Ġ: I knew it! I said it! Now that it's published and tops the bestseller list maybe they believe it...
J: When you calm down maybe you'll tell me what exactly it is you mean?
Ġ: It is Noonday Demon. The book by Andrew Solomon. It is about bingeing, alcoholism, drug addiction, prozac, valium, depression. Today's topics. It is that their diagnosis is on the up and getting higher... It is about what the economist Richard Layard asks in his book Happiness. Life today is in many ways far better than what it was 50 years ago, yet we are not happier. Even though we have unprecedented wealth, better health and nicer jobs, things are getting worse! Get it?
J: You are inferring that the situation is worse, not in spite of prosperity, but as a result of it, right?
Ġ: Bravo! My niece wastes her life collecting these damn gossip rags. They're full of rich people saying how miserable they are. How the process of getting rich is causing all these problems.
J: We always knew that not knowing how to deal with prosperity causes acute problems, so what's new here?
Ġ: Listen, depression is on the increase, so are suicides, more and more anti-depressants are finding their way into local homes, drug abuse is rampant; and nobody is batting an eyelid.
J: That's not nice. As I said, abundance destroys the soul. What happens to somebody who always wants more, when there is always more to be had? He gets fat or depressed or he experiments with sex or drugs or both. In modern capitalist societies, like ours, he becomes a marionette for Big Business. They speak to us via advertising and other media related programmes, especially the talk shows.
Ġ: Right. Our youngsters keep on buying things thinking that material wealth is the key to happiness. Armed only with a paper education that lies framed in the living room and lacking any semblance of culture, which is what ultimately leads to fulfilment, they resort to the marketplace in an effort to buy happiness. Then it gets worse as common misery turns to depression.
J: The important thing about happiness and misery is that we need them both. In order to survive our ancestors would have needed a balance of both states of mind. A capacity for elation but not too much for complacency. The elation serves as a reward. The end of elation signals a spur to action.
Ġ: Precisely. In a world of abundance something strange happens. People begin to want what they don't have. Envy appears. If somebody has more than they do, they want it. Even when they have more than enough. In our society people exist on the hedonistic treadmill. They want something, then, having got it, they get used to it. They want more while they want their neighbours to have less.
J: There's this folk-tale, I believe it's Russian. This poor peasant's neighbour has a cow. When God asks how he can help, the poorer guy asks him to kill the cow.
Ġ: That reminds of this famous football player at Arsenal who was offered a huge weekly salary but he wanted £5,000 more. When the chairman refused he had to leave. Everybody knew that it was not about money.
J: Being spoiled for choice or what they sometimes call "the paradox of choice" is a killer. A huge range of options is a killer. Leads to addiction.
Ġ: In the book Solomon says of addiction: Feeling the wish to repeat something because it is pleasurable is not quite the same as feeling the need to repeat something because being without it is intolerable.
J: Of course it's what happens in an affluent society. In order to maintain economic growth, people who have what they need must be made to feel they don't. They must be made to feel unfulfilled. They must be made to have new things because not having them is intolerable. The ideal customer is a person who looks at what he's got and sees nothing.
Ġ: And the best of products are those which quickly run out of use. Things you want more of but don't satisfy you; high-carb snacks that make you hungry, drinks that make you thirstier, fashion stuff that goes out of fashion on the morrow, porn, cosmetic surgery, sugar and cocaine.
J: When you calm down maybe you'll tell me what exactly it is you mean?
Ġ: It is Noonday Demon. The book by Andrew Solomon. It is about bingeing, alcoholism, drug addiction, prozac, valium, depression. Today's topics. It is that their diagnosis is on the up and getting higher... It is about what the economist Richard Layard asks in his book Happiness. Life today is in many ways far better than what it was 50 years ago, yet we are not happier. Even though we have unprecedented wealth, better health and nicer jobs, things are getting worse! Get it?
J: You are inferring that the situation is worse, not in spite of prosperity, but as a result of it, right?
Ġ: Bravo! My niece wastes her life collecting these damn gossip rags. They're full of rich people saying how miserable they are. How the process of getting rich is causing all these problems.
J: We always knew that not knowing how to deal with prosperity causes acute problems, so what's new here?
Ġ: Listen, depression is on the increase, so are suicides, more and more anti-depressants are finding their way into local homes, drug abuse is rampant; and nobody is batting an eyelid.
J: That's not nice. As I said, abundance destroys the soul. What happens to somebody who always wants more, when there is always more to be had? He gets fat or depressed or he experiments with sex or drugs or both. In modern capitalist societies, like ours, he becomes a marionette for Big Business. They speak to us via advertising and other media related programmes, especially the talk shows.
Ġ: Right. Our youngsters keep on buying things thinking that material wealth is the key to happiness. Armed only with a paper education that lies framed in the living room and lacking any semblance of culture, which is what ultimately leads to fulfilment, they resort to the marketplace in an effort to buy happiness. Then it gets worse as common misery turns to depression.
J: The important thing about happiness and misery is that we need them both. In order to survive our ancestors would have needed a balance of both states of mind. A capacity for elation but not too much for complacency. The elation serves as a reward. The end of elation signals a spur to action.
Ġ: Precisely. In a world of abundance something strange happens. People begin to want what they don't have. Envy appears. If somebody has more than they do, they want it. Even when they have more than enough. In our society people exist on the hedonistic treadmill. They want something, then, having got it, they get used to it. They want more while they want their neighbours to have less.
J: There's this folk-tale, I believe it's Russian. This poor peasant's neighbour has a cow. When God asks how he can help, the poorer guy asks him to kill the cow.
Ġ: That reminds of this famous football player at Arsenal who was offered a huge weekly salary but he wanted £5,000 more. When the chairman refused he had to leave. Everybody knew that it was not about money.
J: Being spoiled for choice or what they sometimes call "the paradox of choice" is a killer. A huge range of options is a killer. Leads to addiction.
Ġ: In the book Solomon says of addiction: Feeling the wish to repeat something because it is pleasurable is not quite the same as feeling the need to repeat something because being without it is intolerable.
J: Of course it's what happens in an affluent society. In order to maintain economic growth, people who have what they need must be made to feel they don't. They must be made to feel unfulfilled. They must be made to have new things because not having them is intolerable. The ideal customer is a person who looks at what he's got and sees nothing.
Ġ: And the best of products are those which quickly run out of use. Things you want more of but don't satisfy you; high-carb snacks that make you hungry, drinks that make you thirstier, fashion stuff that goes out of fashion on the morrow, porn, cosmetic surgery, sugar and cocaine.