This youtube video is hilarious. If you've got a few minutes watch it and then read the rest of my post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
This makes me laugh but it also makes me ask a lot of serious questions.
If everything is so amazing why isn't anyone happy?
Our culture spends an enormous amount of time pursuing money and material items which this video describes as so amazing. The more successful we have become, the more unhappy we seem to be. If our unhappiness is a result of our pursuit of the wrong goals, what are the right goals?
Have we inadvertently traded community for self-sufficiency through financial avenues? Is our unhappiness the result of a lack of community?
Is there any way to retain community while still pursuing self-sufficiency? Would that even be a solution?
For some reason, I think there is a very strong correlation between the unhappiness that our culture is experiencing and the breakdown and loss of healthy relationships. We have become so financially self-sufficient that needs no longer bring us together. The need for one person to cook for many and have a communal meal because not everyone has the time to prepare their own food was replaced by restaurants, frozen food, microwaves and higher paying jobs. The need to call your family and friends to help you move was replaced by the company Two Men and a Truck and the ability to pay them. The need to get together with your friends for coffee or beer is being replaced by tv shows like Friends and sites like Facebook. And the list goes on. We are getting more of everything with less authenticity (especially when you think of food and Facebook) and I think what has been lost in the process is contributing to our unhappiness.
I'm not sure I know what the solution is to these problems but I do know that a culture full of unhappy people is a danger to itself. Unhappiness breeds unhappiness. Discontentment breeds envy and jealousy. Crime goes up when people want what others have. Whatever the answer is, I think it's in all of our best interest to start thinking about it and looking for it.
I'm not sure how happy or unhappy people actually are . . . or were. Certainly people were unhappy in the fifties when they had less. However, it doesn't seem like we've gained anything more with the gadgetry we've developed.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even sure community leads to contentment. It does, however, create meaning and belonging - which, for all the talk of being "connected" we lack in our technology.
There have been plenty of studies which have tried to gauge the subjective well being of Americans through the years. The ones that I have read about seem to think that we are less happy now than we used to be (I think The Tipping Point touched on a lot of these). I'm not a proponent trying to go backward in time to the way things used to be but I do think it would be a good idea to try to blend technological advances with a more communal environment.
ReplyDeleteKind of like that chapter in your book about baseball stadiums and how they evolved over the years. I think we are creating a society like the Superdome when we need to integrate the technology into the community instead of replace the community with it.
Thanks for posting, I like getting comments.