Perpetually Unsatisfied

Prosperous, permissive societies have created generations of raw nerves.

There are clearly segments of humanity that are always at war with, well…something.

It does not really matter what that something is, whether it is merely a concocted offense or an actual shooting war, there are people who know nothing but conquest, they are driven by a hatred of a world that does not fit their wants, needs, desires. The world does not give them happiness and peace simply because it does not react to them the way they want it to react. The world does not yield to their will.

And this tragicomedy is currently playing out at a university campus near you.

If college populations are representative of the greater society, there is a growing segment of our country who draw their “happiness” from being unhappy. It is some sort of weird nexus of sadomasochism and progressive asceticism. They claim to dislike pain but seek satisfaction by making others unhappy. I know that is a complex concept to contemplate due to the massive contradictions but think of what we are witnessing. People who:

• Revel in pain yet are perpetually aggrieved and offended by and afraid of everything.

• Claim to want to end problems but do so by creating problems for others.

• Create problems where there are none and adopt causes for reasons that are irrational, unrelated, or simply not real.

• Are so completely trapped by emotional reasoning, they pick “victims” based on feeling rather than cause and effect.

• Demand strict compliance with their rules of engagement, a functional impossibility when those rules are based on an ideology that claims all existence is merely perception and there are no rules.

At Psychology Today, I ran across an article titled “Are You Addicted to Unhappiness?” This article (found here), listed characteristics of the chronically unhappy (I just picked a few):

• Find reasons to be miserable when life gets “too good.”

• Prefer to play the victim role and blame others rather than take personal responsibility for their choices.

• Compete with friends and colleagues to see who has it the hardest.

• Have difficulty setting and achieving goals, or conversely achieve goals only to find that they cannot enjoy their success.

• Struggle to bounce back when things do not go their way.

• Feel enslaved to their emotions and powerless to change.

• Have dramatic, unfulfilling relationships.

The perpetually aggrieved are consumers of unhappiness – it is as essential to them as food, clothing and shelter are to the rest of us. I was taught that the world was filled with beauty - and it is natural to seek both pleasure and peace – not necessarily to be hedonistic, but to be happy.

Even the Declaration of Independence lists the “Pursuit of Happiness” right up there with life and liberty and yet we see people who pursue unhappiness every day as if it is some sort of ultimate virtue. They have created this Hobbesian universe where pain, oppression and discord rule the day – but isn’t this what progressivism teaches? That there is only envy, rich people are only rich because they are stealing from the poor, earth’s climate is doomed due to capitalists willing allow factories to belch smoke into the air and deadly chemicals into the rivers for nothing other than naked profit and everybody hates everybody else?

People once understood that they will never get everything they want and life is unfair and the best in life is to expand the pleasant while shrinking the unpleasant is a worthy goal, but I suppose when you are taught your country is evil and all the world is only pain for long enough, people are going to believe that is reality.

In an interesting 2007 study of the popularity of horror films and horrific videogames conducted by Eduardo Andrade (University of California, Berkeley) and Joel B. Cohen (University of Florida), they noted that:

“We believe that a reevaluation of the two dominant explanations for people’s willingness to consume “negative” experiences (both of which assume that people cannot experience negative and positive emotions simultaneously) is in order. The assumption of people’s inability to experience positive and negative affect at the same time is incorrect.”

Andrade and Cohen argue people experience both negative and positive emotions simultaneously and people may enjoy being scared, not just relief when the threat is removed. As the authors put it, “the most pleasant moments of a particular event may also be the most fearful.”

One thing is true, when people are trained to create their own unhappiness, there will always be an infinite supply of it.