The “pursuit of happiness” is a uniquely American phenomenon. Few people know that is was originally formulated as “the pursuit of property,” then changed because it was seemingly too cynical and immoral in the face of the destruction of Indian nations and of the stealing of their lands.

Happiness is nevertheless still frantically chased by most as if it was a criminal on the run, and New Agers are the latest to have espoused the idea that to be happy is a natural, normal, God-given state, and to be unhappy or not completely satisfied and fulfilled is a symptom of some form of mental pathology, failure, or spiritual ignorance.

It is very strange indeed ... How this quest for happiness focuses solely on the individual, severing him from his environment to attempt to make him, or her, the complete master of his or her own life. Wealth here is perceived to be a sign of alignment with divine purposes, another peculiar American belief that parallels the conservative view that the rich has God’s approval and the poor is rightly punished by God for some purported sins, which validates the greed and lack of compassion typically defining conservative ideology, and total personal fulfillment is said to be desirable and achievable regardless of local or worldly circumstances.

From here it is only a small step to view others' misery and misfortunes as opportunities for personal enrichment, and to state that to take advantage of the weakness or failures of others is part of God’s plan and of nature’s laws, that predatory behavior is at once natural and divine.

The individual then is conceived to be totally self-contained, a separate unit unaffected, untouched by his environment, a view that leads to the ideas that to be emotionally and psychologically affected by such world events as the genocide in Darfur, for example, would be a sign of mental illness … that to look at the world and actually see the suffering, the misery that are prevalent would be to indulge in “pessimism” and “negativity”… to have compassion for those who struggle would be to “look for a cause to avoid facing one’s personal issues,” to “go out and attempt to save the world to not have to live one’s own life,” etc. … in other words to be a phony, completely misguided and in need of psychological readjustment.

It is amazing how the ideology of profound selfishness that constitutes the foundation of our Western civilization permeates even the most progressive thoughts, such as can be found in the New Age movement, whose ideal of achieving personal bliss in the midst of an intensively suffering world is as grotesque and obscene as are the power and wealth gained by a ruthless elite.

It is indeed the product of the same culture that still refuses to connect the dots between the rich and the poor, the exploited and the exploiter, the winner and the loser, the victim and the victimizer, those whose main preoccupations are to stop gorging themselves on food or refine methods to look sublime, and those whose sole problem is to find some food, any food, for their children and themselves, or to dodge bullets or machetes.

Massive cultural denial notwithstanding, this pursuit of an ever-elusive happiness is obviously not working, as more and more people desperately need more potent medicines to fight their depressions or psychological difficulties and barely function … Could it be that it is not the individual that needs “fixing,” but the culture itself? Could it be that our cultural values do not fulfill the individual?

Personal alienation and a “survival of the fittest” social structure disregard and actually oppose the human heart, soul and our conscience. They transform society into a battlefield, cold, unforgiving of any mistake, ruled by mistrust and promoting unfeeling, immoral behavior. They makes winners out of criminals who do not end up in jail because their actions are legal and condoned by principles of predatory competition.

How could anyone build an ivory tower of wealth and personal comfort in a world torn and screaming for relief from thirst and hunger, from diseases, from oppression, torture, rape and mass murder? How could anyone find perfect fulfillment in the midst of a sinking world? How could anyone find happiness without giving, without doing something, no matter how small, to make the world a better place, without some form of selfless effort to relieve the suffering of others?

Rather than looking for a self-centered, immature, bratty form of “happiness,” a neurotic activity that keeps the machine that is destroying the world running at full speed, why not give happiness to others, and end the individual alienation and the inequities and injustices that feed this engine of mindless consumerism, of exploitation of people and exhaustion of natural resources? Why not restore the dimensions of conscience, of unity, of balance and sharing to the idea of happiness, as was prevalent in many indigenous tribal cultures (such as among Indians before they were made into “American Indians”), which were more human precisely because they were more attuned to universal spiritual laws?

Raphael Montoliu

Lakeport

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