Yes, he's using the wrong word with "happiness". "Good life", "best life" are better conceptions for what he's trying to get to. I like your point that it's p

Yes, he's using the wrong word with "happiness". "Good life", "best life" are better conceptions for what he's trying to get to. I like your point that it's pleasures are hardly pleasures. Why do you think this is? For me the explanation is that this is not a world that I have had much input in making, nor is it unfolding naturally. Instead I think it is planned by powerful forces and steered in a way that uses our (good) nature against to achieve greater control. Eg, technology is a neutral 'tool' but it is being used to track everyone and everything. Events such as epidemics, result in greater centralised control, less individual freedom. The direction is towards greater authoritarianism. Everyone will struggle for happiness/the best life under those conditions. (Except those running the system.)