Şırnak Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi

Öz

This study deals with new religious and spiritual searches that emerge in the face of uncertainty, speed of change, stress and anxiety experienced by individuals in the dynamics of today’s society and how these searches are associated with the happiness industry. The main claim of this study is that spiritual movements have become commercialized in the performance society and have become a part of fun morality and the happiness industry. The rapid change and transformation experienced with modernization creates various problems that individuals have difficulty in coping within their inner world. Especially with the secularization debates, efforts to purify today’s world from religion push individuals to different searches. For this purpose, in the face of uncertainty and change, individuals try to reach inner peace and satisfaction by turning to new religious and spiritual searches. Personal development, spirituality and the happiness industry are closely related to individuals’ quest to improve the quality of their lives and the goal of inner fulfilment, and they enable the growth and spread of the happiness industry. The happiness industry is marketed with promises such as adding meaning and purpose to individuals’ lives, reducing stress and anxiety, increasing self-awareness and providing spiritual fulfilment, and attracts the attention of individuals living in the uncertainty and competition of modern society. In this context, the article aims to evaluate in detail the efforts of the happiness industry to provide individuals with performance-oriented inner peace and fulfilment. Using basic theories such as performance society, happiness industry and fun morality, these efforts will be analyzed comprehensively within a theoretical framework. The performance society theory argues that individuals today live in a culture that focuses on their social and economic achievements and emphasizes that individuals are under constant pressure to achieve success and perfection. In this context, understanding how the happiness industry strives to provide individuals with inner peace and satisfaction beyond performance will provide an important analysis from the perspective of performance society theory. The happiness industry is also linked to the fun morality that is widely adopted today. Fun morality refers to an approach in which individuals are in a constant search to make their lives more enjoyable. How the happiness industry positions the products and services offered to individuals within the framework of fun morality and how they add meaning to individuals’ lives is an issue that needs to be addressed from a broader theoretical perspective. In this context, the potential risks of the industry and its possible negative effects on individuals will be analyzed through the theories of performance society and fun morality. In the literature, there is a lack of studies that examine the relationship between the happiness industry, fun morality and spiritual movements. This study aims to fill the gap in the literature in terms of addressing the relationship between these fields, to understand whether the happiness industry can help individuals discover their inner potential, and at the same time to understand the factors that lead individuals to ignore their inner values and keep them under performance pressure. The study is based on a comprehensive data collection and analysis process with a qualitative approach to understand how individuals respond to the challenges of modern life and the role of the happiness industry in this process. At the end of the study, in which literature review and critical readings are prominent, it is concluded that the happiness industry turns individuals into consumer objects by using spiritual pursuits, the individual feels obliged to perform daily performances based on fun morality, inability to access spiritual tools deepens social inequality and not being happy is seen as a crime.