IN PRAISE OF MELANCHOLY

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ERIC G. WILSON, CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION - Ours are ominous times.
We are on the verge of eroding away our ozone layer. Within decades we
could face major oceanic flooding. We are close to annihilating hundreds
of exquisite animal species. Soon our forests will be as bland as
pavement. Moreover, we now find ourselves on the verge of a new cold
war.

But there is another threat, perhaps as dangerous: We are eradicating a
major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We
are annihilating melancholia.

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85
percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least pretty
happy. The psychological world is now abuzz with a new field, positive
psychology, devoted to finding ways to enhance happiness through
pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Psychologists practicing this brand
of therapy are leaders in a novel science, the science of happiness.
Mainstream publishers are learning from the self-help industry and
printing thousands of books on how to be happy. Doctors offer a wide
array of drugs that might eradicate depression forever. It seems truly
an age of almost perfect contentment, a brave new world of persistent
good fortune, joy without trouble, felicity with no penalty. . .

I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at
the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an
essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire
only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic,
to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations.
I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. .
.

I'm not questioning joy in general. . . I do, however, wonder why so
many people experiencing melancholia are now taking pills simply to ease
the pain. Of course there is a fine line between what I'm calling
melancholia and what society calls depression. In my mind, what
separates the two is degree of activity. Both forms are more or less
chronic sadness that leads to continuing unease with how things are -
persistent feelings that the world is not quite right, that it is a
place of suffering, stupidity, and evil. Depression (as I see it, at
least) causes apathy in the face of this unease, lethargy approaching
total paralysis, an inability to feel much of anything one way or
another. In contrast, melancholia generates a deep feeling in regard to
this same anxiety, a turbulence of heart that results in an active
questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of
being and seeing.

Our culture seems to confuse these two and thus treats melancholia as an
aberrant state, a vile threat to our pervasive notions of happiness -
happiness as immediate gratification, happiness as superficial comfort,
happiness as static contentment. . .

The American dream of happiness might be a nightmare. What passes for
bliss could well be a dystopia of flaccid grins. . .  I'd hate for us to
awaken one morning and regret what we've done in the name of untroubled
enjoyment. I'd hate for us to crawl out of our beds and walk out into a
country denuded of gorgeous lonely roads and the grandeur of desolate
hotels, of half-cracked geniuses and their frantic poems. I'd hate for
us to come to consciousness when it's too late to live.

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