Once a year for quite a while now the National Opinion Research Council has asked Americans whether, on the whole, the are very happy, pretty happy, or not too

Once a year for quite a while now the National Opinion Research Council has asked Americans whether, on the whole, the are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy. Since the early 1950s the percentage of people who counted themselves "very happy" has steadily dropped. From the book "Deep Economy" http://jamestravels.com/2008/01/deep-economy-growth-and-decline-in.php http://jamestravels.com/2008/01/deep-economy-growth-and-decl... I've noticed the looks on faces in old photos too. Yes, today, we all smile, but they are forced smiles. "Say cheese!" They didn't do that in the early days of photography. Photos were expensive and were a serious endeavor. I think a lot of the smiles in photos are fake. We smile for the camera whether we are happy or not. Yes, life was hard, but I feel happy when I'm working hard and being productive and I feel life is worth it. I think today, we are filling our lives with material goods and sacrificing a lot of the earth and resources and invading other countries and killing people to take their oil and things like that take a toll on people. Even more, we pop pills to alleviate our depression. The unfortunate side effect of these pills is that they also limit the upside of happiness. They flat line us at a normal mood. Not a happy mood -- a not depressed mood. Add to this the migration out of families and into more individual lives. We are isolating ourselves from the group. We are gregarious animals by nature, but living independently in little square boxes all alone violates our natural drives to be with others. We need more community. A push to materialism comes at the expense of community.