According to Elliott, among all countries in the World, the United States of America is, perhaps, the most concerned with the happiness of its people, but it is paradoxically also the country where we will find the greatest number of people apparently being unhappy and yet, at the same time, seeking for ways to increase their happiness through psychological treatments, medications, self-help, spiritual experiences, etc.

According to Elliott, those unfortunate people are constantly feeling so because they are unable to find fulfillment in their lives. In other words, those people end up trying to fill that void that is inside of them with objects and experiences outer to themselves. Moreover, such people inevitably end up comparing their lives with the lives of people who appear to have found personal fulfillment and true happiness in their lives.

If that was not already enough, Elliott also believes that the media and major American corporations have become extremely efficient at coercing people to seek happiness outside of themselves, or even beyond activities that could genuinely make them happier.

A typical American citizen is virtually unable to escape this lifestyle imposed by its country because it is constantly imposed to him by commercials and articles in journals, which not always reveal their true intentions, even though they have the clear objective to convince him that he needs to be happy no matter what, and that to be happy, he also needs to consume manufactured products promoted by particular companies.

It is interesting to note as well that for Elliott, even the American idols (such as the celebrities) are molded to feel compelled to find that same kind of happiness so estimated by the common American citizens. We can include here many people, even Rock 'n' Roll Stars, such as Elvis Presley. And we, the common people, which constantly turn our full attention to the lives of these icons, sometimes even using them as role models for our own lives, tend to forget or intend to ignore that even they experience problems and that despite appearances, are as unhappy as us all, or even more unfortunate, in some specific aspects.

To conclude, I suggest that the situation experienced by people in the American society is not very different from the reality of most people in other countries. I also want to remember that Elliott's criticism to the tyranny of happiness is also directed to the excessive deposit of faith in the ability of the enhancement technologies such as, say, the psychotropics, to make us happier.

It is unquestionable that these technologies make our lives easier or more efficient, but they do not necessarily make us happier in the same sense that doing something we like does. I risk to say that maybe they can promote the wrong idea of what is to be genuinely happy. For Elliott, at least, true happiness is quite different from what most people are looking for in this exact moment.

​Nevertheless, I do not want to delegitimize the enhancement technologies, nor the possibility of one being genuinely happy using them with this argument. My intention here is to promote what I believe to be a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between the enhancement technologies and the happiness itself. This is just the first of a series of essays in which I want to explore this topic in depth.

References

ELLIOTT, Carl. The Tyranny of Happiness. In: ELLIOTT, Carl. Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. p. 295-304.

See also

ELLIOTT, Carl. Adventure! Comedy! Tragedy! Robots! How bioethicists learned to stop worrying and embrace their inner cyborgs. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Sydney, v. 2, n. 1, p. 18-23, 2005.

______. Adventures in the Gene Pool. The Wilson Quarterly, Washington, p.12-21, Winter 2003.

______. A New Way to be Mad. The Atlantic Monthly, Washington, p. 72-84, Dec. 2000.

______. A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture, and Identity. New York: Routledge, 1999.

______. Attitudes, Souls, and Persons: Children with Severe Neurological Impairment. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews, v. 9, p. 16-20, 2003.

______. Enhancement Technologies and Identity Ethics. Society, p. 25-31, July/June. 2004.

______. Enhancement Technologies and the Modern Self. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Oxford, v. 36, p. 364–374, 2011.

______. Humanity 2.0. The Wilson Quarterly, Washington, p. 13-20, Autumn 2003.

______. Pursued by Happiness and Beaten Senseless: Prozac and the American Dream. Hastings Center Report, v. 20, n. 2, p. 7-12, 2000.

______. The Mixed Promise of Genetic Medicine. The New England Journal of Medicine, Boston, v. 356, n. 20, p. 2024-2025, May 2007.

______. The Rules of Insanity: Moral Responsability and the Mentally Ill Offender. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996.

______. White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.

ELLIOTT, Carl. (Ed.). Slow Cures and Bad Philosophers: Essays on Wittgenstein, Medicine, and Bioethics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

ELLIOTT, Carl; CHAMBERS, Tod. (Eds.). Prozac as a Way of Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

ELLIOTT, Carl; LANTOS, John. (Eds.). The Last Physician: Walker Percy & the Moral Life of Medicine. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.