From the NYTimes- Link:
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Coorelation: TV and Happiness
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About Me
- Jesse
- Basically absent-minded professor meets disillusioned traveler. I walk around each day with my head well into the white clouds of pointlessness, where mists of innocent answers lead to a downpour of angry grey questionable quests. This along with a demand that the people of this world stop taking themselves seriously, you'll rarely see me without a grin from ear to ear.
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2 comments:
One of my favorite columnists, Mark Morford, with the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about this very subject. He said, "Anyway, they don't say, in this cute and obvious new study, what everyone already knows: that there's an entire universe of unhappy things that unhappy people also indulge in besides watching way too much TV, and perhaps those things are all interrelated, and it might be worth exploring those things too, because oh my God don't you know this here life is a veritable liquid madhouse of unhappiness? A giant smoldering smoothie of misery and angst and vague feelings of inadequacy and spiritual barrenness? It's the American way."
Then he goes on to say, "Happy people usually only want a long walk, some sunshine, maybe a margarita and a good book and messy oral sex every hour or two. That's easy. It's unhappy people who really drive the economy. Unhappy people make capitalism go. This is why we like to create so many of them."
So, what I take from this is that unhappy people watch TV, want things (from all the ads on TV, duh) then buy them and make our economy grow. The economy wants this, it wants to grow and for people to continue to stay unhappy so they can buy things and have the cycle repeat itself. What to do about this? Ask yourself if you are really happy. Do you have a job that pays the bills and puts food on the table? Do you surround yourself with mostly people that earnestly care about your well-being? Are you healthy enough to get outside and enjoy the natural beauty around you? Probably you answered yes to all these questions. I guess what I'm trying to say is wanting stuff is okay, as long as it doesn't consume you. Be thankful and gracious for what you have in your life. And just because the newest, shiny thing is out there, will it really make you a happier person to get it?
Don't forget the drug companies.
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