Are people in America happy in general?

Whatever. Have at it. I'm doing drugs. The good, universe hyperspace kind not the OD in your car kind.

the american bourgeoisie dreams of slumming it for a workers' revolution.. tis funny for a crowd that doesn't know which side is up with either a sickle or a hammer.

Very very few people are protesting.

We're mostly happy being unhappy.

We love being full of righteous indignation.

We will speak to the manager. And smear crap all over the Capitol Building. And throw bottles, but at the wrong people, oops, so sorry, how dreadfully clumsy of me.

r3 few in relative to nation... but alas, for months, years, on end

[quote]Or no, and that's why they're protesting?

I think people need a cause

Ban the Bomb - Vietnam - CND...

An interesting question OP. I'm not American so shall be interested in all the replies. Cheers mate

America is currently at a low point after four years of Trump and one year of Covid. A lot of us are feeling disillusioned, disgusted, and discouraged.

I’m basically R1 right now. I’ve gotten through this pandemic shit high as a kite and still toking the trouble away. America is a very sad place, filled with greed and division at its worst. I think this stuff makes the sixties look like a cakewalk in our history books.

What will be interesting is how the world turns out after we get past this period.

In the annual World Happiness Reports, the U.S. always comes in well, at around 14th place. But I don't believe it.

Americans are hell-bent on projecting happiness, but underneath the show, they are not so happy. In other countries where I consider the people much happier, the instinct in answering such polls may be to say everything is terrible, the government, the price of housing, the low salaries, etc, etc. The instinct is the opposite of Americans who always want to put on a competitive good face and insist they couldn't be happier. It's a big difference compared to that of other countries that wear their cynicism outside but have a ready laugh behind it, and I think it's in that respect that the U.S. fares better than some other --happier to my observations-- countries.

Americans are defensive about how they appear to the world, but some other countries are unaccustomed to the constant competition to which Americans subject themselves and don't mind blurting out that the government are all corrupt and incompetent, etc.

In converse Americans are more guarded about their personal lives. Some may be effusive about how wonderful everything is, always, but few people know how to discuss everyday happiness with their lives. They deflect immediately to some other measure: work, real estate, a healthy family...

I think people fake their instagram happiness. Is there a word for that?

OP, you have already tried some nonsense thread about people not caring about you. Why are you so determined for everyone to experience your loneliness, anger and hate?

Keep your sad, soviet existence in your own back yard.

They’re not now that Biden is in office.

Not since 2016 and TRUMP MANIA .

Americans fake all this happiness based on commercial advertising, Instagram, Church, consumerism.

R13 ...ok

Americans = 🔫 🤡 🇺🇸

Are people really happy in most places? I mean all the great art is filled with tragedy misery and suffering. Nobody has a right to happiness. Nobody really has a right to anything. We impose it on our societies. But we really depend on nature and nature doesn't give a shit about us. We just hope to be lucky because life is 99.9% luck.

R12, the Germans must have an awful word for that.

No.

Yes. Ignorance is bliss!

Americans are almost entirely dissatisfied with things, nothing meets their unrealistic expectations. Everyone thinks they ought to be richer, better looking, more popular, have more impressive families, getting more sex, being more like the shiny happy artificial people they see on TV and social media.

It's all bullshit. The normal state of human affairs is a struggle to survive, every moment of happiness is a miracle to be cherished, and that's being happy with the things you actually have and not wasting your life pining for the things you want... or that other people think you should be want. Happiness is within, it's not acquired.

An interesting article (2012) on the history of happiness and its expression, particularly among Americans. The author explains that the notion of seeking happiness and an outgrowth of the Enlightment and the outward character trait was noticed in Americans from the late 18thC. He also notes that the national mood of flavor of happiness can change over time, as with the new and less melancholy Danes.

[quote]A modern Russian adage holds that “a person who smiles a lot is either a fool or an American.” It’s true that when McDonald’s arrived in Russia, in 1990, one of its first tasks was to train clerks to seem cheerful. I’ve spent time since with Russian friends, discussing cultural rules on showing happiness, agreeing that differences remain.

[quote]The point here is not to disparage Russians. Most East Asian cultures also have lower happiness expectations than Americans are accustomed to. Some Latin American cultures tend in the other direction. The point is that cultural variations on happiness are considerable, contributing to the findings of international happiness polls that dot the contemporary public opinion landscape.

Not since the Whiskey Rebellion. That's when they learned that "freedom" was for rich, white men exclusively.

Most Americans are over worked and underpaid. Amazon workers don’t even have time to pee. We need fundemental change: Bernie Sanders style change-but Americans are too obsessed with the notion someone else might get something for free. Plus the government is designed to keep an oligarchy in power and to prevent change, so we stew in misery.

[quote]but Americans are too obsessed with the notion someone else might get something for free.

R26: There's much to that, I think. Americans take too much pleasure in making a show of their perceived sacrifices so that they can wag a finger at those who have it easier or, better yet, got something for free. From Reader's Digest and later Reagan's Welfare Queen Myth to Donald Trump's immigrant/foreign scapegoats, Americans halve more than a half-century of modern experience at this old game. If they were even half so good at looking after their own interests as they are at criticizing others for taking too much (the truth of which is quite unimportant), they would be in a much better place.

Americans put on a face of happiness while basking in misery. They "love" their jobs and boast that they are "so important" that they dare not use even one of their 10 vacation days a year that they are "so lucky to have."

This is hilarious. It’s like a movie satire. I love it when the motley crowd have trouble chanting Tapiocarias. I don’t know why more people aren’t mocking these shameless BLM would-bes.

You're right on, R27. I don't know about other countries, but Americans lie to themselves constantly so they can feel "exceptional."

If you believe the research out of Harvard's human flourishing Institute or Yale's Happiness Project, Americans are overwhelmingly happy.

Check out the movie Wall-E. It called it. That's what America is already. And Idiocracy, too.

Which "America," OP? The entire North American continent? South America? U.S.A.?

I'm an American and it feels like the US is a deeply damaged and deranged state these days. I'm only waking up to the injustices and traumas in our history in the last few years and it's been eye opening. Compared to parts of Europe and Asia we are practically in a dark age right now. I worry for our future. My fellow Americans scare me.

The people you see prostituting themselves on social media are not, be definition, happy. But most Americans do not do that. And, most Americans are relatively happy.

Not insanely joyous, like some fucking dumbass retard Mediterranid or North African grifter, but mostly happy most of the time.

Thanks for another poorly scripted thread, Boris. What a bunch of contrived bullshit.

You and your internet troll farm minion crew are turds circling the drain.

Move along. You don't belong here.

What's wrong with a little self-criticism, R35? The U.S. has many advantages, but can anyone be "happy" with climate change causing disasters, plus social injustice causing misery, and then Trump minions trying to trash the place?

America is, overall, a miserable nation. Sure we are bloated when it comes to goods and resources, but there’s an underlying dissatisfaction and entitlement in the culture. Everyone is on drugs, either prescription or illicit. So many people are on antidepressants that it’s showing up in our drinking water.

It’s constantly “MORE, MORE, MORE!” Americans have to have the biggest and latest of everything. And as a result, we’re in jobs that have become a rat race. Even school is a damned rat race, with kids overloaded with unrealistic demands of academic, athletic and extracurricular perfection.

The middle class is quickly eroding and we’re pawns of nefarious billionaires who have set the game firmly in their favor.

Apart from economic uncertainty, add to that violence, political division and race relations, and it becomes clear, Americans are fucking insane and unhappy.

I’ve traveled a lot and seen third world countries in which people thrive amid poverty far better than America thrives amid prosperity.

In the US it's all about choices. There is a very easy path to comfort. Do well in school, find a way to go to college or trade school, avoid hard drugs and don't have children before your 25. Follow that path and it's easy to have your basic needs met due to a normal middle class job. After that, you have the freedom to pursue what makes you happy. But happiness is all abut choices. We have just about every worldly comfort for sale with a relatively safe country.

Overall I'm more bored than anything but that's because of the pandemic and my decision to be more conservative in what I do. Despite EVERYTHING going on in America it's still a kickass place to live. I choose to stop being glued to the news and politics for my mental health.

American happiness is Hopper's woman in the automat. In another setting she would tell you how very happy she is and how everything is just great, "thank *you* for asking!"

Oh yes. Much happier than people in other countries.

See, I disagree with most of this. Right now we are certainly in a place of transition. We are transitioning out of the crazy Trump years into a more caring society. We are trying to figure out real equality, and that's difficult. And we still can't really do interesting things like go to restaurants and museums, so we're all just watching a lot of tv

But, in general, Americans are happy. I'm not a rah rah American, but we have everything we need. We have beautiful places and beaches and glam cities, semi-tropical crazy Florida, tons of growing regions to provide food. It is the land of plenty. Also, Americans are brought up to think they are each the best and can do whatever they want in life. That can be kind of destructive, but usually it's good for your self esteem. That's probably why we get in screaming fights with each other so often. (Don't tell me I can't do so and so. I can do whatever I want to do!!!) Yes, there is a class structure, but if you speak well (and maybe if you have a lightish skin tone), you can travel anywhere and do anything. Yes, you have to have money, but even you don't have it, you keep thinking you might get it eventually.

Maybe I'm optimistic because it's springtime and Biden is in office, but sure, I'm happy.

It indeed sucks, OP.

[quote]Which "America," OP? The entire North American continent? South America? U.S.A.?

Are you retarded?

ok, Boris.

We need balance between the wealthy elite and the workers who do back breaking work.

UNIONIZE!!!!

UNIONIZE!!!

Become Voltron and defend yourself!

