Quote Originally Posted by stinkyattic
You-all should go run grab a copy of 'amusing ourselves to death' by Neil Postman. It fits this train of thought perfectly. Excellent book on our culture's need to have even education and facts presented in an entertaining way in order for them to be assimilated.
I never read this book, but one of the professors I had in college mentioned it several times in a lecture on this topic. I definitely beileve that our society makes it very easy to distract ourselves away from things that matter. A cynical mind might even believe that the volume of entertainment and distraction we are constantly bombarded with makes us easier to control as a society. Hmmmm....

But back on happiness... One of the resaons I think that a lot of people have not found happiness through our society's focus on buying new and better junk is something called the "Hedonic Principle." The idea is that you might a get small surge of satisfaction from owning something new or having a new experience, but after awhile you get used to it and need a new "jolt" to get the feeling back. So you get back on the cycle of having to earn more money to buy the next things to make you happy for the next moment. After a point, there is nowhere left to go down that path. You actually enjoy special things more if they are rare and novel, than if they are commonplace and everyday.

One example would be if you went one time to a great restaurant with a bunch of people who could afford to go there every day. For you, it might be the best meal you ever had in your life and you would really enjoy it. But for the other people, they may have enjoyed it the first few times, but now it is just a meal like any other. You are actually in the better position, because you will return to your everyday meals and can hope to maybe someday have that same great experience again. But those other people have nowhere to go. They are used to the great experience to the point that it is no longer special, and they have little hope of experiencing something better. That is the self-limiting nature of hedonism.