Requiem for a meaningless dream

Unlike the old days when letters were still delivered by pigeons, goods were transported by carriage, the businessmen's business often had delays of half a month, nowadays email enables us to send documents from one continent to another in less than 3 seconds.

That means we can respond faster and process more documents in a day. That also means we have to handle them faster and more.

People often think that when they buy washing machines, dishwashers or similar household equipment, they will have more time to rest. In fact, that time is set aside for other work.

Everything is easier and we have no reason to refuse. Cars and airplanes make it easy to get from place to place, so we have to move and visit more. And we have to deal with more work to arrange for those visits.

The pressure makes many modern people feel "breathless" and jealous of their ancestors who spend the day just wandering through the vast grasslands chasing rabbits.

If modern people deal with at least 100 issues in different fields in a week to make sure everything is okay, then the primitive only have to worry about eating, drinking and, of course, making love.

The common point between us and our ancestors is that they are programmed to survive and reproduce  — like many other animals. However, modern humans do not want their life purpose to be so tedious and pragmatic.

They want to live and die for something more meaningful than to leave a generation of DNA behind.

That's why so-called buzzing terms like "American Dream" or "the pursuit of happiness" appear in the minds of many people and important texts like the declaration of independence.

The industry of happiness and positive thinking is estimated to earn more than $ 11 billion a year, by drawing to humanity what happiness is and what to buy to get there.

"THEY say money can’t buy happiness. But that doesn’t stop people from selling it. Day passes to Goop’s wellness summit in London in June cost £1000, with weekend tickets (two nights in a hotel, a VIP Sunday workout and Goop-favourite meals) going for an eye-watering £4500. " [1]

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332450-200-how-the-science-of-happiness-became-an-industry-worth-billions/#ixzz6G8fJuHBW

Perhaps that is why when typing the word "happiness" in the search section of the book on Amazon, more than 50,000 results appear. Common phrases you may have heard are "Think less to feel happy", "Think more to feel happy", "Poo at the right time to feel happy", "Resist to feel happy" … I'm kidding Yes, but the results are that bullshit.

While joy and sadness are well known to all humanity, happiness is still a vague concept. It may be just a moment when the body releases a lot of dopamine and adrenaline. Maybe it's just a recently drawn concept, similar to romance.

The biggest cause of being unhappy, is the pursuit of happiness. Because when pursuing something invisible, you will feel frustrated, uncomfortable and depressed. Dr. Rafael Euba, a psychiatrist, said: "Acknowledging that there is no such thing as happiness is a positive message."

And maybe it depends on the human life span being extended many times as a primitive. Primitive people only have enough time to hunt, eat, sleep, mate and take care of as much as possible their children, so they don't need to think as much as modern people do. Long life and increasingly modern life that the human brain can not evolve, keep up with such a rhythm to secrete the happy substances.

Therefore, it is difficult to say whether we or the original people were happier. Because sometimes they don't even know what happiness is?[

[1] About Industry of Happiness:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332450-200-how-the-science-of-happiness-became-an-industry-worth-billions/

Source of examples:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/mental-health-condition-happiness-worry-happy-sadness-a9027381.html