The human society isn’t built around happiness. The quality of happiness is shallow and superficial. The society is dead. If we are to raise the quality of happiness we feel, we need to address the things that stop us from being truly happy.

A society that’s not living is dead. A society that’s not happy is dead and that’s the current state of the human society after years of technological progress. Somebody in my social circle recently committed suicide, who appeared to be alright on the façade for months, and may be years.

The society is dead. If we are to revive it, we have a lot of work on our hands. There are several reasons why the society is dead and we need to work hard to revive it. Let us see some of those below.

1. Materialism kills true happiness

A materialistic life is a curse that all of us need to fight. But, how would we fight it unless we realize that it’s a curse. There are people living from one version of the iPhone to another, and that has become their reason for existence. They don’t even need a new phone when Apple decides to release the next version and they are forced to buy it because all their friends are buying it.

Why all their friends are buying it- because it looks good to show off to others that they have the latest technology even when they don’t need it at all. Materialism is a huge curse which has turned the society into a massive black hole of superficiality where nobody has a purpose. Materialism erodes the quality of happiness and quality of life, and we need to be careful of it.

2. Lack of self-awareness and purpose

Everybody looks and behaves like everybody else. That is, besides some honorable exceptions. People do not care to understand who they are, their strengths, weaknesses and purpose. It is impossible to be able to reach a purpose without self-awareness and that’s where we are as a society. Since people do not care to spend time understanding themselves, they lead a purposeless life. A purposeless life takes away from the quality of happiness one feels.

There is no real happiness possible without understanding your purpose, but everyone seems to be rushing to the most crowded party.

3. Homogeneity depletes the quality of happiness

Most people hold crowdfunded views. Since people haven’t taken the time to form their own views about what matters and what doesn’t, most of their views come from the crowd. The crowd or the mob doesn’t have a mind of its own. It takes a certain view from a loud member and everybody in the crowd follows it without questioning if it serves the people in the crowd or not.

This is how respect for things over people has become a mass phenomenon. This is how crowds seek to rule over aberrations.

4. Craving for social acceptance diminishes happiness

People need social acceptance. Why? The society is a bunch of miserable fucks who are trying to increase their group size. Why would you care? All my life I tried to do stuff that the society would respect. I finished my education including a master’s degree, which I am not even sure I needed. I picked up subjects in school and college which were socially respectable and nobody cared to tell me that I was being a fool, because they didn’t know any better. Neither the parents nor the teachers knew any better and hence one bad decision led to another.

I realized quite later in life that craving for social acceptance is recipe for pain because the society is a bunch of miserable fucks who wouldn’t care if you drop dead tomorrow. So, stop caring about what people think of you and do what feels right for you. Only when you do what is right for you would you be able to raise the quality of happiness you feel.

5. Comparisons take away from the quality of happiness

Out of the craving for social acceptance comes the desire to constantly compare your life with those of other people so as to catch up with the Joneses and the Kardashians. What bullshit is that?

Consider the fact that nature designed all of us in a unique way and considering the fact that she did so, nature did not intend for us to lead similar lives and compare the hell out of each other. Your life is meant to be unique and you are not supposed to catch up with your neighbours, with your peers or your colleagues.

You are supposed to carve out a distinct identity for yourself for a better quality of happiness, which is different than that of others since that was the purpose of your life- to find yourself and use it to make the world a better place.

But, who would tell this to a dead society. I am trying.

6. Lack of support for people who try to fulfill their dreams

This fits the definition of a society of miserable fucks. It doesn’t have any respect for people who try to break free and make something worthwhile for themselves. The society doesn’t like people having the guts to follow their own dreams.

Once they do that, the society blocks them from access to resources, financial or emotional so that they are forced to give up and return to the gang of miserable fucks. It makes people who even talk about following their dreams shut themselves up so that they don’t even try. If people don’t follow their dreams, the overall quality of happiness in the society goes for a fall.

There are some respectable exceptions where the families of people who want to follow their dreams through a process of conscious self-awareness respect them. But, exceptions do not defy the law. In most cases, the families are the biggest roadblocks on the journeys of dreams.

7. Success is respected, happiness is not

Success is not the right measure of life, happiness is.

The problem with success is that it is an outward measure and hence the answer to someone’s success becomes the level of materialistic things they own- the house, the cars, the goods. Happiness is an inward measure. Nobody can comment on your happiness because nobody can see it. You are the only person in the world who can understand if you are happy or if you are not happy, and that’s the only thing that really matters about life.

However, the dead society of miserable fucks is stuck on success as the measure of life, and hence everyone judges everyone differently by the level of perceived success in their minds.

Happiness should be the only measure of life and it will only happen when people accept happiness as the right unit measurement. However, since it is close to impossible (doesn’t come to my mind right now) to make happiness tangible, the society would continue to respect success, which translates to materialism.

8. Painful relationships

There are largely two key relationships in any person’s lives-the relationships with their parents and that with their life partner. Just because the values of these sets of people don’t match, relationships are painful. They are painful because compromise with one’s ambitions is seen as a sign of virtue and surrender of dreams is celebrated.

Unless and people realise that in spite of people being in relationships, they are individuals with individual ambitions that need to be respected, relationships would continue to be a source of pain, than of joy.

9. Bored workplaces

We spend most of our times either at work or with families. Since the society lacks self-awareness, people get into jobs they don’t like since they don’t quite know what they would like in the first place.

The way to create happy organizations is to hire people on purpose so that nobody who feels disconnected with the organizational purpose gets to be a part of the company. This would force potential candidates to evaluate themselves, and understand where they could use their skills and passion more productively. This is the way to create happy workplaces.

10. The general pretense

All this is true, but try going around and asking people. Nobody would admit that their souls are rotting and they can’t take life anymore. People wouldn’t admit that they are spending their lives in jobs that they don’t like and are in relationships with people who don’t understand them.

The world is a happy pretense where people look good to the world and show that everything is hunky dory where global surveys reveal that more than 80% people hate their jobs and most marriages end up in divorces.

There is a general pretence everyone is comfortable with. You pretend with me and I would pretend with you, thereby creating a wonderful pretentious world together (this is sarcasm, don’t quote me).

The conclusion

So, here we are, living in a world where people are pretending that the things they have bought with jobs they can’t stand are making them happier and improving their relationships that have been built on the façade of meaningless materialism. That materialism is eating our souls and not even giving us the opportunity to think about what’s rotten inside us.

Unless and until we admit that the society is dead, we will not be able to fix it. This is 2020, as I write this, and I don’t think we are living in a happy society where self-aware people believe in their dreams, and go after them, supported by a supportive human community. That’s the kind of society I would want to live in, the kind of world I would want to belong to. That’s the kind of world I am trying to create with this blog. Hopefully, someday. How about you?

Thank you for reading.

The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani