Hapiness

After yesterdays lecture one of the main points I took from it was that many people are living their lives in ways which make them very unhappy. Both of my parents work in fields that they have great passion for, my mother being a teacher and my father working in the art industry. Although they may not love their specific occupation, I know that working in their fields is what they really want to do.
The shift toward a “civilized” society created many jobs that needed to be filled, and occupations that had previously never existed. Moving away from hunter gathers and trading goods with neighbors have led humans to perform specialized jobs. Specialization seems great, it allows for more productivity and a more widespread use of that product. The unforeseen effects of specialization may still be very unclear to people today, but there is no doubt that it has permeated all levels of society. Specialization forces people to occupy certain roles in the chain of production with detrimental effects to their health. These effects may be physical dangers, as well as a distressed emotional state. Overall specialization creates specific fields that people feel pressure to become educated in and eventually enter the workforce and have it be their profession.
Not only are people not happy with how they are earning their wages everyday, but they are unhappy because of an insatiable hunger for material goods that come from the specialized industry. Constantly being told how we can save our hard earned money on things we don’t really need and how we should be wearing the latest most expensive item of clothing is unhealthy. Americans in particular have become so obsessed with this that our electronics have started to control us instead of us controlling them. Our material desires are holding are true happiness captive while breeding greed and hatred.
All of these factors combine to take away time from things that really matter, like family and friends. People are so busy with work and their material things that they enjoy after work that family values have greatly changed. The amount of families who actually sit down together and enjoy dinner has decreased greatly over the years.
The change from our primal ancestors who formed social groups around the scarcity of resources, to our society today has had devastating impacts on the planet as well as each individual. Goods and services are so abundant that a parent can provide a laundry list of things for their child without actually being there or interacting with them. Not only is this taking away from the true happiness of the parent, and the child, but it is also setting a social norm that will begin to be the regular pattern. I believe shift back to our ancestral ways would bring about much more happiness in the lives of those who need it most.