Take the figures from the World Database of Happiness, compiled by Dutch researcher Ruut Veenhoven, which has been tracking the happiness status of almost every country in the world for nearly half a century, simply by asking people to give a rating for their lives on a scale of 0 to 10. In fact, the rise of psychotherapy as well as antidepressants, both more available in affluent countries, have significantly contributed to growing happiness in modern societies. Even when pessimists are confronted with the data on increasing happiness, they turns it to their advantage: for does modern humanity not have an ‘obsession with happiness’; are they not weighed down by the ‘cult of happiness’, as the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner claims in his book Perpetual Euphoria ?