Fat and (un)happy
In an essay that comes to us courtesy of ABC Religion (a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), David Malouf ponders the modern malaise: if we are so successful as a species, why are we so unhappy?
Ask any one of your friends or neighbours if they are happy and the answer they will probably give is that they have nothing to complain of. What they mean is that the good life as previous generations might have conceived it has been attained.Medical science ensures that fewer children die in infancy, that most infectious diseases have been brought under control and the worst of them - smallpox, plague, TB, polio - have in most parts of the world been eliminated; that except for a few areas in Africa famine is no longer known among us; that in advanced societies like our own we are cared for by the state from cradle to grave.
We do complain, of course, but our complaints are trivial, mostly ritual. Our politicians lack vision, interest rates are too high, the pace of modern living is too hectic; the young have no sense of duty, family values are in decline.
The good life, it seems, is not enough. We have nothing to complain of, we are "happy enough"; but we are not quite happy. We are still, somehow, unsatisfied, and this dissatisfaction, however vaguely conceived, is deeply felt.
Thoughts?
In "The Spirit Level: Why more Equal Societies Almost Always do Better," London: Allen Lane 2009, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett report a direct correlation between a country's economic inequality and mental illness (with a radically high inequality like the U.S. meaning a much higher rate of mental and physical illness compared to other developed nations) and economic inequality and crime (U.S. with greatest income disparity and again at the highest level for both physical and mental illness of a developed nation). Australia, source of this article has greater income inequality than most. Maybe it's not strictly modernity that's making us unhappy. Maybe our unhappiness goes up as we steel ourselves to care less for our sisters and brothers.
Posted by Donald Schell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 14, 2011 7:39 PM
I dunno - I'm happy but maybe people are fearful that their luck will turn if they talk about being happy. Norwegian myths are all about getting struck down by the gods if you say anything is going well. Maybe we just have too much Norske in our system.
Posted by Ann Fontaine![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 14, 2011 8:11 PM
Ironically, Ann, I believe Norway is one of the happiest countries! [And (because?) it's one of the more EQUAL societies, ala Wot Donald Said]
JC Fisher
Posted by tgflux![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 14, 2011 9:06 PM
I just don't know about happiness of whole societies. Of course, I'm all for equality and work in my profession as a librarian to help (in some small way) to achieve it.
But I feel happy almost every day. I haven't always, I've had years of feeling very unhappy. But with the help of a social worker and thinking about my great aunt's approach to life, I've found a way that, for me at least, has lead me to find happiness in small things.
Is the world just the way I want it? No, clearly not. Is my life what I imagined? Absolutely not. It's better in ways that I couldn't have even imagined as a child on a farm (I now live in New York City) and worse in ways I couldn't really have imagined either.
And though it's certainly possible for people of faith to be unhappy or depressed, I think a life of faith does put happiness a bit closer to our grasp.
But one can't grasp it; happiness is too elusive, too much of air and wind. I was taught as a boy to seek happiness, but not to try to catch it. Good advice, I think.
Posted by Dale McNeill![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 14, 2011 10:29 PM