time . Translator and also strangely exactly the opposite happened. We have no free time and are constantly at work. We find it very hardpressed to say what the nature that work is and this is totally subjective process. Now if thats the case how does critique turned outwards . How does one begin to think through that . There is a dialectical insight and many dialectical insights in this book but this one moment i want to focus on which is on page two of the 14 which i will try to find. And you say the following. Its a fascinating moment. Karl marx believed that by bringing Work Together in the factory and forcing them to Work Together capitalism was creating class formation which was eventually overwhelming the marx analysis of the paradox of the contradictions of capitalism. This was despite the ideology which stressed the privacy of individuals transacting in the marketplace. Similarly individuals may be brought together for their own mental and physical health for their own private hedonistic kicks social congregations can develop their own logic. Social congregations which is not individual wellbeing or pleasure read this is the hope that currently lies dormant in this new format like in life that we exist. Can we talk about that, social congregations and this seemingly oppressive prisonlike structure of the world of the market and emotions that we are living through might perceive this transformation. But cant rest of that suggestion is the idea of the social has become a preoccupation for various people in Market Research and business and Health Policies we have a phenomenon in britain which is called social prescribing. When someone goes to the doctor with various forms of psychosomatic symptoms a combination of Mental Health problems worthlessness and bury us other things and rather than prescribe a behavioral intervention doctors can now prescribe social activities. It might be Something Like joining acquire or gardening or dancing or that sort of thing. What is intriguing about that and im not an out in a proponent of that but think of the that the question is with relation to Mental Health is how do you you medical eyes that kind of problem . Medical icing problems is a way of keeping them within expert reviews particular types of technical interventions whether it be pharmaceutical or not it in a way what intrigues me about this new interest and social media is a key part of this because of course social media now allows a closer relationship to become visible and quantifiable and manipulable by various companies but at the same time as we become more and more comments the question of how we connect with each other which is things like describing a concern for some of these expert techniques of social analytics and in this sort of thing. The question is the point you see it as dialectical whether something can emerge from any of that which is not producible to the logic which brings it to being in the first place. How might that work . I suppose that is the question but the first thing it requires which is the same in the book is unique for zabala different vision of a human being really. You need to vision of a human being who is not simply somebody who behaves, somebody who is amenable to the various stimulus and response and away the behavioral psychology views it. You need a human being which later in the book eyeblink liechtenstein is someone who is vocal, someone who in a way if someone who has the authority to explain and narrate their own experiences and circumstances and therefore in relationship to dialogue with other people. That dialogue with people isnt just a form of behavior. Its not what psychologists call report on their inner state. But people say isnt to be judged in terms of factually true or factually false and psychology views but actually its the basics for relationships and that might be on a small scale but also i would argue the basic of democratic relationships is where as well where ultimately human beings speak to each other and they do so in ways that cant be rendered entirely predictable. Exactly how it happens is. Because its the villain of the vote is bentham and the heroes victims shine the democratic dialogue so if what has happened with the happiness industry is to critique we have gone into what philip reef used to call a long time ago the liturgy of witness. We have gone into the liturgy of inferiority as a way of escaping from the tyranny of sounds. Your suggestion than with the turnout towards dialogue towards language then traded which is interesting so you are hopeful cracks the last word of the book is hope and i just wondered how hopeful you are. Lets talk about hope. The last word hope. This is something you want to bring up. This is really interesting. Its the valorization of smartness. The book ends with we live in this happiness industry is also an industry about the production of smart tvs smart cards, smart this, smart that. Everyone has to be smart. What is smart about a sob and the answer to this question is should we celebrate dumbness . Maybe, maybe. Whats wrong with that . But then where the last word in the book hope where would hope why . For bentham the problem was the tyranny of sound doesnt perfectly camp sure in. Reality and in a way that has to be turned into something which we resent and want to eliminate into something which we affirm and celebrate but also recognizes the basis for tragedy and comedy and something which psychoanalysis is the agreement is equally hostile to the bentham you. Analysis language is flawed messy, doesnt quite say what it means to say and yet its all that we have got really. You cant get around speech. And of course there are nonverbal forms of communication but they are still nevertheless culturally certain in certain respects. So i think in some ways this is the critique critique of smartness because smartness in some ways suggests a kind of efficiency of representation and some way the idea that mike caddell knows exact weight how hot i like my coffee whatever it might be. There is a fact about me, the fact about what i want and affect about where he ought to go that day and how i ought to get their can be collected and have them sorted out in a perfect efficient fashion is the promise of smartness or Something Like that. I suppose theres always a fantasy and matt like living in environment it is perfectly adaptable to whatever you want before you know that you wanted in some way so it has no failure. Has no ambiguity, has no opacity for comedy in no capacity for tragedy because it doesnt accept that human beings speak in ways that are ambiguous and amenable to understanding but at the same time can also indicate far more than a number. So there is hope. Bentham is the line only to the hopeless is hope given. But i suppose accepting that we get things wrong is also the only basis or hope in a society that wants this kind of perfect empirical representation. So should we just give up the idea of happiness . You kind of hedge your bets around that in the book. To say happiness is the ideal of human foraging. You find it in aristotle. Its really rather specific and an idea less of this was for him came with the light of contemplation which was research for a few people a lot of those who could experience genuine happiness and what we have seen in history happens is it that rather elitist but substantial idea of happiness has become the service of goods. Happiness has become a point of viable metric and that is kind of what youre analyzing in the book. But wouldnt the response be loved and we should give up the fight of happiness and just embrace normal human misery . Embrace normal human misery. [laughter] aspire to normal human misery. Normal human misery might the something we can yearn after and we have been bewitched by this idea of happiness and this idea of wellbeing. Wellbeing fulfillment or the american version of this is authenticity. The idea of authenticity leaving an authentic life and havoc authentic of life in your private life in your work life and everything has to be authentic. Its just interesting that the greatest american novel is i think arguing that authenticity is a white whale that is going to kill you. Maybe happiness you say the same thing about happiness so wouldnt one conclusion of the book be that you should just give up this idea of happiness . Its delusional. I wouldnt give up on happiness. I would certainly abandon happiness is something that can be produced in this machinelike way but i think maybe rather than happiness the reduction of suffering is something that is plausible, something which involves some mundane political act, political reforms. There are things that could be done tomorrow which would reduce a lot of suffering. You can reduce the amount people work. You can distribute work in different ways so in some ways one of the things you describe in the book aint dialectical there are aspects of economics and statistics that seated in a more permanent way in the book. It comes through the science high levels of active ethos in the work laser high level of inequality in unemployment and security. This is why whenever you hear someone like Prime Minister David Cameron talking about caring about wellbeing there are clear things you could do an economy tomorrow to reduce suffering and if you want to call that promoting happiness then so be it people that are trying to raise children well the thing very precarious economic lives have no capacity for happiness. The stress of doing that sort of thing is terrible and there have been various psychological studies done of some of the reforms of the British Government at the moment, things like welfare reforms that are loading more and more stress and responsibility on people who are party phone or both effectively punishing them for their vulnerability and their weakness and a quite maligned and punitive sense. So i think there are things within contemporary capitalism which cause suffering could be changed so in that way i have a rather more simple point of view of this. I think those types of interventions and those types of reforms are thwarted by this constant throwing back of an individual save of an individual safe you are unhappy they needed behave differently or think differently or choose differently. In some ways its a rather traditional argument for different political economy. Thats good. Do you think its different in the United States talking about the british context. Here we have happiness as a political factor the pursuit of happiness and so on. Do you think the question of happiness is differently articulated in the american context . Is of more purposes the more pervasive . Anecdotally i think that is the case in america has a much larger self helped psychology culture and i think the Cultural Impact of that the presence in american last 30 years has been far more pronounced than it has been in britain. When i say cultural i mean in the sense that they view that each human being can worship to a greater extent to some form of expert intervention which is the broader cultural of antidepressant beyond the limits of their youth but i think its Something Different in the United States and i think in a way this brings us back to neoliberalism and a way. It is what the american worldview in the new liberal world view shares the core political questions of society have been completely settled. In america they were settled in the late 18th century. For neoliberals they been settled by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and therefore the opportunity for political transformation and cultural transformation cannot any longer happen at the level of laws or society and therefore must happen at the level of subjective feelings