The Search for Meaning: Creative Responses to Depression
October 2007
Banner photo: Davis McCardle/Getty Images
Seeking Happiness, Finding Depression
We're obsessed with happiness. At every turn are "how-to" happiness books, articles, TV and radio programs, videos and websites. There are happiness institutes, camps, clubs, classes, cruises, workshops and retreats. Universities are adding courses in Happiness Studies. Fast-growing professions include happiness counseling, happiness coaching, life-lift coaching, joyology and happiness science. Personal happiness is big business, and everyone is selling it. But, increasingly, all we find is depression.
There are several reasons for Western society's worsening epidemic of depression. All higher systems of meaning have withered. Life purpose has dwindled to "feeling good." Innocence, the lifeblood of happiness, is obsolete. We live on cultural soil perfectly suited for depression.
Our age of materialism breeds perpetual discontent. People's lives are dominated by overcomplication, hyper-competition, stress, rage, boredom, loneliness and existential confusion. We're honed to be removed from nature, married to work, adrift from family and friends, spiritually starved, sleep-deprived, physically unfit, dumbed down and enslaved to debt.
We usually hitch our emotional wagons to ego, ambition, personal power, excess and the spectacular. But all of these are surprising flops. Today's "success" has become a blueprint for failure and spiritual starvation, as well as depression.
Health professionals face new epidemics of "hurry sickness," "toxic success syndrome," the "frantic family," the "overcommercialized child" and "pleonexia" which refers to out-of-control greed.
The Romancing of Desire
Too much is no longer enough. Many are stretching themselves so far that they have difficulty feeling anything at all. At its heart, the depression crisis is a metaphor for the deadness that permeates contemporary life. We are the most miserable people in history if we measure well-being in terms of mental health, personal growth or general sense of aliveness.
The Navajos of North America gauge quality of life in terms of the attainment of universal beauty, or what they call "hózhó." By contrast, consumer culture attaches supreme value to the romancing of desire and the satiation of the self, reducing life to a sort of emotional masturbation. Our unceasing quest for "satisfaction" is actually a main contributor to the depression epidemic. In his classic 1863 work Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill wrote: "Better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."
To preserve the "rarity value" of life's gifts, one must resist wrapping heaven around oneself. Keeping paradise at a distance, yet within reach, is a much better way of staying alive. People who have it all must learn the art of flirting with deprivation.
In warning that "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy," author John Updike was referring to the superficial mass tranquilizing that prevails when economics successfully conspires to define our existence. "I profit, therefore I am." To be "happy," gulp something. Pay later, with depression.
Governments are the biggest players in the happiness conspiracy. Any political action aimed at a more people-friendly or planet-friendly happiness is certain to be met with fierce resistance. The best consumers are itchy narcissists who hop, skip and jump from one fleeting desire to the next, never deeply satisfied, but always in the process of satisfying themselves. Our entire socioeconomic system is designed to spew out this type of "ideal citizen" who is, unfortunately, so often depressed. Contentment is the single greatest threat to greed economics.
Cultural Comparison
The causes of depression are far more cultural than biological or genetic. We know this from the abundance of anthropological and cross-cultural data that we have available to us. Over the years, I have written about a number of non-Western societies that lack so-called "clinical depression" as we know it in the West. Some of these have been in Africa. The head of an American aid agency in Kenya commented recently that volunteers are predictably dumbstruck and confused by the zest and jubilance of the local people, as well as their apparent immunity to depression. It's become a cliché for them to say, "The people are so poor, they have nothing--and yet they have so much joy and seem so happy."
It didn't surprise me that an African nation, namely Nigeria, was found recently to be the world's "happiest country." The study of "happy societies" is awakening us to the importance of social connectedness, spiritual depth, simplicity, modesty of expectations, gratitude, patience, touch, music, movement, play, "downtime" and a certain amount of doing without.
Ladakhi men
[Phil Borges/Getty Images]
The small Himalayan region of Ladakh is one of the best-documented examples of a happy and depression-free society. As Helena Norberg-Hodge writes in Ancient Futures, they were a remarkably joyous and vibrant people who lived in exquisite harmony with their harsh environment. Ladakhi culture generated mutual respect, community-mindedness, an eagerness to share, reverence for nature, thankfulness and love of life. Their value system bred tenderness, empathy, politeness, spiritual awareness and environmental conservation. Violence, discrimination, avarice and abuse of power were nonexistent. Depressed, burned out and obese people were nowhere to be found.
But in 1980, consumer capitalism came knocking with its usual bounty of raised hopes and social diseases. The following year, Ladakh's freshly appointed Development Commissioner announced, "If Ladakh is ever going to be developed, we have to figure out how to make these people more greedy." The developers triumphed and a greed economy took root. The issues nowadays are declining mental health (most notably depression), family breakdown, crime, land degradation, unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor, pollution and urban sprawl.
Restoring Health
In his book What Does Development Mean?, Ted Trainer refers to pre-1980 Ladakh as a "superior culture" that was populated by exceptionally well-adjusted and "notoriously happy people." He sees in their tragic story a sobering lesson about our cherished goals of "development," "growth" and "progress." For the most part, these are convenient myths that are much better at producing materialistic societies than healthy people.
Some disillusioned folks, including myself, are adopting "society proofing" as a technique for protecting themselves and their families. Radical groups are even resorting to "culture jamming." It's obviously time to contradict our time, something that can be done with compassion and love, and without adding to the existing tensions of the world.
One of the 50 "Happiness Keys" that I incorporate into my new book In Search of Happiness is an exquisite line by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: "Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a moment--a little makes the way of the best happiness." Paradoxically, the good life is closer when we kneel than when we soar. Our own nothingness can be a great source of joy.
John F. Schumaker is an American-born psychologist and social critic currently living in Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa. His new book is In Search of Happiness: Understanding an Endangered State of Mind. He is also author of The Age of Insanity that examines the mental health consequences of modern consumer living.
