| >we seek happiness instead of achievement and get neither. Probably because we've been conditioned (through billions of dollars, spent yearly, on marketing) to believe that happiness comes with the acquisition of certain items, status or experiences. We've conflated happiness with dopamine rushes and short-lived pleasure, and believe the feeling can be elongated by merely emulating the actions which either provided both or could provide more of both. Many of us have also altered our lives to support the above mentality - living in densely packed cities with air and sound pollution, or poor commutes, working around the clock, or in chaotic and stressful companies, doing ultimately purposeless or even outright destructive work, with the hopes of gaining more money or more status to fund the above, etc. Coupled with the increasing social isolation and division, the never-ending outrage we're told to feel over today's new issue, which we as a civilization are going through, it's not hard to see why people are finding it hard to say they're happy. |