Carl Cederström isn’t the first to question whether the pursuit of happiness usually leads to good ends—or to wonder whether happiness has been hijacked by corporate interests. But in The Happiness Fantasy, he also examines how the commodification of everyday life has accelerated since the ’70s’ Me Decade when “selfishness and narcissism were hailed as moral values.” Nowadays, young people “are narcissists not by choice, but by necessity.” Ironically, as “the line between work and non-work has vanished,” and employees are expected to pursue happiness in the workplace, “a burnout society” of fundamentally unhappy and fatigued people has emerged. The Happiness Fantasy is a cogent critique of many problems plaguing contemporary life.
