The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy

by Michael Foley

Who has not yearned to be younger, richer, more talented, more respected, more celebrated and, above all, more sexually attractive? Who has not felt entitled to more, and aggrieved when more was not forthcoming?

‘There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, and whatever throws this cycle out of balance – poverty and misery where exhaustion is followed by wretchedness instead of regeneration, or great riches and an entirely effortless life where boredom takes the place of exhaustion . . . ruins the elemental happiness that comes from being alive.’

the bubbly, smiley age of nice days is increasingly dosing itself with antidepressants. The brightly smiling depressive seems to be a phenomenon of the times.

Buddha expressly rejected the idea of faith as an abdication of personal responsibility – no one should believe anything just because someone else says so. Each individual must work out a personal solution.

in the mid-twentieth century, many surgeons actually caused similar effects by carrying out frontal-lobe lobotomy, a procedure supposed to cure many conditions from epilepsy to schizophrenia. This crude technique, used on thousands of people in prisons and mental homes, involved inserting a scalpel under the eyelid and hammering it through the bone to sever the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain. (Anyone in awe of the Nobel Prize should bear in mind that the 1949 prize for medicine was awarded to the two surgeons who pioneered this lobotomy procedure.)