Application Question: (absurdity of happiness
articles)
Foley observes that the pursuit of happiness
can lead to unhappiness while Cohen sees a silver lining in our attempts to
measure happiness.
How much emphasis
does your society place on the pursuit of happiness? Do you think this
is beneficial?
My society places an undue amount of emphasis on pursuing
happiness instead of simply enjoying it in the here and now. The main reason is
that like in Foley’s society, we too are sipping a ‘deadly cocktail’ comprising
dissatisfaction, a sense that we do not deserve to enjoy happiness without
working for it, and constantly comparing ourselves against those we believe are
happier than us.
The situation is as ‘problematic’ for us as it is in
Foley’s society. There is confusion here that the pursuit of money is
equivalent to the pursuit of happiness. We are trained from young that our
happiness is far away, out of reach, and that to approach that eventual goal we
must work to earn enough to afford the finer, more luxurious things in life and
then we will be happy. Hence we look on others in our society who are wealthier
than us as having ‘made it’, though we frown on some of them whom we feel did
not work hard enough and yet have more privileges than us. This is particularly
true of our Ministers who are paid awesome salaries compared to our meagre
monthly wages, and yet we feel that they are incompetent at their jobs, which
is to make it easier for us to achieve happiness.
It is hard to ‘question… the system’ (Foley) because we
are too deeply immersed in it to view it objectively. We emphasize pursuing
happiness because the pursuit is our primary motivation for working hard in
order to survive as individuals as well as a society. Without presenting
ourselves as a diligent, capable, tireless workforce, we have little else to
offer the rest of the world. With people as our only natural resource, the
entire nation’s survival depends on us not resting on our laurels but to
continuously strive to achieve, to offer more, to do better than before, even
past retirement age. The myth, of course, is that there is happiness for each
of us at the end, but not now. Now we just have to knuckle down and work to
pursue that end.
In the meantime, though we do not actually have a habit
of taking drugs to keep us from actual depression, we have our own addictions
to make us feel happier. The Singaporean’s cocktail of choice is food, shopping
and Hollywood. Unfortunately, similar to Foley’s antidepressants, they only
provide a temporary relief from our stress and anxiety, and the next day we are
busy pursuing happiness again.
This constant state of civic unhappiness cannot be good
for our society in the long run. With our government making policies that focus
on economic growth so much, we the people have grown cynical about its
intentions. It’s a trickle-down effect: the government emphasizes economic
growth and we have to keep working to grow larger and larger slices of the
economic pie, yet we feel we are not benefiting from our hard work. While our
salaries stagnate, the fruit of our labour are being shared by an increasing
flood of foreign nationals and by our government representatives with their
exorbitant payscales. This in effect multiplies our discontent, as much as the
British public scorns their own Prime Minister’s policies (Cohen).
While our government today – since the watershed
elections of 2011 in which the people voiced it’s anger by electing an
unprecedented 6 opposition candidates into parliament – is paying more
attention to policies that focus on social happiness such as emphasizing values
education over pragmatic exam-score based education, healthcare and
family-friendly, work-life balance policies, it may already be too late.
Linking happiness to policy (Cohen) is an uncertain proposition. Our earlier
policies linking economic growth to happiness have created our current stewpot
of brooding malcontent; while current policies specifically targeting happiness
are being viewed cynically as just lip-service. As long as we continue to chase
after happiness rather than learn to appreciate what we have our society will
continue to destabilize.