| The right to pursue happiness is
promised to Americans by the US Constitution, but no one seems quite sure which
way happiness ran. It may be we are issued a hunting license but offered no
game. Jonathan Swift conceived of happiness as "the state of being
well-deceived", or of being "a fool among idiots", for Swift saw society as a
land of false goals. It is, of course, un-American to think in terms of false goals. We do, however, seem to be dedicated to the idea of buying our way to happiness. We shall all have made it to Heaven when we possess enough. And at the same time the forces of American business are hugely dedicated to making us deliberately unhappy. Advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising exists not to satisfy desires but to create them—and to create them faster than anyone's budget can satisfy them. For that matter, our whole economy is based on addicting us to greed. We are even told it is our patriotic duty to support the national economy by buying things. Look at any of the magazines that cater to women. There advertising begins as art and slogans in the front pages and ends as pills and therapy in the back pages. The art at the front illustrates the dream of perfect beauty. This is the baby skin that must be hers. This, the perfumed breath she must breathe out. This, the sixteen-year-old figure she must display at forty, at fifty, at sixty, and forever. This is the harness into which Mother must strap herself in order to display that perfect figure. This is the cream that restores skin, these are the tablets that melt away fat around the thighs, and these are the pills of perpetual youth. Obviously no reasonable person can be completely persuaded either by such art or by such pills and devices. Yet someone is obviously trying to buy this dream and spending billions every year in the attempt. Clearly the happiness-market is not running out of customers, but what is it they are trying to buy? Defining the meaning of "happiness" is a perplexing proposition: the best one can do is to try to set some extremes to the idea and then work towards the middle. To think of happiness as achieving superiority over others, living in a mansion made of marble, having a wardrobe with hundreds of outfits, will do to set the greedy extreme. |