As with many other things, Adorno anticipates our reduced human circumstances, among whose symptoms is the current obsession with happiness indices and wellness:Â
‘As if a happiness gained through speculation on happiness were not the opposite, a further encroachment of institutionally planned behaviour-patterns on the ever-diminishing sphere of experience. [...] There is straight line of development between the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps of extermination so far off in Poland that each of our countrymen can convince himself that he cannot hear the screams of pain.’Â
(‘Invitation to the dance, Minima Moralia, tr. by E. F. N. Jephcott, London: Verso, 1999, p. 62-63)
 One can only conclude by blaming the predatory optimism of the capitalist doctrine of optimisation for making us aspirational self-loathing narcissists.Â




















