The Happiness Industry Quotes

“Positive psychology, which repeats the mantra that happiness is a personal ‘choice’, is as a result largely unable to provide the exit from consumerism and egocentricity that its gurus sense many people are seeking.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“The mood-tracking technologies, sentiment analysis algorithms and stress-busting meditation techniques are put to work in the service of certain political and economic interests.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“The hope is that a fundamental flaw in our current political economy may be surmounted, without confronting any serious political–economic questions. Psychology is very often how societies avoid looking in the mirror.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“The spirit of this agenda originates with the Enlightenment. But those who have exploited it best are those with an interest in social control, very often for private profit.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Until relatively recently, most scientific attempts to know or manipulate how someone else was feeling occurred within formally identifiable institutions, such as psychology laboratories, hospitals, workplaces, focus groups, or some such. This is no longer the case. In July 2014, Facebook published an academic paper containing details of how it had successfully altered hundreds of thousands of its users’ moods, by manipulating their news feeds.14 There was an outcry that this had been done in a clandestine fashion. But as the dust settled, the anger turned to anxiety: would Facebook bother to publish such a paper in future, or just get on with the experiment anyway and keep the results to themselves? Monitoring”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold us Well-Being

“The mathematics of networks means that most people will have fewer friends than average, while a small number of people will have far more than average.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“There is indeed some evidence to suggest that individuals who use social media compulsively are more egocentric, prone to ‘exhibitionism’ and ‘grandiose behaviour’.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Принцип "зарплата за результат" похож на предыдущую концепцию: дополнительные усилия должны вознаграждаться увеличением зарплаты. Однако научные сотрудники Гарвардской школы бизнеса обнаружили более эффективный способ: повышение зарплаты нужно преподносить в качестве подарка. Если предлагать деньги в обмен на улучшение качества работы, то не исключено, что сотрудник решит, что эта прибавка им заслужена, и продолжит работать без изменений. Напротив, за денежное вознаграждение, преподнесенное "в альтруистическом порыве", работник почувствует себя обязанным начальнику и начнет трудится усерднее.”
― Уильям Дэвис, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“En lugar de indicar calidad, lo que indica es cantidad.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Es la principal razón por la que el Foro Económico Mundial actualmente se preocupa tanto por nuestra salud y por nuestra felicidad.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“La incesante fascinación por las cantidades de sentimiento subjetivo tan sólo puede distraer nuestra atención crítica de los problemas políticos y económicos de carácter más amplio.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Happiness is not something we can be factually right or wrong about, but which we either know how to express or don't”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“To assert the subjective, transcendent, intangible nature of the mind, in opposition to the physical body, is to keep flipping the same dualism on its head, like preaching a mindfulness doctrine that is one half neuroscience and thr other half Buddhism. To return to a vision of the mental realm as entirely private and invisible to the outside world is to remain trapped in a state of affairs where we keep asking ourselves neurotic and paranoid questions, such as 'What am I really feeling?" or "I wonder if he is truly happy". It is in this sort of confused philosophical territory that the owner of the brain scanner can promise to resolve all moral and political questions, once and for all.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Spending time with plants becomes a medical fix. After all, as positive psychologists relentlessly remind us, well-being is a choice. Someone needs to take my mind or brain in hand.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“but is unavoidably interpreted through a consumerist philosophy.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“When psychologists, neuroscientists or market researchers claim to have liberated their discipline from moral or philosophical considerations once and for all, the question has to be posed – so where do you get your understanding of humanity from, including its various emotional states, drives and moods? From your own intuition? And what feeds that?”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Once social relationships can be viewed as medical and biological properties of the human body, they can become dragged into the limitless pursuit of self-optimization that counts for happiness in the age of neoliberalism.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“The darker implication of strategically pursuing happiness via relationships is that the relationship is only as good as the psychic value or kick that it delivers.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“The fetish of celebrity permeates our own social lives, now that we are able to gaze at the carefully curated images and utterances of people we are actually acquainted with.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“While we grow increasingly accustomed to the idea of a private company, such as Google, collecting detailed data on the everyday behaviour of millions, the notion that the government might do the same remains more chilling.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“The ways in which we describe ourselves and our mental afflictions are now shaped partly by the financial interests of big pharma.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Slavoj Žižek has argued, enjoyment has become an even greater duty than to obey the rules. Thanks to the influence of the Chicago School over government regulators, the same is true for corporate profitability.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“It is only in a society that makes generalized, personalized growth the ultimate virtue that a disorder of generalized, personalized collapse will become inevitable.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“There is a long history of viewing sufferers, especially those of suspicious character, as exaggerating or wrongly describing pain.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

“Facebook published an academic paper containing details of how it had successfully altered hundreds of thousands of its users’ moods, by manipulating their news feeds.”
― William Davies, The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being