From a Simple Question to a Historical Problem
A few years ago, after one of my philosophy of ethics classes, a student came up to me and said:
“Professor, can I ask you a question?”
I said: “Of course.”
She said: “I have everything. My family is good, my finances are fine, I’ve almost finished my studies. But to be honest… I don’t enjoy life. I mean, life has become tasteless. I have no worries, no specific problems, but something feels missing. I don’t know why.”
That day, I had no answer for her. I knew there was no simple answer to this question. You could say “you should be grateful” or “look at others and see what they have” or “your mind is too busy, take some time alone.” Many people say these things, and perhaps they are true, but they don’t solve the core problem. That student wasn’t looking for a simple piece of advice. She was speaking about an experience for which she had no name. The same experience that Alain de Botton, the contemporary philosopher, calls “the melancholy of success” – when, at the peak of apparent achievement, a deep sense of emptiness overtakes you.
A few days later, another student asked me the same question. In a different way, with a different example. A month later, at a friendly gathering, one of the guests – a successful company director who seemed to have everything – came up to me and said: “Honestly, nothing feels good anymore.”
That was when I realised this was not just a personal question. It was a historical problem. Something that has afflicted contemporary human beings. Something we sometimes call “feeling of emptiness,” sometimes “loss of pleasure,” sometimes “existential exhaustion.” Different names for one and the same thing.
That’s why I decided to take this issue seriously. Not to write a book that tells people how to be happy, but a book that says: “We are here, facing a great crisis that we don’t even know how to name; let’s try to understand it.”
Zygmunt Bauman, in one of his last books, has a sentence that perhaps best summarises our situation: “We have never been so comfortable and so dissatisfied at the same time.” This simple, straightforward sentence is the core of the book you are holding.
Framing the Problem: A Book to Restore a Question
Let’s pause for a moment and think together. Today’s human being, in material terms, is living in the best era in history. The statistics confirm this. Not just in wealthy countries, but even in developing ones. Life expectancy has nearly doubled in the last hundred years. That is, an ordinary person a hundred years ago might have lived only to forty; today, many of us can hope to see eighty. Absolute poverty – living with hunger and homelessness – has declined globally. Many diseases that were deadly a century ago are now treated with a simple injection or pill. With a small phone, we can speak to someone on the other side of the planet. With a single click, we have access to the entire body of human knowledge.
From any angle you look at it, life today is better than in any previous era. Not relatively better, but absolutely better.
But right in the heart of these astonishing advances, something strange is happening. The World Health Organization reports that depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. The number of people experiencing loneliness is rising in societies that have never had so many communication tools. In many wealthy countries, the consumption of antidepressants has multiplied. And interestingly, many studies show that despite rising incomes, people’s life satisfaction has either remained constant or decreased.
What does this mean? It means something is off. We miscalculated something. We thought more money would make us happier. More amenities would bring more pleasure. Health and longevity would bring more satisfaction. But apparently, things are not that simple. Material progress and life satisfaction do not align as we once thought. This paradox is precisely where this book is born.
But the book before you is different from many others. Let me say from the start: this book is not going to give answers. Not because there are no answers, but because its job is something else. This book’s job is to frame the problem more precisely, more clearly, and more deeply. Let’s see what the real issue is. Why are so many people, despite having everything, not enjoying life?
You might ask: “Haven’t many books been written about happiness and well‑being?” Yes, they have. Dozens of books are on the market with titles like “How to Be Happy,” “Ten Rules for Happiness,” “The Art of Living Well.” Many of these fall into the self‑help category. Some are useful, some are not. But almost all share one common feature: they prescribe. They say if you do this, you will be happy. If you build this habit, you will experience pleasure. If you remove this thought, you will find peace.
The problem is that the issue of “existential loss of pleasure” is not a simple problem that can be solved with three good habits. It is deeper than a psychologist can wrap up in a two‑hundred‑page book. Its roots go back to the architecture of modern life, the workings of our minds, the expectations we have of life, the meaning we attribute to life, and what we understand by “the good life.”
On the other hand, purely academic books, with all their references, jargon, and dry language, are not accessible to ordinary people. Someone who feels low on a Friday evening and doesn’t know why has no patience for a thirty‑page article in a philosophy journal. Between these two kinds of books, there is a gap: a book that is both deep and fluent; both questioning and unassuming; that draws on the humanities but speaks in the language of ordinary people. This book aims to fill that gap.
And one more point – perhaps the most important. This book speaks about religion, but it is not a religious book. It speaks about tradition, but it is not a traditionalist book. It speaks about the West, but it is not an anti‑Western book. It is not going to take sides or prove a particular theory. It aims to help us understand why so many people, with so many resources, do not experience pleasure. And then, at the end of the book, it raises a fundamental question: “Can today’s humanities, with all their advances, answer this crisis, or must we look elsewhere to continue the journey?” This question is a bridge to future books.
What Do Today’s Humanities Say?
Let’s take a look at what has been said about these issues in recent decades in universities and research centres. If we visit a gathering of humanities scholars, we see that each has approached the subject from a different angle. But interestingly, all these perspectives, from various directions, converge on a single point.
**Positive psychology**, which has gained much popularity recently, led by Martin Seligman, a former president of the American Psychological Association, concluded that traditional psychology had focused too much on “illness” and “treatment.” It says: instead of just looking at why people become depressed, let’s look at what happy and healthy people have in common. Seligman introduced the concept of “flourishing” – a state where a person not only feels good but also uses their talents, has meaningful relationships, and makes progress in what they value.
A third critique, perhaps the most controversial, is that modern humanities, despite all their progress, have ultimately failed to answer contemporary humanity’s fundamental question. Because the question goes beyond the boundaries of science. The question is: “What is life, and why should we live it?” This question is by nature philosophical and even metaphysical. Empirical sciences, however much they show what factors correlate with greater satisfaction, cannot answer “what is the ultimate purpose of life.” That answer lies in the realms of philosophy, religion, and mysticism, not in science.
Provisional Summary
So far, perhaps we can draw a few provisional conclusions.
First, we live in a strange era – an era of “having everything and having nothing.” Materially, we are in the best conditions in human history, but emotionally and existentially, we are in one of the most critical periods.
Second, this paradox is a global issue, not unique to Iran or the Islamic world. But the Iranian experience of it has its own specific colour and shape, which we must pay attention to.
Third, contemporary humanities have done a great job: they have turned the issue from a general concern into a precise scientific problem, identified indicators and variables, and provided useful statistical data. But they are still far from a final answer, and perhaps it is not even their role to provide one.
Fourth, what seems to emerge leads us to a fundamental question: If modern humanities, with all their capacities, cannot provide a final answer to this question, should we turn to other sources? Is our religious tradition, as is commonly assumed, merely a set of ancient moral prescriptions, or can it offer a fresh response to the new question of today’s human being?