Ha, R46. The only unions I hear about with any frequency are those of cops, firefighters, and teachers - and the first two of those usually for all the wrong reasons.

Americans take a somewhat skeptical view of unions and of government provided services, thinking it's better left in their own hands - but where are their pensions? Where are the large percentages of American workers comfortably secure in their retirement prospects? Where are the large numbers of American workers who can retire a couple years early and provide for their own healthcare? And the workers who don't have to worry about what a medical crisis or long term disability would do to their finances?

Is this R42's land of opportunity, where "Americans are brought up to think they are each the best and can do whatever they want in life"? Because they can grow much if their own food (or some of it, the U.S. being the world's largest importer of food.) Because they "have glam cities"? Because people without money can keep thinking that they might one day be rich?

Americans are stupid.

Fixed it for ya!

R46 that’s the most key - unionize!

For those who live in prosperous areas all seems well. But the US has decayed terribly. Old industrial and coal producing areas look like third world countries. You have never seen real poverty until you experience Mississippi. The problem here is that the Right wing blocks any attempts at economic reform. We need to be investing more in education, infrastructure and jobs. Instead we subsidize national and global corporations that pay no taxes (Trump) when the obscenely rich should be taxed fairly and loop holes eliminated. A reconstruction program of road, rail, educatiom, and infrastructure is badly needed and that would provide a lot of good jobs in the construction, maintainence and help spur growth. Republicans will block any program like this from ever happening.

"There's a Democrat in the WH so everything is just fine"-types like R42 are a HUGE part of the problem actually. These people think everything's on the upswing because the bad man went away.

R42 actually has the audacity to type "we have everything we need" in a country with horrific wealth inequality, where millions sleep outside homeless and no one fucking cares. Then he signs off on American Exceptionalism as a self-esteem booster, and that's how you know fascism has taken hold for good. We've brainwashed people into thinking we are good simply for being American. It's sick.

My east and west coast liberal friends are happy and contented. They don’t know or care about the rotting middle United States. They will write a 25$ tax deductible check to a rural cause if you ask them.

[quote]My east and west coast liberal friends are happy and contented. They don’t know or care about the rotting middle United States.

And why should they care? Does Middle America vote to support the things important to East and West Coast liberal causes? Did they send checks when NYC was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1975 (or did they take delight and a laugh at the expense of liberals and their crazy causes and lack of common sense - Middle Americans have so much common sense, you know)? Did they support Trump because they liked him that much or because he gave them cover to give a big Fuck You to the Coastal Elites and people who turn up their nose at "hot dish" church suppers. To show their contempt for immigrants and foreigners/foreign ideas even as their precious farms have become fewer and fewer and controlled now by science and multinational corporations? Do they care about East and West Coast liberal cities when they let their own cities rot and blame race and immigrants and foreign influences? Do they care about East and West Coast liberals even as their children have spent decades fleeing family farms for colleges and white collar work? Not really. They are too busy being perennially pissed off about not being listened to -- maybe because they have nothing more to say than that they are pissed off for not being listened to (never mind that any politician with the least national ambition has to spend untold time at county fair sheep shearings contests and pickled beet canning demonstrations.)

Do your "rotting middle United States" friends send tax deductible checks to the Met to keep things running in this Covid emergency? To LA, San Francisco, Portland? To the Art Institute of Chicago even? Would they if you asked them? No, they cry like fucking babies that no one listens to them even as the NYT can't spill enough ink of these self-pitying fuckers somehow worried that the rest of the country is shitting in high clover with their poor, misused tax dollars.

As a child of immigrants, I actually think Americans are happier than most. The focus on happiness is not irrelevant - it’s a priority here more than other places like Europe. As is said about depression, sometimes you have to fake it to make it. People here believe in the pursuit of happiness. Being surrounded by people attempting to be happy is arguably more conducive to happiness than someplace like Russia.

The thing that ruins it is the myth that wealth brings happiness. The capitalist dream confounds happiness in the US - always leaves one wanting/expecting more.

I agree with the above that Latin American culture has a more sincere, ingrained focus on happiness - prioritizing things that truly bring happiness like social connections and less obsession with work and money. Mexico is consistently ranked high on happiness charts - despite relative poverty, the culture prioritizes things that breed true happiness.

I am an East Coast Liberal, so maybe that's why I'm happy. We're not rich, (we have the smallest house of almost anyone I know. One bathroom for two adults and two teens), but we're okay right now. I'm not happy with the 15 pounds I put on during the winter and can't seem to diet off, but I'll keep trying.

I see unhappy people as people who don't like their circumstances and don't see a way to improve them. Obviously there are plenty of people in the USA and around the world who feel that way, and that's tragic. I had kind of a horrible childhood so I don't have any big expectations about life. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy.

I don't know what people in the middle of the country want. Do they want to move? Do they want to stay where they are and do drugs and drink? Do they want to be reality tv stars?