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Article: Forced smiles.(Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class)(Book review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- September 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ronald W. Dworkin
Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side
of the New Happy Class.
Carroll & Graf, 336 pages, $24.95
The word "unhappy" has almost been banished from our vocabulary. It has been replaced by the word "depressed." For every patient who confesses to unhappiness, a thousand now claim to be depressed, what was once considered to be an inescapable part of the human condition has been elevated (or is it reduced?), by a semantic change, to an illness. And since good health care is now regarded as a right, the corollary of unhappiness being an illness is that people believe themselves to be entitled not merely to the pursuit of ...