The Muse

Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content.

“The exhaustion experienced in burnout combines an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it cannot be attained, that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which can’t be silenced,” Josh Cohen, a psychoanalyst specializing in burnout, writes. “You feel burnout when you’ve exhausted all your... See more

Emotions are usually defined by their ungovernability, experienced as forces that wash over us and challenge our sense of agency. That quality is what makes most seem authentic and trustworthy to us. Fake anger or love feels like a betrayal. But fake cheer? It’s hard to say how it’s so different from the real thing. Cheer has always been perched on... See more

Feeling spontaneously, genuinely cheerful no longer matters—if it ever did. What’s crucial is that you put on a convincing show, for others as much as for yourself. As Hampton explains, modern life has stripped away cheer’s authenticity and made it fully performative: “To act cheerful is what it means to be cheerful.”

Cheer, according to Hampton, isn’t what it used to be. The cheap version we know today, a ploy for selling beer and breakfast cereal and political candidates, is the result of mass consumerism. In his telling, “modern marketing culture” ruined cheerfulness and remade it into a flimsy commodity.

Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.