THE PARADOXICAL HAPPINESS ESSAY ON THE THROWAWAY SOCIETY

THE PARADOXICAL HAPPINESS, ESSAY ON THE THROWAWAY SOCIETY.

by Gilles Lipovetsky

Editions Gallimard, 377 pages,

21 euros.

Vilified since 1968, the consumer society is still a carrier theme for those who denounce the fireworks and the excess, trace a commodification of life that did save any area, not even one called religion regularly at the service of happiness. Other the condemn on behalf of the frustration it causes those who continually solicited by the advertising, are condemned to aimless walks in shopping centres promoted as of places of life. Unemployed youth in the suburbs are the first victims, who lack other means to be recognized, to argue through trademarks, emblematic signs of this consumer society. There are few authors that empowers critical current dominant analyze instead the benefits of a bid always renewed, further raise the loss of desire as announce it regularly the Cassandras, turn deep behaviour and would allow people to be more independent in their choices and to find, otherwise the happiness, at least for the pleasure.

Narcissistic pleasure

Should read "The paradoxical happiness, essay on the throwaway society", of Gilles Lipovetsky to discern its purpose. Is it the condemning of a society from the era of mass consumption of the throwaway, described as "a hedonism of the perpetual changes which feeds the frenzy of shopping" Is the singer of a new culture as "part of long aware of the individualistic civilization of happiness" The author of "The era of vacuum" and "The Empire of the short-lived" aptly describes the consumer of the third kind, "turbo-consumer", nomadic, zappeur, unfaithful, in face of which the political rupture utopias fade to make way to new imperatives of the type "eat healthy", "buy better", "protect your environment. Does not hide the shadows of "a society structurally haunted by worries of prevention", but it is better to emphasize the virtues. One of the most important in his eyes that this individualistic consumer is gradually free of burdens of the community of origin and socio-professional edicts, its arbitrations to purchase now based on personal taste, criteria for age or sex, propulsées modes by of the néo-clans, themselves changing. What is important to him, he says, it is more the race standing, the desire to assert its wealth or membership in a class, but a narcissistic pleasure seeking, the concern to confirm its value in its own eyes, that summarizes the advertising of l ' Oréal: "because I the vaux well." Better. Envy would be neutralized, the luxury would have lost its ability to produce resentment. In this society of consumerism, the happiness of others is itself become a "great object of mass consumption."

Failure of walls

Gilles Lipovetsky scans a setback of the main frustrations obsessive consumption, noting that torment the more serious are related to the intimate life emotional, professional, to the difficulties of the relationship to the other. While he admits that this tyranny of happiness which deploys the throwaway society makes even more painful failures of happiness. And he recognizes that hedonic demands faced the bombing of carrying information anxiety. But he recommends not mistaken target. This is not on the spiral of the merchant needs that must be critical but the current lack of ramparts erected to this surging. Walls should be strengthen that men do not seek happiness "exclusively" in market goods. "The quest for self-actualization eventually escape the race without end the consommatoires pleasures", he says. A rapid conclusion when the book is an ode to emancipatory consumption.