“The Idea That Everything We Do Is Part of the Pursuit of Happiness Seems a Really Dangerous Idea.”
Thoughts on a mystery quote from The Good Life: What makes a life worth living? by Hugh MacKay
The Twilight Zone Vortex: "It's a Good Life
Hugh MacKay’s book The Good Life: What Makes a Life Worth Living? is no longer available on Amazon as a paperback, only in a Kindle edition. I won’t buy the book, but I find these words persuasive. I’ll accept the passage out of context with whatever else is said in the book.
I risk someone saying I should not quote Hugh MacKay because I am ignoring other offensive things he wrote elsewhere, maybe even in The Good Life.
A Facebook friend who has not read The Good Life already warns t“This book is dangerous pop psychology.” Maybe.
I appreciate thought-provoking quotes, but not ones extracted from their sources in bad faith
I often quote Hannah Arendt, knowing she has been lambasted for critiquing the role of Jewish leaders in the Holocaust.
The indictment is that in her works on Eichmann and the Holocaust, Arendt also critiqued Jewish leaders of the time for their roles in the Nazi-led deportations. She suggested that fewer Jews might have died had these leaders not cooperated to some extent with the Nazis. This view was met with intense backlash from many in the Jewish community and others who felt that she blamed the victims.
Among many useful quotes from Hannah Arendt
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Taking quotes from me out of context
Whether it is acceptable to take quotes out of context depends on the quote and the uses that the quote is put. The harassment that follows me around involves bad faith attempts to do me harm by holding me to what I did not say. This is a weaponizing of misquoting.
A quote from my heavily accessed blog post has been taken out of context and used by Gang of Four Peter Kinderman, Lucy Johnstone, David Healy, and Eiko Fried to demonize me and demand that I not be allowed any opportunities to earn a livelihood from my lecturing and writings.
Members of the Gang of Four distort what I say in my ACEs blog differently. David Healy merely passes on what has been said by Kinderman andJohnstone, along with Eiko Fried's histrionic reaction. Eiko has been plying this game for over six years in blogs and tweets that are accessed more frequently than his scientific output.
Lucy Johnstone disclosed the motive for using the passage to dehumanize me
Peter Kinderman exposed how anti-intellectual he is when dealing with criticisms of his group. He accuses me of using the academic commentary as a fig leaf (excuse) for advocating adult sexual abuse of children.
Eiko brings David Healy back in but confesses he did not fact-check Healy’s claims but that the majority are documented. His harassment of me around this issue of my covertly promoting abuse of children has attracted him more attention in social media than his vigorous promotion of his scientific output.
The context of Eiko’s tweet is that he was justifying his attempt to undermine my ability to work as an advocate for patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). ‘Coyne arguably wielded some power in the movement & has not always used it responsibly.’
Eiko’s next move would be to discredit my advocacy of ME/CFS patients, based on my comments on a confidential email leaked to the Guardian during the attempt by allies of the PACE authors to block the publication of the #PACEgate Special Issue of the Journal of Health Psychology.
In later articles, I will use Eiko as a premier example of bullying and harassment as tools for career advancement. Experts Susanne Tauber and Morteza Mahmoudi discuss this strategy in Nature Human Behaviour.
Täuber S, Mahmoudi M. How bullying becomes a career tool. Nature Human Behaviour. 2022 Apr;6(4):475-.
The Gang of Four’s engagement of my blog post is in bad faith.
"Bad faith" in communication refers to instances where someone participates in a discussion or interaction without a genuine intent to engage honestly or constructively. This concept is often discussed in negotiations, relationships, and various interpersonal or organizational interactions.
My sense of being an evidence-based skeptic of positive psychology literature and my lived experience.
I endorse the mystery quote from Hugh McKay as consistent with my sense of being an evidence-based skeptic of positive psychology literature and my lived experience of being happy and sad. I am sure my good friend and non-spiritual advisor, Barbara Ehrenreich, would agree with the McKay quote about positive psychology. Besides being the author of the pop book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, she has a Ph.D. in biology and showed positive psychology guru Marty Seligman that she knew more about regression analysis than he did. We met when Barbara called me and asked me to go for drinks to celebrate having shut Marty down in some verbal duel at the Philadelphia Art Museum.
Barbara often makes puzzling, provocative points that are meant to incite outrage readers not only at others but at readers themselves:
Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation...none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.
The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.
I know that the last thing a book wants is to just sit around unread, serving as an element of interior decorating. So when I have people over, all they have to do is glance at my books, and I implore them to take a few home with them. If I am really ambitious, I pack books into boxes and donate them to prisons.
And, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others~Martin Luther King Jr.
I’ve concluded that much of the evidence for the advice for sale by positive psychologists about what to do to be perpetually happy is flawed or greatly exaggerated in terms of its effectiveness.
I’m not sure I need to “actually attack” the idea of happiness as Hugh McKay feels the need to do. I won't follow those who think they have 100% proven effective advice. Some things I do that make me happy may be consistent with positive psychology. That is no reason to accept wholesale the advice gurus are a lot of money telling me and are often wrong.
A quote from Hugh McKay’s The Good Life: What Makes a Life Worth Living?
“I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that—I don’t mind people being happy—but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down three things that made you happy today before you go to sleep” and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position. It’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness.” Ask yourself, “Is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is. ~Hugh Mackay
Three empirical articles expressing my skepticism about positive psychology
Coyne JC, Tennen H. Positive psychology in cancer care: Bad science, exaggerated claims, and unproven medicine. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. 2010 Feb 1;39(1):16-26.
Coyne JC, Tennen H, Ranchor AV. Positive psychology in cancer care: A storyline resistant to evidence. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. 2010 Feb 1;39(1):35-42.
Frazier P, Coyne J, Tennen H. Post-traumatic growth: A call for less, but better, research. European Journal of Personality, 28(4), 337–338.
Video presentations, just for fun
The Bad Science of Positive Psychology - Ashley Frawley Ft James C. Coyne
Ashley Frawley: I'm a little concerned that part 2 might get me sued, but here you go:
Looking hopefully ahead
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