To be positive, ambitious, dynamic and full of projects and objectives: such would be the promise of contemporary happiness according to the new ideology of personal development. To find the resources within ourselves to face life and overcome all its handicaps, to use motivational techniques and abstract projections: is happiness hiding behind the omni-motivated facade of an anxious and depressive society, tingling with injunctions to become the archetype of its own happiness? Nothing less!
We are the first society to consider the individual as the center of the world and of all attentions. This entity would embody a unique mystery to be revealed at all costs. The consumer society and the marketing of needs are strongly responsible for the representation of the unique being. It is taken for granted that it is up to us to become the architect of our own accomplishment. Whether it is on a professional or relational level, everything seems to be manageable by being positive. Before, happiness was thought to be a phenomenon that depended on the outside world: religions, destiny, etc. Today, it is considered as a choice, and it is up to us to decide. We would choose to be happy or unhappy. Really?
For this, we are offered all sorts of techniques to boost our mind and our testosterone. There is no place where the dicta of "become what you want to be and choose your destiny" is not hammered out as obvious and common sense. The libraries are full of "best sellers" dealing with wellness and personal development.
The new ideology of optimism is in full swing, and the business of happiness is booming.
Everyone is competing with marketing ingenuity to propose unique methods. According to these new gurus of contemporary fulfillment, happiness is immediately possible if we are gullible enough to entrust them with our life and our wallet. It would be a matter of paying to discover that it is enough to be positive to attract the positive.
There are accompaniments for all aspects of one's life: love, sex, make-up, fitness, professional, sports performance etc... One would have to be fooled to think that this type of accompaniment leads to happiness and fulfillment. When we observe our contemporaries, the individual has never been so alone and isolated inside. All the commercial proposals that try to attract him are only there to fill the void and the solitude.
They talk about using one's deepest personality, learning to love and forgive oneself, smiling at life so that it smiles back at you, etc. All these empty formulas are so many mantras supposed to give a direction and a meaning to a life that has none anymore.
The religion of the self is born, it is now a question of developing its cognitive business.
When we take the time to dissect the proposed methods, the vast majority of the works are mediocre and without much interest. The subjects treated and the psychological mechanisms at work are identical: be confident in 5 sessions, be rich in 6 sessions, etc. A well Americanized narrative for an assured goal of Eldorado and the promised land. No need to accumulate diplomas to ensure a glittering future. It's time for emotional recycling. It is by hitting rock bottom, then deciding to be happy that we would find the recipe for happiness. One would then feel the legitimacy to evangelize the rest of humanity. To be next to the devil in order to be god oneself in short.
There has never been a more narcissistic time than the one we are living in now. The great decline of Western society is upon us. Adapting the individual to a sick world is the new proposition that we must worship. Otherwise, the ambient conformism will chase you out of the pack to preserve its own decrepitude.
The fact is that the individual gives too much importance to what he is, to his conditioned being. He has de facto isolated himself from the rest of humanity. There is no longer a border between "normality" and "neurosis".
The world embodies the modern spirit of the decomposition of the critical faculty, to the benefit of a culture of appearance, of the image and more globally of intellectual nothingness. Lobotomization is in the air. Its nauseating perfume covers everything. He may polish his plastic smile, whiten his teeth and work on his influence on social networks, everything suggests that he is alone and without real connections with anything. His relationship status is almost non-existent. On the work side, it is the great disenchantment and resignation. Individual coaching and stress management in the workplace is a flourishing consulting business. Adapting the individual to the company with methods that are each more unique than the last. Making them more productive and more compliant with the injunctions to be a profit center and a money-making entity, a marketer experienced in launching innovations that are not innovations, seems to be the profession of consultants that is on the rise. But making an individual adapt to the corporate religion of "all together for a better world" does not make a person a fulfilled subject. For lack of having an existence of one's own, one conforms to a model in which one does not believe, in an attempt to give meaning to an existence that no longer has any. Because working for the grandiose collapse of the world generates all kinds of contradictions. One makes the illusion last for a few years until burnout, then one decides to change one's life.
Health and fulfillment are not the result of professional adaptation. To live a fulfilled life in which order and virtue reign, free of conflicts and fears, cannot be summarized in the traditional scheme of professional success. We need to step back and take a global view of our existence.
We must understand that the ego-centric and narcissistic nature of the individual can only produce disorder. The fact of considering oneself as a unique center which must tend towards an archetype of one's own happiness is contradictory in nature. For wanting to be what one is not generates a tyranny of becoming. There is nothing to become, because it implies a flight forward. The fact is that the individual is depressed. All his old models and patterns collapse. The paradigm shifts in society have created a deep anxiety about tomorrow and chronic emotional insecurity due to isolation, which now fills all available space. Everyday life is nothing but tension and discomfort. One dreams of a different place, but in the meantime the boat is taking on water and it is only a matter of time before it hits the bottom.
He no longer knows who to turn to and has no confidence in himself. All his former authorities have failed: politics, religion, education, science etc.. No promise of improvement in sight. He doesn't know which way to turn. Normalized depression is the new Western norm.
The problem lies in the concept of free will and freedom of choice. The consumer society has given birth to individualism. It is the latter that, from its confused being, asks the question of choice. When we know where we are going, there is nothing to choose. We take the path that leads us there and that's all. It is only when one doubts that the choice arises: left or right. But if I take the right, I may be making a mistake... Confusion is therefore the product of indecision and uncertainty. It is only by understanding what disorder is that we can find order in our lives. Then the right action imposes itself, without the need to exercise choice. Therefore there is nothing to become. One embodies what one is, and the contradictions disappear. No more tensions, no more conflicts, no more depression.
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