I was born in 1994, and according to pop culture, I am a Millennial. What I’m about to describe in this article will take my generation and its features as the subject of study. However, this doesn’t mean that alienating dreams don’t take place across generations, cultures, genders, and occupations. The claim is simple: We were told two things when we were kids; 1) there were very specific ways to be happy, and 2) we MUST be happy. In other words, we were told that our lives would be meaningless, our identity worthless, and our persona immoral if we didn’t pursue happiness. What is more, to pursue happiness, we also had to pursue the dreams we were given by (at least in my generation) media.
We had to make those dreams come true to live meaningfully and “quality approved lives,” but guess what? Sometimes (just SOMETIMES), some people were assigned unachievable dreams, either because these dreams were naturally impossible or because their nature disapproved of the dreamer’s identity. And sometimes (just SOMETIMES), this led to a life of permanent frustration and misery. All because we were trying to be “happy” 😀
According to Sarah Young, reporter for the Independent Journal:
“Social media networks report that a quarter of Millenials will go to extreme lengths for celebrity fame, including disowning their family. Clapit’s study, a social entertainment network, found that Millenials are, as a whole, learning away from traditional life jobs and traditional life paths in favor of pursuing notoriety. One-third of millennials (30%) reveal[ed] they would rather be famous than become a lawyer and almost one quarter (23%) would rather be famous than be a doctor…One in nine millennials would rather be famous than get married, and one in six would forego having children for the possibility of fame.”
But why do we want to be famous so bad? As a typical child of the golden era of TV in a third-world country, I was raised by a screen. My mom was out working 16 hours a day, and my dad was never there. My brother and I didn’t find a more attractive alternative to numb our abandonment wounds than to watch TV from the minute we got home from school until we couldn’t stay awake anymore. We spent more time immersed in the reality of TV shows than in our actual reality. According to Ph.D. Robert T Muller from “Psychology today,” kids from ages 2 to 8 that watch more than 4 hours of TV a day are extremely vulnerable to developing a dissociative identity disorder. Is this shocking for anybody? My brother and I could easily watch over 6 hours of TV daily, and quite frankly, that was the norm in our community.
Long story short, as I matured, I discovered that, as a strategy to cope with the abandonment and disapproval of my parents and my schoolmates, I developed an obsession to become the best and most famous singer. In a way, TV had “let me know” that the only way to deserve my parents’ time and my classmates’ approval was to become Hannah Montana. My reality became what TV showed me; my identity was pursuing talent and fame. I was trapped in the idea that the ONLY way to be happy was to be a famous singer, and happiness was a must. You might think that it is just my case and that I could have just changed that way of thinking through willpower, but half of my class was enslaved by the same obsession. Whether it had to do with sports, modeling, or dancing, there were a lot of us caught in this identity trap until our early 20s. Maybe it wasn’t entirely our fault. Escaping the promising reality of TV was not an easy task when everything else was so contrastingly unkind.
And this is when the oppressive nature of alienating dreams sponsored by the “happiness industry” started doing its black magic. The standard of a “meaningful life” was so high that it became a martyrizing quest for the impossible. For some, this meant either worldwide fame or suicide, there was no alternative. The isolated intellectual kids were dreaming of being famous musicians in an industry where being smart didn’t work because they couldn’t be easily objectified and manipulated as products. The kids with aggressive parents were dreaming of being famous soccer players in a country that selects 11 players per year out of 40 million soccer dreamers, and if selected, the pressure and exploitation were unhuman. The gay kids were dreaming of strong and sexy identities in a patriarchal society that considers them weak and unappealing. The black kids were dreaming of professions exclusively reserved for the white and so on.
Wouldn’t you agree that we were kind of dreaming the impossible? There only seemed to be two possibilities later on for us, either persisting with the obsession and living very unauthentic lives or conforming with a “normal” civilian lifestyle and living permanently frustrated. The saddest part was that, even if these dreams were not quite impossible but pretty accessible, I suspect that they were not necessarily what we wanted. We just wanted to belong. It didn’t really matter where; we just wanted to feel the warmth of acceptance in a free, safe, and authentic environment. But somehow, what we understood from all the commercials and ideal TV romances was that the only way to feel this warm acceptance was by being famous, talented, and beautiful.
The happiness industry knew that we were ill and took advantage of our vulnerable brains. It was very convenient to keep the expectations high and keep our parents and teachers telling us that we needed to believe and follow our dreams no matter what. Morbid capitalism couldn’t succeed more under these conditions. Why is happiness so unquestioned? What if pursuing happiness isn’t the “happiest” way of living? In his work From the Paleolithic to the Present: Three Revolutions in the Global History of Happiness, Darrin M. McMahon from Dartmouth College gives us a tour through the history of happiness. This fascinating essay shows clear evidence that happiness wasn’t always a life expectation, and when it started being expected, it was never this high. However, most people are convinced that happiness is a duty and that it has always been. Maybe you are wondering why I keep saying “happiness industry” from the beginning of this article, and the reason is that I’m automatically referring to it as one more marketed product of our neoliberal times.
