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The Paradox of the Big Bad Wolf

Full title: The paradox of the big bad wolf: The loss of life satisfaction and its recovery in the affluent society

We - the global middle class - are living in paradise, and yet we continue to complain. We live longer lives than ever before in human history, we work less and are healthier than previous generations. We can eat anything we like, listen to our favourite music whenever we like, read whatever we like. Most people have paid vacations when they are free to travel the world or just stay at home and do nothing.

Yet we are not satisfied. Studies show that life satisfaction has in fact decreased slightly since the 1950s. Abundance has not made us happy; the good life appears to be just as elusive as it was in the age of scarcity.

This original book draws on academic research, fiction and personal anecdotes in an attempt to find out what makes life worthwhile. The author explores the Law of Diminishing Returns, the spectre of comparisons, why expectation lasts longer than enjoyment, and why it is so important to be allowed to do something difficult. On our way we encounter Plato, Cinderella, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mihaily Czikszentmihaly, Peter Wessel Zapffe, Paul McCartney, Slavoj Zizek and many others, on a journey that brings the reader to places like Kerala, Bronx, Ladakh, Costa Rica and The Seychelles, but one which begins and ends right where every single one of us are right now.

The ideas developed in this book are both immediately recognisable and surprising at the same time, and the underlying political agenda is bound to have consequences for the way we will live our lives in what remains of this century.

Praise for The Paradox of the Big, Bad Wolf:

Hylland Eriksen uses a form more reader friendly than most. He says important and reasonable things in a manner so sparkling and casual that you almost don’t notice that he’s telling you something – a classic pedagogical device. At the same time he is just and descent enough to give almost all fairly reasonable attitudes to the problem of happiness proper treatment and thorough evaluation.
(Morgenbladet)

Eriksen dares to think big, to present new proposals for the understanding of fields were we all turn out to be amateurs. We need intellectuals who interfere in fields they know little about, and who use their competence as citizens. Eriksen belongs to those who are worth reading
(Dag og tid)

First published: 2008, Aschehoug
Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Biography and bibliography

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