Happiness is relative, relative to many factors including, freedom, agency, and importantly to this note, expectation. Travelling in developing countries it is not hard to find genuine happiness in the people, even though they may have little food, no TV, no night clubs and street cafe's. With little to expect from life, each small thing received, experienced and gained can bring happiness. On our TV's we have seen the tears of happiness of a person who receives a gift we wouldn't look twice at. If it is unexpected, the smallest event can bring genuine happiness, even in circumstances of great poverty.
For the developed world, with its many distractions and opportunities, a crisis of happiness seems to be a topic of increasing concern. If people with so little can gain happiness why, when we have so much opportunity and freedom is it so hard. I suggest the following.
In today's media driven the world, a principle driver of expectations is what we see on the TV, and advertisements. These foster an expectation that certain emotions are delivered through consumer spending and the acquisition of goods. This consumer culture is criticised as being the source of unhappiness as it supplies an instant gratification but not a sustainable or meaningful happiness. This consumer culture is further embedded, due to a critical mass living a consumer life. In addition to the media, it is the drive to live as ones peers do that drives a consumer happiness culture to become a larger collective movement.
However the consumer culture may not be the direct source of this unhappiness but an indirect source. Maybe it is the expectation that surrounds that consumerism that is the problem. By presenting images to the community, that bear no resemblance to that of the average life, we build expectations that we should be living the life presented even though it is an artificial construct.
When the purchasing of goods fails to deliver the lifestyle as presented, or we are unable to purchase to goods to get the lifestyle that we believe others seems to have, our expectations are unsatisfied leaving us depressed. A sense of inadequacy and failure can enter the mind against for what is in reality a false idea in the first place.
With so much of our information about our world, viewed through the lens of media, rather than directly and personally, are we able to discern what the normal and real life of others really is, so that we can set our expectations more realistically?
