喜怒哀楽 – Human emotions, which ones are desirable?

喜怒哀楽 kidoairaku “joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure”.

Recently I attended a talk by an American anthropologist Melissa Caldwell, where, inter alia, she shared her observation that Russians consider experiencing the whole range of emotions from suffering to joy as natural for human beings, while for Americans being always happy is the desired objective.

For me, the latter has a lot to do with the technologies of the self of the Neo-Liberal subject: our life objective is assumed the be the relentless pursuit of happiness (a nod to the Founding Fathers), where we would strive for perfection in every aspect of our lives. It should be rather self-evident that such a unrealistic goal-posting is a recipe for disaster: if a basic acquaintance with how the human nervous system works (it naturally operates in up-ad-down cycles  and prolonged periods of either negative or positive stimulation wearing it out) is not enough, the 21st century’s boom in anti-depressant consumption should confirm that the pressure to be always happy achieves exactly the opposite.  

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