To what extent does the pursuit of happiness blind us to the evil around us? When is it good to experience melancholy?

While we live in a society that is obsessed with the constant pursuit of happiness through achievement, recreation, and material goods, there is one man who is willing to argue against happiness. In his recent book "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy" (Wilson, 2008) Eric Wilson argues that the fact that as many as 84% of Americans report being happy is not only troubling, but in fact may be an indicator that many people are missing out on an important element of life: melancholy.

History of Melancholy:

• During the Romantic age the “power of blackness” was seen as a source of strength, vigor, and inspiration.
  
  
• John Keats described it as a “sense of the finite that makes life worth living.” He claims that it is the delicate morality of a real rose that makes it more beautiful and precious than a fake one.
  
  
• Carl Jung described it as part of the relationship between chaos and order and described it as part of the essential neurosis that shapes identity and serves as a source of knowledge of the self and the world.
  
  
• Melancholy has sometimes been described as part of the transcendence of the self (Secret of the Golden Flower), as it is necessary to feel sadness in order to truly know the reality of life.
  
  
• Yet, in more recent times melancholy has been reframed as the worst malady imaginable and those who experience it are frequently labeled as gloomy and anti-social and put on prescription medications to treat what is really just normal and healthy sadness.
  
  

Melancholy & Creativity:

• Wilson describes two understandings of creativity that have been expressed in the literary world…
• 1. Classical Creativity: The type of creativity experienced by a poet who is in sync with their society and reflects the values of their society. This individual is frequently very well-adjusted and relatively happy.
• 2. Romantic Creativity: The type of creativity comes from an artist or poet who is deviant and does not feel at ease in the world they live in. Thus, the artist in the pursuit of the insight endures this discomfort and confusion to reveal what others are incapable of seeing and understanding.
• Melancholy has also been linked to creativity through disorders such as bipolar (maniac-depressive) disorder in which some of the most creative people have also been individuals suffering a great deal in their daily lives. For more information on this consider reading the book Touched by Fire: Maniac-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison.
  
  

Wilson’s Argument:

• Americans are entirely too obsessed with happiness and this obsession often blinds them to the complexities of life and the important polarities of existence.
  
  
• There is a difference between depression and melancholy. Depression is apathetic and unproductive state, while melancholy is a productive and generative state.
  
  
• Melancholy often leads people to come up with new ways of thinking about the world and results from an interest in and embrace of polarities within life.
  
  
• People who are melancholy are often more creative and productive than others and produce great works by embracing the confusion and sadness which results from their discomfort with the world.
  
  
• Melancholic individuals believe that the world is too abundant with meaning for any one meaning to be entirely true and must therefore live in the gap between utterance and fact. They must exhibit “negative capacity” or the capacity to live in uncertainty and negative affect without being too quick to jump to conclusions. Thus, they can see things much more clearly than those who are constantly trying to be happy.
  
  
• Melancholy gives us a “weird sense of the texture of life.”—Wilson
  
  
• Melancholy is thus a tool to displace the complacency and euphoria that permeate our society and push people towards a deep sense of brooding and contemplation of the world.
  
  

Melancholy and Leadership: Should Leaders be Happy?

• Some of the most influential and effective leaders have dealt with severe melancholy in their lives. For example, Abraham Lincoln experienced very severe feelings of sadness throughout his entire life and even reported having suicidal thoughts during his adolescence.
  
  
• Leaders are thought to operate at higher levels of moral reasoning than the general public and according to Lawrence Kohlberg those who operate at more complex levels of morality often experience greater feelings of sadness as a result. In fact, Kohlberg, who was reportedly a stage six moral thinker, is rumored to have committed suicide.
  
  
• According to James MacGregor Burns’ model of Transformational Leadership, leaders elevate their followers to higher levels of moral thinking. Thus, one might argue that leaders are in some ways responsible for experiencing sadness for the greater benefit of their followers. Furthermore, it may even be possible that leaders are responsible for educating and exposing their followers to the power of sadness and melancholy. If sadness is a prerequisite for understanding then perhaps by teaching empathy leaders can learn to cultivate a more complex and moral view of the world.
  
  

How do Happiness, Creativity, and Leadership Interact?

• Check out our page on An Integrative Theory of Happiness, Creativity, and Leadership!
  
  
• Also, consider if intelligence is negatively related to happiness, as those who are obsessed with happiness and constantly doing things to satisfy themselves are frequently less interested in pursuing the "life of the mind" proposed by Mazharain Banaji.
  
  
• "People disparage knowing and the intellectual life and urge doing. I am very content with knowing, if only I could know... For to know a little would be worth the expense of the world."--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience.
  

References:

Wilson, E.G. (2008). Against happiness: In praise of melancholy. New York: Sarah Crichton/ Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.




To see Dr.Wilson discuss his book and his theory on melancholy along with some of the proponents of happiness check out the you tube video here. --->