CHAPTER 01: HAPPINESS REVISITED

“Today’s teenagers show the symptoms of the malaise that ails their elders, sometimes in an even more virulent form.”

Because of the actions of our elders in the past, the youth now suffers even greater effects. These include but are not limited to social constructs, prejudice, eve going to physical and environmental factors.

“While humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.”

How far we have come from society’s prejudice, yet it still fosters. We may say that we are accepting of all races and gender identities, yet that’s really not the case.

A common principle to achieving a goal is by means of instigating either pleasure or pain. Pleasure in the sense of emotional pleasure as a reward or a physical pleasure. An example given was that Turkish sultans would pledge a reward to the males that should they join his armed forces, they would get the privilege of raping the women of the cities they would conquer. This is a prime example of the reward system being put into use with physical sexual pleasure, although it is wrong. It may be inhumane, but it increases the likelihood of Turkish men partaking in the armed forces. For pain as a motivator, typically it is in the form of a punishment, whereby people would be less likely to disobey regulations set due to the fear of the impending punishment.

According to the book, we become highly dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purpose. This ranges from official institutions like schools and churches to business-driven ones like merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers to underground systems like gamblers, pimps, and drug dealers.