Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class

is the book I'm reading now. Author Ronald W. Dworkin takes aim at a number of different trends in American society, most significantly the "staggering rise in antidepressant medications," to quote the dust jacket, but also the fitness craze and the vacuity of modern religious practice. My first question going in was, what does the author mean, exactly, by 'artificial' happiness? We're all gonna die, there's not a damn thing we can do about it, and isn't all happiness therefore 'artificial'? Perhaps 'fleeting' is closer to what I'm thinking of, but believe me, if I find some artificial happiness, I'm grabbing some of that, too. Anyway, here is what the author writes about his title:

What exactly is Artificial Happiness? John Green, a man I met during the writing of this book, is a good example of someone who feels it.

A thirty-five-year-old lawyer, John fights constantly with his wife over money. He won't divorce her because he fears losing custody of their young son. In the past, he tried Valium to relax, but the drug made him drowsy. Once, an associate phoned on a case. John's wife fielded the call, made excuses, and then screamed, "You can't talk to him! He's already taken his pill!" John finally found relief through Prozac, which lets him live happily inside his loveless marriage. He expects to be on Prozac for years, until his son grows up (and he can leave his wife), or maybe even longer, ssince by the time his son is grown John will have built up a nest egg that his wife would grab in any divorce.

Although John Green's life is miserable, his mind is happy. His life and mind are out of synch: he enjoys Artificial Happiness.

Maybe John Green can get that divorce and Dworkin can include him in his next book about the staggering problems created by divorce in our country. On the whole, I didn't find many of these anecdotes very persuasive. I like the thesis, but the stories of individuals refusing to struggle with their problems were often so sketchy that I couldn't help but wonder about other contributing factors.

Dworkin goes on to write that the most significant problem with Artificial Happiness is that it is being foisted upon younger and younger children, and this does not bode well for the future. Probably true. I know I'm thankful for my wretched childhood, and it's just too damn bad that future generations will be robbed of their chance at misery. It's a great character builder, Redemptive Suffering. Although I've also worked with several students who were able to make positive changes in their lives because they were able to develop some psychological distance from their problems with the help of psychotropic medications. But who knows? Maybe life will come crashing down on them later. It usually does. But by then Lilly and Merck and all the others will have developed other drugs for those problems, so it's probably okay. Perhaps we should just cut to the chase and develop synthetic soma. Then we'd be done with these tiresome discussions.

Anyway, what I've read so far is pretty good, but not great. I was persuaded to read it by Richard John Neuhaus' comments in First Things and an article by Stanley Kurtz in National Review. I'll press on, but so far the articles are better than the book itself.