Double-Think: Striving to be Unhappy
Very few young people strive to be happy anymore. We strive to be rich, as though it is a synonym of happiness - obviously being rich will make me happy - but I'm not sure that the concept of happiness is even considered much.
The lives of the uber-wealthy and privileged are flaunted in our faces as a daily occurrence; many surf the net to read about and watch the activities of these modern-day icons. Consider that millions watch that abominable Kardashians programme. Technology has given us not just a peek, but constant access, into the lives so-called "aspirational individuals".
As home-ownership becomes less and less likely for the current crop of teens and twenty-somethings, even the thirty-somethings, their belief that winning the X-factor will lift them from their inevitable gloom has become even more entrenched. Nobody aspires towards a settled family life anymore; nearly no-one I meet and talk to has any ambition to expand their mind (barring drugs) or cure the ills of society or, simply, leave the world a better place than they found it.
Obviously I use the term "no-one" in an extremely general sense, but this is certainly the "trend". I'm also not suggesting that a settled family life is what people should be aiming for - all I say is that this is an "achievable" life-goal, whereas winning some celebrated Saturday night show and being propelled into stardom is, albeit possible, highly unlikely.
Prior to these days of easy teases into the life of the extraordinary rich by watching one of a multiplying number of odious TV shows or twitter feeds, the average guy didn't have extravagance rubbed in his face at all times. He didn't know what he was missing, so to speak. But, knowing exactly what they are missing, has engendered a crop of deluded, envious and extremely confused youngsters seeking fame, power and wealth.
Football can be a beautiful game - but it is fast becoming a gateway to riches. The true significance of being a good player is that you can go on to earn thousands per week for playing a game. The potential beauty of the game, the very essence that spreads joy around the world for those watching, has become secondary to personal success and the wealth produced by that success. This might explain the Machiavellian approach pundits and players take towards diving, which is of course cheating. Players and managers cannot afford to be honest nowadays.
Children are exposed to a vast range experiences via the internet - their minds and souls are awash with possibility. We have a media conglomerate that lauds wealth and fame even when it is not underpinned by talent. When Newspapers mock talentless celebrities, they automatically keep them in work - remember what Oscar Wilde said: "the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." They see glitter and glamour and botox and pouting every Saturday night, on some channel or another, and it presents itself as the bridge to paradise. This has led to a rejection of traditional values and expectations. It has also created a caldron for discontent and jealousy.
Why? Because they don't ask themselves: "what will make me happy?", but "what will make me rich?" Could be football for some, singing for others, acting or dancing. If these methods of applying talent fail, then young girls are inclined towards getting their kit off and prostituting themselves as web-cammers or, taking the more traditional route of seducing someone wealthy, whether they are married or not. They might abuse themselves with bizarre facial surgeries designed to achieve the "frozen" look, in hope that they can benefit from a short-lived career as a miserable looking model!
Money, as a storage system for our efforts; the physical capacity to delay the fruits of one's labour, is essential in modern life. Having more than the average can make life easier and, I would guess, easier to achieve "happiness". It removes stresses, provides cover and protection, allows one to obtain all necessary equipment and produce as well providing purchasing power for some well rationed pleasures. Earning less than the average can undoubtedly cause stresses and worries, impoverishment, boredom or even hunger and humiliation. Granted.
But in this culture of extremity, where the extremes of possibility in any give subject or activity are so easily accessible with the littlest of effort, (and once the extremity of a possibility has entered the mind it cannot be banished), the aim is extreme wealth, not an above-average, comfortable income. A comfortable income, in comparison to what they just saw on MTV Cribs, would represent a manifest failure.
But as we are encouraged to stew in the juices and oils of bitterness and envy, we at least know the destination towards which we aim. But do we really know what it is to be exceedingly wealthy - can we really envisage the life that these dangling fruits will engender? Of course, a luxury holiday in St Lucia and a brand new Ferrari sound wonderful, majestic - dream-come-true - as isolated incidences - but what would life be like once this journey has been completed; once this utopia has been arrived at?
We have a couple of things to consider. I won't bark on about the innumerable cliches and parables that warn money can't buy happiness. I'd be booed, no doubt. Let us even confine these maxims to the temporary dustbin. Let us pretend that the old moralisations don't exist.
Money itself is not the problem - money doesn't necessarily make you unhappy. This is not what I'm saying. The reason, however, why millions of youngsters strive for money, is to give gratification to their desire for pleasure - their sheer desire to get and spend. I think this ethos, this philosophy, makes you unhappy. It is a striving, and it strives to be unhappy.
John Stuart Mill, that old architect of intellectual hedonism, aptly remarked "you would do better to limit your pleasures than seek to satisfy them." Why? I'll throw in an Eastern quote now: "man is trapped by the chains of hate, or the flames of lust!" All pleasure is relative. The pleasure derived from an activity or circumstance, journey or indulgence, is not qualified by that activity in the isolation. Pleasure is derived from being in the higher end of our scale - the top end of the range. The scale or range within which we appreciate our experiences, garnering either pleasure of discomfort from, is often determined by our situation, particularly our wealth.
The problem with pleasure gratification via monetary esteem is that the individual simply raises the range, within their experience, for when they derive pleasure. The discipline required to work all week long in order to earn the money you need for you and your family live, makes a relaxing Sunday and a couple of pints of ale a delicious treat. The pleasure stands in dynamic relation to the lifestyle. The same dinner will not be enjoyed in the same manner by another relative, perhaps, who had spent the previous five days at a music festival, eating and drinking with wild abandon and sniffing and smoking with equal license. No - this person finds the Sunday meal dull, difficult, awkward and torturous. He can't wait for it to end.
Now imagine that one of our ambitious little urchins luckily arrives, gets there, makes it? The money pours in - they never need to "work" again. Everything they do for work is a pleasure and everything that they do in between is even more so. Twitter and Instagram are ablaze with pictures from the beach or a yacht, Las Vegas or a London club with the guests pouring £550 a bottle Champagne over each other's heads. Do these people acquire great happiness? Unfortunately not. They just raised the ceiling.
They seek more extreme and expensive pleasures, just to give them the same pleasurable sensation that used to be generated by the aforementioned Sunday lunch with the family or a week in a caravan in Devon. If they cannot control the slip into decadence, they simply invite the black dog of depression and despair to settle like dusk over the dales of their enjoyment. They have been caught by the flames of lust. The endless push for more, inevitably requires, still more if an experience wishes to "stand out". They trap themselves in a lifecycle of disappointment; disappointment at things that used to provide genuine satisfaction. At this juncture, they are impelled towards either a re-evaluation of their whole lives, or a push into further extremity, which can become, as we know, very dark indeed.
What a paradox modern culture encourages impressionable youths into. They begin with envy; concentrating on what they don't have and how what they do have pales into insignificance compared to one of their "heros". They become intoxicated by the wonder of possible experiences given to them by the internet and TV, then pine the hours away convinced that they'd very much love that life (because they are judging it from a conscious range that has not been raised by obscene wealth). Most will forever remain jealous paupers looking through the steamy windows at the banquet going on within, but one or two "lucky" ones will make it, will succeed in their striving, and will never have to strive again - lost in a vacuum of recidivistic hedonism that becomes less fulfilling by the day.
Can't win.
It's A Roffey
