Positively happy

Abstract

This chapter details the third shock to have transpired, enabling happiness to become central to and circulate throughout modernity: the (predominantly) twenty-first-century emergence of a practicable positivity within influential psychological circles and society at large. It is affective at a micro-sociological level, supporting the meso-human relations and macro-utilitarian developments previously discussed and, in addition to the prominence of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) and Positive Organizational Behavior (POB), derives most notably from the formalized positive psychology movement.

Our popular culture, and now — owing to the dominant, separatist Message [sic] of some spokespersons for the positive psychology movement — our professional culture are saturated with the view that we must think positive thoughts, we must cultivate positive emotions and attitudes, and we must play to our strengths to be happy, healthy and wise.

(Held, 2004: 12)