The Corruption of Happiness

The industrial revolution was the time when this civilisation completely lost it.  Like a virus, it became more concerned with making infinite copies of itself than contemplate the meaning and purpose of that which it made copies of.  Narratives of perpetual economic growth and procreation were aggressively pushed by the psychonomy to continue making photocopied humans so much so that, today there is no leader who doesn’t feel obliged to talk about economic and population growth: even though it is precisely this growth which lies behind the spectacular collapse of civilisation and biosphere.  

Although growth is unsustainable, it is always the promise of growth and prosperity that has sustained leaders and their mobster friends.  The political survival of leaders and credit rating of their nations depend on how effectively they can broadcast toxic narratives of growth.  Prosperity is now measured in metrics, not results, as society makes a dystopian shift from qualitative to quantitative measures of success, happiness and well-being.  In this numerized and financialized economy people have become nameless singular GDP units at the mercy of algorithms and employers.

Our metrics-driven world has forever redefined happiness.  There is an obsession to measure it in ever so many quantitative ways rather than simply experience it.  People who dare to define and pursue happiness on their own terms are seen as losers, cheaters or misfits, just because they have managed to reclaim their life from this oppressive economic system.  

The corruption of the concept of happiness began as soon as the emergence of money made the real value of things increasingly invisible.  Because it represented abstract quantities rather than tangible value, money became an object of mindless accumulation.  If the object of accumulation is apples, we stop at the point where we feel we’ve had enough apples.  But if the object is money, there is no upper ceiling.  The drive for limitless accumulation that came with abstract currencies forever changed how we saw and valued life, and fuelled uncontrollable growth and collapse countless times in our history. 

Currencies led to the transmutation of happiness from the tangible to the abstract, therefore rendering happiness fundamentally unattainable. As humans became more desperate and impatient to achieve this elusive happiness, they resorted to the most extreme and self-destructive activities. The collapse of civilisation is nothing but the suicide of a species that tried too hard to make itself happy.

Our planet received its death sentence the minute money was invented.  Money became the engine of acceleration behind the psychonomy, supercharging greed and universalising it into one, simple “object” of acquisition: money itself.  Humans fell into the trap of comparing each other by how much money they had, than who they really were.  The trap became bigger and bigger, until it could fit an entire civilisation.   

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons

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