Should I ever meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama, my instinct would be to punch him in the face. He has a very annoying continuous chuckle. He ‘is happy and breathes happiness’, according to his acolytes - and how can anyone be like that and remain sane?
I’m glad I’m not the only person harbouring such cynical thoughts. Pascal Bruckner, in this brilliant book, is also irritated by the Dalai Lama, calling him ‘this hammy prophet’ who spouts ‘amiable twaddle’ about everyone’s duty and right to be carefree and euphoric.
It seems such a nice philosophy, but actually it is the cause of much dissatisfaction and depression. To want to be happy all the time is a ‘juvenile enthusiasm’, according to Bruckner.
If religions defer happiness - jam tomorrow - then those who try to establish euphoria here on Earth are also in for trouble. The clause in the American Declaration of Independence about ‘the pursuit of happiness’ has created endless dissent.
Money doesn't buy happiness: Viv Nicholson's famous pools win led her into a spiral of 'alcoholism and smashed cars'
Money doesn't buy happiness: Viv Nicholson's famous pools win led her into a spiral of 'alcoholism and smashed cars'
Money, for example, as has been proved time and again, doesn’t buy happiness, only a better class of despair. The Pools Winner, Vivien Nicholson, for instance, spiralled into a pit of alcoholism and smashed cars - do see the new DVD release of Jack Rosenthal’s classic 1977 biopic about her, Spend, Spend, Spend.
Nicholson’s happiness, like that of movie stars or footballers’ wives, quickly curdled into boredom and surfeit. How much Louis Vuitton luggage does a person need?
As Agatha Christie says in Sparkling Cyanide, ‘happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves, they don’t give a damn’.
There is certainly a smugness, a selfishness, a determination to find the next kick. But the self-satisfaction doesn’t last long.
My wife is a child psychologist and she is always seeing patients with what is called body dysmorphic disorder - all these youngsters who hate themselves for how they look.
It is madness (literally) that they feel compelled to be like this about themselves, from such an early age.
But the ethos is - the body has to be transcended. It is not enough to be well-off or comfortably-off. You’ve got to look good, otherwise disgrace and failure await.
The brevity of human beauty has to be combated, and we’ve got to the stage now where the natural process of growing old is an affront. The rubric seems to be that of Kurt Cobain: ‘It is better to burn out than fade away’.
Who can be genuinely happy in such a culture? It would seem to me, and to the excellent Bruckner, who is not bad at all for a Frenchman, that the pursuit of the ideal of happiness has led only to its opposite. Everyone is in hell.
Gadgets such as mobiles and iPods, meant to make life easier, make life more frantic. People text and tweet and twitter, filling the world with gibberish and drivel.
Nobody is any good at lolling about on Sunday afternoons or doing nothing on holiday - they insist on doing ‘activities’.
Material happiness is undercut by envy - of someone else’s superior possessions or appearance. (Peter Sellers went nuts because he felt that Blake Edwards always had more - a bigger Swiss chalet, bigger cars in the garage, a bigger bank balance, Julie Andrews.)
Everything done to achieve happiness drives it away. Why? Because happiness cannot be a permanent state of being, unless you are out of it on psychotropic drugs.
And interestingly, when scientists tried to isolate the parts of the brain responsible for mood swings, they found that they were those branches of our DNA which best absorb cocaine and opiates.
At best, happiness is fleeting, ‘a moment of splendour wrung from the monotony of the everyday,’ says Bruckner. ‘A brief moment of ecstasy stolen in the course of things’. It is also retrospective - emotion recollected in tranquillity. We draw sustenance from our memories.
But the most important lesson to learn is that there are far better aims in life than happiness - such as cherishing freedom, justice, love, and friendship. Focus on these and happiness may come about almost incidentally, though no less powerfully for all that.
Perpetual Euphoria is more than a book. It is a manifesto. It is work of genius. It is my bible.
Weigh and consider!
Topic: A delusion called happiness