Are You Pursuing Happiness
or Serving the Machine?

by Peter Messerschmidt

We created the "machine" for the purpose of making our lives easier and having more leisure time. But I think that perhaps we have become its victim. Studies show that Americans now have less leisure and more stress than they did 50 years ago. What has gone wrong?

It seems that culture—particularly American culture—has become socially and emotionally impoverished in the process of trying to attain the "ideal lifestyle,” and many of our maladies can be traced there. The problem isn't even all that old—it has its roots somewhere in the relative affluence of the post-World War II years.

Economists and so-called experts claim that we're better off than ever, and currently enjoy a higher standard of living than ever. But what exactly does that mean, and at what price? The more I look at this, the closer I come to the conclusion that we're on the road to a form of bankruptcy—though not in direct monetary terms, perhaps.

Vast majorities of people hold themselves up and measure their relative success and happiness against some version of what greater society determines to be The Ideal of the Day. Some of us may have the independence of thought to live according to our own ideals, but it's pretty hard to be completely immune from the daily influences and pressures of what we "should" be. Most people very strongly associate their version of The Pursuit of Happiness with the goal of achieving society's version of The Ideal Life.

Society's Ideal: Then And Now

In the 1950's, the “Societal Ideal” was Dad working at ABC Company, and Mom staying at home and raising 2.5 kids. And Dad's 40-hour-a-week job at ABC Company was sufficient to pay for that life—rent/mortgage at a nice 3-bedroom house in Suburbia, one car, vacations to Coney Island or Yellowstone, and maybe even a TV. Simplistic, perhaps, but the key issue being that it was a very accessible/obtainable American Dream.

Fast forward, 50 years. Now Mom and Dad both work 50+ hours a week, in a constant struggle to pay the mortgage on a 4000 square foot house, a beach condo, and to pay for at least two cars (one of which is an SUV), day care and special education for 1.9 kids, health care, sports club, trips to Bora Bora, Viagra (thanks to job stress), flat screen TVs, Gucci handbags, plastic surgery, and $200 sneakers.

Meanwhile, the economists tell us that we're "better off" than ever—and Hollywood and Madison Avenue perpetuate the New Myth of the American Dream in which we're impossibly young, impossibly pretty, impossibly skinny and fit, with impossible amounts of leisure time, while being impossibly happy.

What's wrong with this picture? It's not realistic, and it often results in anxiety, stress, loneliness, and self-loathing more than happiness.

A Real Wealth Index

We have scores of "Wealth," "Inflation," and Cost-of-Living indices out there—each measuring a different thing. I have my own "real wealth" index that annoys the heck out of anyone I have ever talked to from the economic/financial field. It's informal, and certainly not "scientific" but still quite telling, I think. Its principles are very simple.

Units of Effort

I look at the number of Units of Effort (physical labor, psychological drain, actual inflation indexed dollars, etc) it takes for a given person to obtain The Ideal of Their Time. And that's where we're going bankrupt. Here's the deal: If we say that in 1958 it took ONE Unit of Effort to buy ONE Unit of Societal Ideal 1958 Lifestyle, by the year 2008, it took 2.6 Units of Effort to buy ONE Unit of Societal Ideal 2008 Lifestyle. In other words, today we have to give of ourselves 2.6 times more than we did in 1958, just to feel the same way about life, as we did back then.

That may not sound like it adds up, especially if we're "richer than ever," but sadly it does. Why? Because society (more aptly, consumer driven economy) has moved—and continues to move—The Ideal of the Day ever further out of our reach. In simple terms: an "Inflation adjusted banana" may actually be cheaper in 2008 than it was in 1958. And my "inflation adjusted income" may be higher today than in 1958. This is how economists try to convince me that I am better off. However, they overlook the simple fact that ONE banana was all it took in 1958. In 2008, I'm "deficient" with anything less than five bananas.

And although $200 sneakers and trips to Bora Bora are essentially irrelevant, we are bombarded by daily imagery that we're "failures" if we don't strive to get them. And as soon as we've bought those $200 sneakers, we'll learn that we're "deficient" unless we join the $99/month health club with the special indoor running track.

Of course, I'm taking this to the extreme—it's just an illustration.


Growing Psychological Distress

This leads me to a related topic of the world's growing psychological distress, which I believe to be less about stress, than about a direct result of our lack of profound close/intimate relationships (intimacy isn't about sex, in this context, but about connecting with other people on a non-superficial level).

In our mad pursuit of The Lifestyle we've increasingly lost connection to people and live more and more in terms of sound bite concepts. As the people disappear, so does the intimacy, and we start feeling empty inside.

Trying to Fill the Void of Intimacy

As we all flail about in our growing voids of intimacy, many of us reach for anything we can find: retail therapy, support groups, a therapist to whom we spill our guts. We buy self-help. We're always searching, but technology has taken over our intimacy. Work and "working on ourselves" has replaced love and family. Meaningless busy-work has replaced sitting on the couch and talking. We have to "schedule" time with our loved ones. We have so much fear because so many of us feel like we're coming up short. Can we talk to our closest confidantes, our families, our partners, or our lovers about this? Can we tell them of the great void of intimacy or do we fear that we'll be judged as needy or simply, failures? Many of us fear that our needs won't be met if we talk, even though we know that they won't be met if we don't talk.

So we become "intimate" with a therapist. But our therapist can't fill the void. Over a period of many years, we've taken almost all the humanity out of being human. Ironically, we have become the impersonal, non-human mechanical/industrial complex we created to avoid becoming overworked. We are no longer human beings; we are human doings. Perhaps this is why virtual communities have become so popular. Through them, we reach out across the ether and find some tenuous connection with other people....in an effort to find closeness, connection, intimacy, love—which we know in our genes, in our spirits, in our minds, with our intuition—that we "should" have, yet we haven't been able to find it. In this oasis, at least, we can perhaps "recharge" each other's emptiness for a while—a long enough while to allow us the continued forward stumble through the void of Inhumanity.

As I am writing this, I am reminded of a very poignant scene from the movie Crocodile Dundee—not exactly a film one would think of as "deep".... Mick watches a guy do a couple of lines of coke, there's a little narrative explanation; we learn the guy with the coke is depressed. Mick responds "But doesn't he have any mates?" That's the problem, isn't it? We DON'T have any "mates." The void many of you feel, the void I feel—even though we have "good people" and "love" in our lives—is directly associated with the fact that we don't have any "mates." Almost nobody has any mates. There isn't time.

Walking Your Own Way

I don't have any handy answers, other than to say walk your own way and teach others to walk their own way, independently of "group-think." In a depressing sort of way, the bad world economy may be a good thing—a prolonged period of obvious evidence that "the system doesn't work" may inspire people to get on the track of thinking of alternative paradigms. When unemployment is high, people often turn to their individual creativity; small "solopreneurs" flourish as more people depend on themselves, rather than The System for survival.

Historically, people also reach for their spiritual sides during economic downturns. As such, a bad economy makes me more hopeful than distressed, because it forces so many to re-examine their values. Of course, those who support the idea of the "status quo," fiercely disagree with me.

Peter Messerschmidt is a social commentator, active proponent of the simplicity movement, and self-confessed "creative slacker" from Port Townsend, Washington.