What if “happiness” not only isn’t the happiest way of living but also alienates and discriminates against those kids that didn’t fit it. This is actually Sara Ahmed’s view in The Promise of Happiness, where she explains how happiness may act as one more dogma that segregates people, and instead of making room for more lives to participate, it alienates the ones that don’t fit the profile, perpetuating xenophobia:
“I now think of spaces created by such conferences as providing new kinds of tables: perhaps tables that gave support to those who are unseated by the tables of happiness. I know that I risk overemphasizing the problem with happiness by presenting happiness as a problem… If this book kills joy, then it does what it says we should do. To kill joy is to open a life period to make room for life, to make room for a possibility, for chance. My aim in this book is to make room.”
None of these ideas are radical generalizations, but they do have this destructive potential. So maybe next time you dream with your “ideal” identity, visualize it, compare it to your favorite commercial and start asking yourself, are they similar? What does it mean/entail to become that? Am I able? AM I WILLING?
*Ahmed, S. (2010). The Promise of Happiness. Duke University Press.
*McMahon, D. (2018). From the Paleolithic to the Present: Three Revolutions in the Global History of Happiness. Dartmouth College.
*Muller, R. (2013). Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder in Children. Psychology Today. psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-trauma/201312/understanding-dissociative-identity-disorder-in-children
*Young, S. (2017). Millennial Fame. The Independent Journal.
A beautiful essay, Paula. I think you’re really onto something with the happiness industry not just existing but thriving off taking advantage of people. I wonder if this is ever escapable, though. I think pursuing happiness might just be an evolutionary trait. Why would we want to exist or survive or reproduce if we never found life meaningful or worthwhile? And if it is not a product of evolution, it might just be a lie that has become so integral to the human experience we can’t just run away from it.
Making this assumption, I wonder what we might do about such an industry. Regulate it? The medicinal industry is integral to the human experience as well and we ought not to just regulate it, but I dare say nationalize it given its integral nature to the human experience. Should the happiness industry be nationalized and put up to democracy? Or would it fall victim to bureaucracy? Does this delve into a deeper question of how to control a great citizenry?
So many questions but so little answers! I think that’s the sign of finding a great question! Again, a great post, Paula!
Good evening PAU, interesting blog post, some of what you mentioned especially resonates with what I also experienced in my upbringing as well. What I also found interesting in your claim is that at times I was able to see your strategy 2 approach that looking at an examination of a real-world issue to shed light on a puzzling philosophical question was evident. You are right, sometimes that belief embedded into our subconscious from a young age still triggers us into our adulthood years. Even though I found most of your stance interesting, I slightly disagree with this sentence that it meant either worldwide fame or suicide, which there was no alternative. The reason I disagreed was because I believe happiness is not driven by ONLY fame, I believe if we look at things from a wider scope of things, we can see happiness in other areas of your lives. I believe this approach is far too extreme in the spectrum of suicide as the alternative. All in all, I find your blog post very interesting in some points and proposes challenging points as well.
I enjoyed reading your perspective on happiness, equally painful realization of my own accessible but permanently disappointed at my unachievable dreams. I think you hit the nail on the head with your description of belonging and fitting in. it seems that society defines happiness more as a form of profit than human need so naturally there is always a group that falls victim of the systemized oppression.
This was great! I have always felt like there are issues with the concept of achieving happiness – one of them is just the vagueness of the concept. I have some thoughts that are inspired by what you wrote, but hopefully not ranty:
It is interesting that happiness is considered more than an emotion. It is considered something that you can achieve in life in general, rather than feel in particular moments of life. I remember watching Bo Burnam’s second comedy special, and becoming slightly annoyed at the end, where he performs a song asking the audience “are you happy?”. The song was meant to be spark some kind of deep reflection, but I thought the question was nonsense. What would the question “are you happy?” really mean? It could mean “do you feel happiness right now?” or “do you feel happiness often/always?” or “are you absolutely content with your life?”
I’ve noticed through my relationships and friendships that people who encounter this question of “are you happy?” often become pretty distraught about it, because they realize that they are not “truly happy.” But, it seems like a waste to worry about such a thing. I don’t believe anyone could achieve the kind of “true” and “pure” happiness so many people are concerned about achieving. Life is often difficult.
Instead, it’s good to just focus on what we care about and the people we love, and only concern ourselves with achieving a realistic, base level of happiness. In other words, if we are depressed, this is a legitimate issue that needs treatment and work, but if we are simply concerned that we are not achieving “true happiness,” we are holding ourselves to an unrealistic expectation. And, as you point out, holding such high standards of happiness and obsessing over the question of “am I happy?” could paradoxically cause a person to be less happy.