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America is obsessed with happiness – and it’s making us miserable

22 points by dwaxe 10y ago

cylinder 10y ago
The creepiest part of American public culture these days is all the smiling. It's gotten to the point where people have learned how to smile while speaking. I noticed Hillary Clinton's campaign exec Kristina Schake doing this on all her TV media rounds and it's honestly very disturbing. If you watch talking heads on TV they're expected to smile at all times when not speaking. Americans are always supposed to be smiling and for no reason. If you are not you are told to smile more. There's this overall obsession with fake positivity that really gets to me. You can't say anything remotely negative in the workplace or you're deemed as not a team player. I know of a person who came from her home country and was there considered to be an extremely positive and cheerful person then came to the US and was told by her managers that she was too negative! This culture is actually pretty destructive because the voices that might speak up and say "I think we're being overly optimistic with our forecasts here" or "Maybe we shouldn't do X, because Y is on the decline" are silenced.
woodandsteel 10y ago
The author says the goal shouldn't be happiness, but living a good life. I think that's right. As Aristotle put it, you want to live a flourishing life. I think so many Americans get this wrong because our nation has so much more freedom than others, with countless options, so people can obsess about their decisions. Also for much of its history it has been growing economically at a rapid rate and so people could try to increase their happiness by increasing their wealth.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
If America is so obsessed with happiness, why don't Americans take, or even receive, substantial amounts of vacation time? Seems like it's more of a workaholic culture with a workplace culture of faked positivity. >Their answers range from the mundane to the mind-boggling. Yoga and meditation. Keeping a “gratitude journal.” A weekend seminar on how to Unleash the Power Within. Keeping your baby attached to your body for a minimum of 22 hours out of every 24, and, most bafflingly, not least on a practical level, the drinking of wolf colostrum. Jeeze, spent any time with people who aren't caricatured yuppies?

22 points by dwaxe 10y ago

The creepiest part of American public culture these days is all the smiling. It's gotten to the point where people have learned how to smile while speaking. I noticed Hillary Clinton's campaign exec Kristina Schake doing this on all her TV media rounds and it's honestly very disturbing. If you watch talking heads on TV they're expected to smile at all times when not speaking. Americans are always supposed to be smiling and for no reason. If you are not you are told to smile more. There's this overall obsession with fake positivity that really gets to me. You can't say anything remotely negative in the workplace or you're deemed as not a team player. I know of a person who came from her home country and was there considered to be an extremely positive and cheerful person then came to the US and was told by her managers that she was too negative! This culture is actually pretty destructive because the voices that might speak up and say "I think we're being overly optimistic with our forecasts here" or "Maybe we shouldn't do X, because Y is on the decline" are silenced.

woodandsteel 10y ago

The author says the goal shouldn't be happiness, but living a good life. I think that's right. As Aristotle put it, you want to live a flourishing life. I think so many Americans get this wrong because our nation has so much more freedom than others, with countless options, so people can obsess about their decisions. Also for much of its history it has been growing economically at a rapid rate and so people could try to increase their happiness by increasing their wealth.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

If America is so obsessed with happiness, why don't Americans take, or even receive, substantial amounts of vacation time? Seems like it's more of a workaholic culture with a workplace culture of faked positivity. >Their answers range from the mundane to the mind-boggling. Yoga and meditation. Keeping a “gratitude journal.” A weekend seminar on how to Unleash the Power Within. Keeping your baby attached to your body for a minimum of 22 hours out of every 24, and, most bafflingly, not least on a practical level, the drinking of wolf colostrum. Jeeze, spent any time with people who aren't caricatured yuppies?