cognition, behavior and so on. So hope and sense of progress and a sense of the future being different from the past can only arrive through interiority and that is where it although britain is in a state of political deadlock right now. But i think thats part of it. How would you answer that question . Is it riders person living in the United States . Theres a sense in which after the financial crisis that was in dublin and when people lost jobs in dublin or in london they tended to blame the government. They tended to blame themselves so theres a shame so one was bound up with these should deep structural shifts which was the phenomena but the effect of that was in effect of that level of ones interiority rebus is the really are. This was a good equal failure if youre out of work. Theres a sense in which the ethos of happiness and the turn towards interiority is deeper and its staff that maybe has been translated over into other cultures. But we should open this up because its time. We need a microphone thats going to go around so you have to wait until the microphone arrives but if anyone would like to ask a question or make an intervention. Or sing a song or imitate pharrell or whatever you would like really. Hi. I feel like the basic philosophy that every College Freshman rights is about happiness when youre comparing and contrasting aristotle and kant. Do you still see those divisions play out in our response to the happiness industry . Well i argue and this is a particularly surprising thing to argue there is actually an interesting german influence running through it as well. The book i talk about the origins of psychology in the last 19th century. In 18 50s from in some ways the first relationship between the world and the mind. So content and kantian and aristotle in he tried to answer these questions by doing bizarre experiments where he lifted weights to try and discover how long it took for the weights to create pain. If i double the size of the weight what does that do to my sense of the feeling . In a way it kind of new age question. There are multiple divisions here. None of them are kantian really. Kantian philosophy is sort of antiutilitarian. Even if something causes me misery if i should do what i should do it if im a kantian philosopher. I think what i dislike about some of the proponents of happiness intervention is a lot of claim to be aristotelians. Its about flourishing and its about the good life it is about virtue and thats why you need to take another thousand steps every day so you shift from a rich ethical concept of human fulfillment and human helio og2 at behavior of analysis of measurements control. I dont know few have anything to add to that simon in terms of how different philosophical positions are play here is. I was popped by this kantian woman brilliant philosopher named nora oneil and she is to wear a tshirt at the summer picnic which said kantian stew stew and in the sense that is what is disappeared is that idea of morality being something that one does as a relationship of duty which usually has some relationship to guilt. Kant says what is the moral law feel like . If it feels like pain it would be the experience of the moral law so this is going to be opposite of the idea of happiness and in many in many ways and thats the way i would knock on the kantian direction and i dont want to just experience pain all the time but in the sense its the way in which the seamlessness of our capture within this regime of images. The theme is about capture within this world which is a world which is reflecting back to us in some way that feels inferior interior and it feels intimate and is objectified bull and data. Its a peculiar state because you feel on your laptop or whatever that this is intimate than you are having a intimate relationship with somebody. We know that and that is not the moment we are in and it seems we are stuck within this imaginary regime of images which makes us puts us in a rather peculiar place. Who wants to Say Something else . Please the jones woman over there. Wait for the mic. The issues you raised in relation to the increasing robotics and the diminishing capacity for people to find work that is perhaps satisfying and lets themselves support themselves without demeaning themselves in a 60 or 80 hour work week . Its not something i talk about in the book. Im not sure im all that follow fight to speak about it. There is a fear as you indicate that maybe work the amount of work is just going to shrink and the rise of the uber economy is going to lead people to be chasing evermore contingent and careless types of work. And i think that will clearly increase the amount of stress in society if that happens. And it will therefore become necessary according to the proponents of happiness that people engage in more forms of mindfulness and meditation and so on in order to keep them within that kind of economic system. But in terms of there are more idealistic views of this and there are those who have argued that in this kind of society you need to have basic income. There are types of policy suggestions as to how you could make such a society livable. It isnt something which really addresses the book and im not sure what i think about all of that. Who is next . Over here. Wait for the mic to come. You out opposite talk about this construct of happiness and i wonder for all in your book you talk about happiness as defined in what the meaning of that is. I think ive heard you use the word flourishing a number of times and my secondary question to that is our we perhaps creating this culture where peoples expectations are too high . People are able to be comfortable being uncomfortably as they have this sense that things should be perfect all the time. Its a good question. 