For critiquing the British government’s blunt tools to measure happiness via self-reported surveys, the lack of a response with strong empirical data was disappointing. Probably the largest miss in the whole book doe me was a lack of engagement with contemporary psychology and neurological research. For a critical Marxist scholar, as well, I found her bland dismissal of the market economy generally lazy and relying on received wisdom. These are questions more or less left for the end of the penultimate chapter, which itself is something of a litany of contemporary wrongs and injustices. Where can collective happiness really be found? Where have we found it before? How do we reclaim it? But as a reader, constantly moving from text to text with little analysis brought in by the author herself felt cheeky at best and avoidant at worst. The range of texts touched on this book is incredible and in the footnotes there are a plethora of wonderful sources that I will enjoy reading far into the future. For a book about “radical happiness” it spends the bulk (+80%) of it’s time synthesising the writings of others about why we are not happy. Segal is a beautiful writer, but this is a book that loses its way and fails to live up to its original intention.
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