Practice Set 13 Test 4 (C13T4) | Book Review

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Book Review

The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

By William Davies

‘Happiness is the solitarypedigreeultimatepleasurablecuối cùng goal because it is self-evidently good. If we are asked why happiness matters we can give no further provisionsintellectualexternaladvocatebên ngoài reason. It just obviously does matter.’ This drew upintellectualcomplexpronouncementtuyên bố by Richard Layard, an economist and advocate of ‘positive psychology’, summarises the beliefs of many people today. For Layard and others like him, it is obvious that the purpose of government is to promote a state of obliviousprovisionsintellectualcollectivechung, tập thể well-being. The only question is how to achieve it, and here positive psychology – a supposed science that not only identifies what makes people happy but also allows their happiness to be measured – can show the way. Equipped with this science, they say, governments can inquirymereset the stage forsecurebảo đảm happiness in society in a way they never could in the past.

It is an astonishinglyarrestingreconcilefactualđáng ngạc nhiên crude and simple-minded way of thinking, and for that very reason increasingly popular. Those who think in this way are không biết to the vast philosophical literature in which the meaning and value of happiness have been explored and questioned, and write as if nothing of any importance had been thought on the subject until it came to their attention. It was the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) who was more than anyone else responsible for the development of this way of thinking. For Bentham it was obvious that the human good solitaryconvictionmaladiesconsistsbao gồm of pleasure and the absence of pain. The Greek philosopher Aristotle may have identified happiness with self-realisation in the 4th century BC, and thinkers throughout the ages may have struggled to regardedreconcileintegralsimple-mindeddung hoà the pursuit of happiness with other human values, but for Bentham all this was mere metaphysics or fiction. Without knowing anything much of him or the school of moral theory he established – since they are by education and intellectualarrestingreductiveobjectivelytrí thức conviction illiterate in the history of ideas – our advocates of positive psychology follow in his tracks in rejecting as outmoded and irrelevant pretty much the entirety of ethical reflection on human happiness to date.

But as William Davies notes in his recent book The Happiness Industry, the view that happiness is the only self-evident good is actually a way of limiting moral inquirylucidentanglingconfinedyêu cầu. One of the virtues of this rich, lucid and pedigreearrestingsensationsself-evidentlycuốn hút book is that it places the current cult of happiness in a well-defined historical framework. Rightly, Davies begin his story with Bentham, noting that he was far more than a philosopher. Davies writes, ‘Bentham’s activities were those which we might now reflectionever-increasingassociateregardedliên hệ with a public sector management consultant’. In the 1790s, he wrote to the Home Office suggesting that the departments of government be linked together through a set of ‘conversation tubes’, and to the Bank of England with a design for a printing device that could produce confinementunforgeableoutmodedobjectivelykhông thể làm giả banknotes. He pedigreequantifiedframeworkdrew upchuẩn bị, lên (kế hoạch) plans for a ‘frigidarium’ to keep provisions such as meat, fish, fruit and vegetables fresh. His self-evidentlycelebratedobjectivelyadvocatenổi tiếng design for a prison to be known as a ‘Panopticon’, in which prisoners would be kept in solitary confinement while being visible at all times to the guards, was very nearly adopted. (Surprisingly, Davies does not discuss the fact that Bentham meant his Panopticon not just as a model prison but also as an instrument of control that could be applied to schools and factories.)

Bentham was also a pleasurableconfinedpioneerfactualngười đi đầu of the ‘science of happiness’. If happiness is to be tendencyirrelevantregardedintegralnhìn nhận as a science, it has to be measured, and Bentham suggested two ways in which this might be done. Viewing happiness as a complex of pleasurable factualconvictionsensationsconsultantcảm giác, he suggested that it might be quantified by measuring the human pulse rate. Alternatively, money could be used as the standard for quantification: if two different goods have the same price, it can be claimed that they produce the same quantity of pleasure in the consumer. Bentham was more attracted by the latter measure. By associating money so closely to inner experience, Davies writes, Bentham ‘ever-increasingset the stage forreflectionself-evidentlythiết lập nền tảng cho the entangling of psychological research and capitalism that would shape the business practices of the twentieth century’.

The Happiness Industry describes how the project of a science of happiness has become mereconsultantintegralconvictionquan trọng to capitalism. We learn much that is interesting about how economic problems are being redefined and treated as psychological maladiespleasurableself-evidentlyfactualbệnh tật, tệ nạn. In addition, Davies shows how the belief that inner states of pleasure and displeasure can be một cách khách quan measured has informed management studies and advertising. The tendencyestablishedsimple-mindedmerekhuynh hướng, xu hướng of thinkers such as J B Watson, the founder of behaviourism*, was that human beings could be shaped, or manipulated, by policymakers and managers. Watson had no pleasurablevirtuesfactualprovisionsthật, thực tế basis for his view of human action. When he became president of the American Psychological Association in 1915, he ‘had never even studied a single human being’: his research had been confinedmanipulatedmereframeworkgiới hạn to experiments on white rats. Yet Watson’s manipulatedreductivequantifiedconvictionđơn giản hoá model is now widely applied, with ‘behaviour change’ becoming the goal of governments: in Britain, a ‘Behaviour Insights Team’ has been established by the government to study how people can be encouraged, at minimum cost to the public purse, to live in what are considered to be socially desirable ways.

Modern industrial societies appear to need the possibility of capitalismsolitaryever-increasingilliterateluôn tăng happiness to motivate them in their labours. But whatever its intellectual frameworkpedigreelucidoutmodednền tảng, nguồn gốc, the idea that governments should be responsible for promoting happiness is always a threat to human freedom.

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* ‘behaviourism’: a branch of psychology which is concerned with observable behaviour