20 years at the Second World War were happiness becomes there were different historical stopping point to one of them is the 1940s, 50s and early 60s which is a key comments were happiness is defined in a particular way and is defined in the way that its medical, the founding of the World Health Organization in 1948 the wind health as a state of complete physical mental and social wellbeing. Effectively it means that we are on healthy really. And ant depressants happened in 1950s and then antidepressants happened in what to call them because the effects of the spill was so diffuse. They thought about calling them energizers. Theres no symptoms daily va. They just seem to make people feel more themselves and in a way that tizon with this mood of trying to come up with the science of human politifact a. , human capability and forcing and so on. You get the first measure of happiness of the entire nation in 1965 and all of that amounts to a view of happiness and what each of the should have because otherwise wed in some way. Its also something that is amenable to expert management expert view an expert measurement but also crucially contextualize. Its not im happy because im with someone arent happy because something has happened or im happy because i love my job or im happy because i just feel happy today he is a view of happiness that something which is worked on maintained and something which is a little bit like health. That is where the way brings us wellbeing. Wellbeing is in some ways the term that captures that postwar construct more accurately. Happiness tends to move around between different definitions. There are psychologists who say they can run a survey on you and find out if you are happy and there are psychotherapists that that but i think that wellbeing concept is something that emerges in the postwar trade. Its quite medicalized in the quite quantifiable way but crucially sexualize. Also together with the rise of spirituality the decline of certain he says we have given up a strong idea of god and replaced it with a weak and pervasive spirituality. Its that we pervasive spirituality that this will be soft and mushy those wellbeing. Could you talk about dubai and singapore the happiest places on her . This is something i mentioned when simon and i were chatting beforehand. Dubai has drank the koolaid on happiness and is placed itself to become the happiest city in the world. They have a egovernment agenda collecting constant feedback on how people are feeling. So the facial skin company tivo for their our rumors that might use at tvec Type Technology to collect Realtime Data on peoples emotions. Their interfaces that they decided he can see them on the internet which is a smiley face a neutral base in an unhappy face. As you were going about Public Service he can hit these buttons. We have come across these things and things like surgeries and in a way in the 1930s. After my book was published i got rung up completely out of the blue last week by someone of the dubai team. I dont think you have read my book about happiness and im not sure im going to help you become the happiest in the world i keep laying my cards close to my chest because this is the goal for psychologists, but he said im currently in the u. K. And i need to make a phonecall now because i dont want to talk to about this when i get back to the dubai. He said just so you know his excellency i cant room for the title of dubai wants to buy it to be the happiest city in the world. He sees dubai in a constant contest against singapore to be not only that happiest state in the world and he doesnt want any negative feed that on any of this. To get done smiley face onto the interface so that hadnt been for a little dose of reality we would give you the choice of being neutral and happy. And he confessed to me in confidence and hear him talking about it in new york on cspan television. There was no chance that dubais happiness Data Collection was going to generate anything other than incredibly positive outcome for the specifics. Otherwise singapore might end up being the happiest city. One thing that is for sure is that new york will never be the happiest city in the world. We know that. People are miserable, coveting and complaining. I was just wondering if you could compare this content notion of doing it out of duty with the ethics of desire. See that its very similar. Pal because you have technology you dont know where the stuff is coming from but thats the only sense you have gotten like going along with this thing you dont fully digest or understand where its coming from. Was dealing with the book in many ways is this strange situation we find ourselves in relationship between psychotherapy or forms of state administered therapy in countries like written. Behavioral therapy and psychoanalysis and psychomouses is connected to the idea of normal human misery and that means traversing your truth of who you are a tester relationship to your desire and this is not giving way on ones desire or on that which desires in you. That which desires the new isnt going to make you happy. It produces these disorders that we experience and the neuroses we experience. The way i see psychoanalysis is a psychoanalysis in its strongest tradition as a commitment to an idea of truth the truth of the self which is always within the idea of happiness. The thing is we just might need the kind of creatures who were not made for happiness. That might need the best thing about us. So we have what makes us the queue here is her peculiar ability not to coincide with ourselves, not to be satisfied by the state of affairs. There is this thing within us that constantly irritates, rubs against us and at the same time that is what makes possible this turning outwards. Its fast that we articulated language and social life. I guess what will is arguing in the book is its a very kind of classical analysis. Its social. Its language and being with others. In relation to that would social media just be antisocial . Again putting it ilec to glade in some ways there are seeds of social within social media and there are ways in which social media can produce something other than just itself but of course in many ways its an expansion of economic and managerial analysis of everyday life. In some ways, i mean lennon said in a socialistic society the whole society would be like one Large Corporation inspired by Frederick Taylor the first management guru. If corporations are so efficient lets just run the society like a Massive Corporation and get these free markets. In a way i think theres something similar immolation to facebook. Lets take the techniques that work well inside these huge healthy corporations and throw them outward unto society so Behavioral Management psychological rather than keep that in side the corporation this is an away what he is talking about in his essay is this idea that they just sort of seep out. They sort of get everywhere and they end up in tattoos and that sort of thing. Was set to match . With the spirituality. My concern i am not quite sure what the question was. [inaudible] i believe that is right. But how do you know, . Denmark is supposedly the happiest nation on earth so with the spirituality question the book is mainly concerned with the things that we have talked about attempts to render emotions to integrate in parts of policy. And though they get really deals with this rich from a question but what seems to me is the behavior is view of a human being with us social scientist for the biologists there is nothing leftover ones you subject them to of this analysis is an away clearly there is something more about human beings and even the most behaviorist scientists must realize there is something leftover about the human condition which is somehow they dont quite capture and i think that is why with the spiritualism because of the remainder of essentialism. Be the change that you want to be. But there are parts that are leftover because it is a voyage of mystery or ambiguity. It does not ultimately working and it breaks down that is right think spirituality comes in and. It is about getting back to work and to work more efficiently that some spirituality serves this. Especially in america you to take this in a couple of ways because i want you to be wealthy he wants you to be happy that god himself is suffering and the resurrected christ the wounds remain so is there a parallel with original sin . I am all about original san. If you could translate that into christian terms then christ was really stupid. So we could go on and christianity is one version of this. It has been reduced to prosperity the ecumenical spurt jollity crap spirituality crap but it is more demanding. Love is a kind of paid and it does not make me happy. We have this idea of that love and happiness go to gather but think about for more than 30 seconds, is crazy. I have two quick comments. The first with the mention of the antidepressant a lot of people are prescribed mood stabilizers rather than antidepressants. But it is about the stasis as the flat line because you still want them to be too happy or that goes against contemporary unhappiness horror discontent mentor like a cruel optimism because of the expectations what happens for the state that provides for us to make us richer than our parents and falls away . Rehab of mood stabilizer rather they have the into the present. Second, of the documentarys of adam kurtis. That does relate to the themes of robots. I do recommend these films of youre not familiar with them because i think it offers the allied for these discussions. We do know his work. There was propaganda. Of course, it is. His nephew comes to endure to say i should do propaganda of your case say that it is not a good word so we will call it public relations. Billing back to what you said earlier about technology i worked and when the touched technology came out we started to see the results so in 2013 with the records to show how peoples feelings were changing have their emotions internally. It is very simple that we as human beings externalized Anything Possible if we can but the moment we start to touch the divided in a longer existed but now there is a whole valley its back to spirituality. We are connected to everything but it is us that extra malaises but now going to the three or four dimensional world, now we are confronted with the brand new reality so when we do have the ability to do that. So my question to you is happiness. If it is a weapon and . They teach happiness to soldiers to said they could be more mentally resilient in warfare. One of the figures a mentioned in the book he studies the underwrote underpinnings of the relationships of trust. If you have invaded a country and you want your boots on the ground not to be shot at or below the up up, you need to teach them how to behave in certain ways like that would indeed to relations of the trust the u. S. Military uses Behavioral Scientist but but it depends. I think there are different types of agendas. Those neurosciences neurosciences, economics this the idea that human to beings are different depending on the agenda so there is a different version of happiness if you are a manager or a doctor or soldier. At all think there is a single instrumentality going on but the mere fact that there are so many different ways to westernize happiness suggest a fundamental flaw of that was mentioned in earlier to get to the single root of why human beings are all about and all to motley why you have to do a sociology test that it is completely contingent of the economic interest. Thank you for coming. Go get a book signed. Faq moderators. [applause] spirit just a reminder we do have copies for sale at the register and we will be citing them. Thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations]