Jennifer Peng

The Melancholy of America

Why are Americans not happy? This seems like a simple question on the surface and
there are many possible answers that come to mind. Perhaps it is because of our roughly twenty
billion dollars of national debt within the United States. There is also the fact that twenty-eight
people die per day because of drunk drivers. Or maybe it is because the average American
citizen works more hours and gets less vacation days than most people around the world. The
world is filled with many horrors, and many of which we have no control over. Yet we are
unhappy. As Americans, we are one of the leading economic and political powers in the world,
yet we are unhappy. There does not exist one right answer to this question, but it is a question
worth exploring.

I. What is happiness?
Clearly, many different people have many different definitions of what happiness is. In
fact, happiness has become quite an abstraction within American society. We do not quite know
exactly what it is, yet we all yearn for it. A dictionary definition of happiness would be that
happiness is the state of being happy. Then in turn, one could ask, what is the state of being
happy? Seeing as this is not a psychology paper, I will not attempt to define what happiness is so
take it as you will. Happiness is what each person believes it to be individually. It is being
satisfied with whatever the conditions of the present are. So, then why are Americans so
obsessed with this notion of happiness and why can we not obtain it in the long run?
When we look at a measurement of happiness, for example the Happy Planet Index, we
are once again presented with this perplexing issue of why Americans are not content in our
current situation. The Happy Planet Index (HPI) was developed to measure how nations were
promoting long, sustainable, and happy lives for all of their citizens. The HPI for each country is
calculated through a mathematical relationship between the product of wellbeing, life
expectancy, and inequality of outcomes then divided by ecological footprint. The United States
earned a 20.7 HPI score as a result of the conditions within our country. Out of the 140 countries
from which data was collected, we are ranked 108th. The country who is in theory happiest is
Costa Rica with an HPI score of 44.7. Though our life expectancy, wellbeing, and inequality
measurements are all good, it is our ecological footprint that causes our score to plummet (the
United States is ranked in the bottom ten in this category). As a result, there is a slight caveat to
this measurement of happiness. The overall happiness within our society may actually be higher
right now in this moment than the HPI predicts, however this happiness will be considerably
lower in the future when our ecological footprint eventually catches up to us, hence the
sustainability aspect of the HPI. When we look at our ranking based on HPI scores, most people
will be puzzled. Why is the United States ranked so low? Looking at our HPI score, obviously
something needs to change if we want to improve it. It is now our job to figure out just what
actions we need to take.
According to a study performed by the World Health Organization and Harvard Medical
School in 2004, the United States tops the list of the fourteen countries studied as the most
depressed country in the world. The United States has a 9.6% rate of people suffering from
bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, or chronic minor depression. When we think about
which countries which are likely to have high rates of depression, we think of nations in which
citizens are not given many rights or people struggle on a daily basis to find food and clean
water. Yet this is not the case, according to this 2004 study. It seems that the further we look into
American happiness, the more dreary it looks. All of the data points to the fact that Americans
are unhappy, but we have yet to do anything about it.

I. Is ignorance bliss?
As Alexis de Tocqueville claims in Democracy in America, he has seen people who are
poor and oppressed yet are happier than those populations he witnessed when visiting the United
States. Therefore, are Americans unhappy simply because we have access to too much? We have
all the information and freedoms that we could ever want, yet something is still not quite
working right. To answer this, we have to first break down what it means to live in the American
democracy. To look more closely at what Tocqueville was claiming, we must explore the
difference between a democratic and despotic society. One of the fundamental differences
between democracy and despotism is the flow of information. In a democracy, the leaders and
the media encourage a vast and rapid exchange of information. Every citizen has access to an
expansive amount of knowledge simply because of the fact that they live in a free and open
society. Communication is encouraged between citizens amongst themselves as well as between
the citizens and their government. Comparatively, information in a despotic culture is a well-
protected commodity. The government tightly controls the amount of information that their
citizens receive and the amount of truth revealed through this information is determined by the
government as well. A leader in a democratic society must encourage open communication, this
is one condition that must be satisfied in order to produce a functioning democracy. The
willingness to openly communicate with one's citizens exemplifies a way in which a democratic
leader is different from a despotic one, showing that leadership always has a political context. In
the sense of communication, a democratic leader must approach this task in a different manner
than a despotic leader would. If a democratic leader were to give out information as a despotic
leader would (in snippets and blended in with lies), then a functioning democracy would not be
able to be sustained. Democratic and despotic leaders are therefore required to approach
information seeking and information giving in different manners. By making the decision to
willingly and freely giving information to his people, a democratic leader is acknowledging this
open exchange of information as a vital component of a democracy. Is it possible that this leads
to an explanation as to why Americans are so unhappy? Perhaps we know too much about the
world around us and this information overwhelms us. It seems that this presents a rather
troubling problem: does living in a democracy contribute to American unhappiness? Of course,
we cannot blame our discontentment wholly on our system of government. But perhaps this does
give us an opportunity to think more critically about what it truly means to live in a democratic
society.
Beyond the simple access to information within a democratic society, there also lies a
distinction between despotic and democratic cultures in the role that citizens play as an audience.
In a democratic society, participation within the government is encouraged. Leaders must take
action in order to encourage a more thoughtful public rather than simply a persuaded audience.
To more clearly define what a more thoughtful public entails, it includes an active audience that
is willing to question their leaders. A more thoughtful public must be aware of its rights and
responsibilities and through this lens, be capable of considering all sides of an argument. A more
thoughtful public has power and is capable and expected to exert influence back upon their
leaders. On the contrary, a persuaded audience is passive and submissive. There is a one-sided
flow of information from the persuaders to the persuaded. A persuaded audience can be defined
by their inaction and inability to communicate back to their leaders. In Chapter 10 of Roger
Soder's Developing Democratic Character in the Young, Soder takes a look at what role a more
thoughtful public plays in a democracy. First and foremost, leaders must be able to recognize the
distinction between a persuaded audience and a more thoughtful public. It is the goal of a leader
in a democratic society to create and sustain a more thoughtful public because a democratic
leader needs an audience who is ready to question and unwilling to accept just anything that is
handed to them. Though sustaining a more thoughtful public is extremely difficult, it is essential
within a democracy. A democratic leader requires an audience that is willing to check the
ambition and selfishness within their democracy for the greater good. In a democratic society, it
is also crucial for a leader to first generate a persuaded audience that is willing to listen through
trust and openness. In order for a democratic society to go beyond simply being a persuaded
audience, a leader needs to understand that he or she plays a large role in initiating this transition.
By gaining public's trust and building a reputation for telling the truth, a democratic leader can
encourage a simple audience to become a more thoughtful public. But does a more thoughtful
public take a toll on democratic citizens? It is our duty as citizens to place checks on the
government. In doing so, we are intimately knowledgeable of all of the problems that face our
society. We know about everything that is going wrong in our country yet we have little that we
can do to change this. Is this too much to ask of an average citizen? In taking on this task,
citizens are also carrying some of the burden when things go wrong. Though, as American
citizens, we pride ourselves in our governmental system, it is also possible that the source of this
pride is also the source of our unhappiness.
As citizens of a free and open democratic society, Americans have access to all the
information they could ever dream of right at their fingertips. We have an uncensored and free
press that is not under the control of the government. We have a government which must respond
to the needs and wishes of its citizens. We have freedom of opportunity. Americans would seem
to have all they could possibly need to be happy. So what went wrong? It seems that what
inherently makes us a democratic society may also contribute to our gloom. We take on too
much responsibility as individual citizens yet this is a critical undertaking in order to produce a
functioning democratic society. So how do we reconcile these two necessities: our need to be
democratic and our need to be happy.

II. Is time too fast?

In 1831, when Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to the United states to study its culture
and government, he stumbled across the phenomenon that Americans seemed unhappy amidst
their great prosperity. Tocqueville noticed that Americans always seemed to yearn for what they
do not have. Since, under the law, all Americans are to be treated equally, we have equal
opportunity. The son of a factory worker has the same chances as the son of a wealthy
businessman to become the next president, in theory. Obviously, there are many other factors
that go into whether or not that opportunity will actually be reached (like money), however there
is nothing stopping these two men from achieving equal greatness. As a result of this, Americans
are blatantly forced to see what they have and what they do not. For example, the son of the
factory worker knows that he has much less money and much fewer connections than the son of
the wealthy businessman. There is a clear inequality here, and according to Tocqueville, this
contributes to our unhappiness. Because of the social mobility within the American society,
people always want to move up this ladder. Americans want to achieve more than the generation
before them did and we want to have what others have. We are always fighting to get that newer
and better product. This causes Americans to take shortcuts and speed their way through life just
so we can obtain that next temptation. Due to the fact that everything is within our reach, we are
continuously taunted by what we do not have. This then begs the question of whether or not
equality is actually a good thing. In the way that Tocqueville framed the issue, equality can lead
to the eternal longing for what we do not have. According to Tocqueville, "men will never
establish an equality which will content them". Looking at happiness through the lens of
equality, it seems that the two cannot coexist with each other. This is really quite a baffling
concept because Americans have fought numerous wars in order to have these equal rights. It
also brings us back to the question of the fact that since equality is a pivotal aspect of democracy,
is democracy then, as an extension, bad for us as well? It seems that in all our devotion to the
concept of a democratic society, democracy in practice seems to present itself as quite a
hindrance to our happiness.
Americans want it all. Like Tocqueville says, we fight and trip over ourselves to get what
we want. Life is just a frenzied cycle of achieving one thing after the next. And we want to take
the shortcut, according to Tocqueville, we want the quickest path to what we want. But having
the ends does not always justify the means. Take, for example, the goal of getting rich. You do
everything you have to do and kick other people down who are in your way before you finally
reach your goal. Now you have all the money you can dream of, but you're not happy. If we take
money as an example, more money does not always lead to more happiness. Numerous studies
have shown that the correlation between income and happiness caps off around a $75,000 yearly
income. Though a lower income does seem to follow a trend of lower happiness, it seems that
higher incomes only buys life satisfaction, but not happiness. So if more money does not solve
our issue of unhappiness, then why are we continually striving to gain more wealth and more
commodities? If our jobs do not bring us happiness and money does not bring us happiness, but
we spend our entire lives on these two items, then it seems reasonable that we are unhappy.
Americans dedicate so much of their lives to achieving their dreams that we do not have time to
step back and enjoy the view. In dedicating our lives to the pursuit of wealth, we risk missing out
on our families and the things that truly make us happy. For too long in American culture, we
have unified the concepts of the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of money, and that has
taken up far too much of our time. By spending our time on achieving the "American Dream",
we miss out on American happiness.
When we look at the concept of time, it is always changing. In Steward Brand's The
Clock of the Long Now, he explores how long-term and short-term perspectives impact society
today. In the current society, people seem to be moving more and more towards short-term
thinking and planning. We prefer to look at what is right in front of us as opposed to looking far
into the future. As Brand puts it, humans resist against long-term thinking into the future,
because the future is where we die. It seems logical: why should we care about the future if we
will not be there to see it? We like thinking about the now because it is what is right in front of
us. The now is what will slap us in the face if we mess up. Society is moving faster and faster as
we enter the age of technology because technology favors the quick-minded. There is also the
tendency for society to be partial towards the quick answer. This can clearly be seen in
classrooms where the teacher rewards the student who is able to answer correctly the fastest. We
can also see this phenomenon in game shows, as well as in other areas within our culture. As it
becomes more favorable to think short-term, more people will. The issue with this phenomenon
will be that an imbalance will begin to appear within society. Brand explains it like this: we are
all part of a system and within this system, there must be both fast and slow moving parts. This is
what allows a system to survive in the long-term. Some parts will respond quickly to shocks that
arise and the slower mechanisms will ignore these quick shocks and continue on steadily. This
balance of fast and slow is key for any system that wants to exist across not only centuries, but
millenniums. The issue is that the fast is thrilling, it keeps people's attention. It is hard to get
people excited about something that may not happen within the lives of their grandchildren or
even their great-grandchildren. This is a dilemma that must be solved if we are to get people to
slow down and think about the long-term. As society moves more towards the fast, its impacts
will be felt.
When we look at the conflict between long-term and short-term, there is no clear
solution. That is because the struggle between these two sides is not a problem, it is a polarity.
What this means is that there are two ideas that are in tension with each other. There is no way to
solve a polarity, we can only manage them. There must be a balance struck between the two
poles. When we compare the long-term with the short-term, there are obvious benefits and
drawbacks of both. For example, a value of long-term thinking is that one can have a greater
impact over a longer period of time. Big things take time to achieve so thinking in the long-term
can help achieve a greater impact. On the flip side, a fear that comes along with long-term
thinking is that the environment can change so that one's long-term goal no longer applies to it.
Looking at short-term thinking, we can do a similar analysis. A positive aspect of the short-term
is that there is a faster reward and things will actually get done. A negative part of short-term
thinking is that there is the possibility of losing sight of the bigger picture and end goal. As
mentioned before, we currently live in a society that places far too much value on the short-term.
This is beginning to disrupt the balance between the short-term and the long-term.
With time speeding up and people wanting more than ever, we seem to approach a never-
ending cycle of going and not stopping. With Tocqueville's observations of society never having
everything they could possibly want combined with Brand's claims that time is speeding up, how
are individuals supposed to find time for happiness? It seems that this constant state of
unhappiness that people are in as a result of never having enough time says that humans are
naturally greedy. Though this may be in some small part true, greed seems like only a surface-
level explanation. I do not think that it is human nature to be materialistic, at least not so much so
as to cause an entire shift within society towards the fast. I think that, as Tocqueville said, people
always want what they cannot have. In a democratic society, this aspect of human nature is
magnified. Leaders in a democratic society (especially one with a capitalist mentality) are taking
advantage of the fact that people will always want, and wanting is not necessarily a bad thing.
People want a better, cleaner, more habitable world. We want our children to have the best
education they can and we want others to be happy and healthy. Humans are not entirely selfish
in their wants, and leaders in a democratic culture understand this. That is how we improve and
leaders have come to realize this. By capitalizing on the fact that it is human nature want more of
everything, democratic leaders can push agendas forward. The more people want, the more we
can improve.
With time speeding up, Americans have less and less time to do things. Even though we
are living longer lives than ever before, we never seem to have enough time. There are so many
things to be done and far too many goals than can possibly be achieve. This constant want for
tangible or intangible things contributes to our habitual unhappiness. We never seem to have
enough. This leads to more disappointment and hopelessness since we can never seem to achieve
all of our goals. Armed with the knowledge that we can be and have whatever we want,
Americans are often discouraged by the fact that we never can fully achieve that "American
Dream", going from rags to riches. As a result, we are never completely satisfied with our
standing in society. Even though all Americans are equal in theory, we will never actually
achieve true equality.

III. Are we simply unprepared?

In The Next Fifty Years, a collection of essays put together by John Brockman, a number
of scientists were asked what they thought the next fifty years would look like for science. In
response to this question, Robert M. Sapolsky, a biology and neurology professor at Stanford
University, frames it in terms of what American happiness will look like in the next half a
century. Sapolsky predicts that depression rates within the United States will continue to rise in
the next fifty years as they have been for the past century or so. The reason why he thinks this is
simple: we are unable to maintain a perimeter around stressful experiences. There is a key
connection between stress, unhappiness and our inability to distinguish the fact that this stressor
is not the whole world and put a perimeter around it. This a primary factor as to why Americans
are unhappy and why we will continue to see an increasing rate of depression within the
population. This "learned helplessness" is what takes things out of perspective, the idea that we
cannot do anything about what is happening around us. Sapolsky also brings up the question of
what right do we have as Americans to be sad today? Things are good. We are not living in the
Great Depression or during World War II. There is enough food to go around and the economy is
stable. The standard of living is rising and it seems like the overall happiness of American
citizens should be increasing as well. So why is it not? Sapolsky explains that unhappiness is not
likely to decrease because it all comes down to the environment that children are raised in. It is
during one's childhood that an individual learns how to control external situations and if one is
not raised to do so effectively, that child has a much greater likelihood to become depressed.
Even if we try to change something about our society and how our children are raised today, this
still would not affect the next fifty years because the next generation has already developed a
flawed way of viewing the world. In the end, the perpetual unhappiness of America may stem
from the fact that the way our society raises its children does not prepare them for the stresses
and fears that come along with adulthood.
When we look at the paradox between American economic growth and the decline in
happiness, people are baffled. As Jeffrey Sachs writes in Restoring American Happiness, a piece
commenting on this contradiction within the World Happiness Report of 2017, "America's crisis
is, in short, a social crisis, not an economic crisis". The idea that has been stuffed into our brains
is that as long as we raise the Gross Domestic Product and boost the economy, the happiness of
American citizens will rise along with it. However, this is not the case. We have seen a steady
rise in our GDP within the United States over the past years yet our overall happiness based on
various measurements has been on a steady decline. The reason we have seen this decline is due
to numerous causes, according to Sachs. There has been a deterioration of trust between
Americans over the past few decades along with a decline in pro-social behavior, that is a
willingness to help others (especially strangers). According to psychologist James Howard,
happiness influences people through three degrees, meaning through friends of friends of friends.
It is a wide network. We can all take steps to help each other yet we do not. The social
atmosphere within the United States is failing. The destruction of social capital has been
accelerated by the increased income gap between the rich and the poor, a lack of social trust, and
our failing education system, among other reasons. The United States must take steps to reverse
some of these failures within society. We cannot simply focus on the dollar sign and on what
people traditionally turn to as the source of our unhappiness. Many countries around the world,
including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, have lower GDPs than the United States yet rank
much higher in measurements of happiness than we do. Money is not everything and we cannot
afford to keep putting off this social dilemma that has been haunting us since the creation of our
country. We cannot keep staring at the screens of our smartphones and hope that everything will
work out. Americans need to realize that money cannot solve all of our problems.
There is also the issue of schools. As Roger Soder suggests in Developing Democratic
Character in the Young, schools are the best place to educate the young on how to be a
responsible, democratic citizen because it is where the greatest number of the population will be
reached. If we think along those lines, it would be a fair assumption to think that teaching
children how to be better prepared for the stresses of the world should happen in schools as well.
In our education system today, we place the focus on teaching to the test. A student's success is
determined by a number which they earned by answering a set of questions printed in a test
booklet. We have placed so much importance on getting the right answer, but it is often not so
black and white in real life. In many situations, there is no right answer, yet this is what we teach
our kids. We push the idea that there is always a right answer, and if you know this answer, then
you will succeed in the world. This could not be further from the truth. In the American
educational system, we have classes that focus on math and science and history, but we teach
nothing about how to handle stress. Perhaps an average high school may have one or two home
economics classes that teach you how to survive in the adult world, but none about how to foster
a healthy social life. It seems that by denying our youth an opportunity to ask questions and learn
more about how to foster a happy and healthy life, we are sending them into adulthood at a great
disadvantage. There is more that children need to know than what year Christopher Columbus
sailed across the ocean blue. Perhaps Americans are unhappy because we have been taught to be
unhappy since we were children in grade school. If we want a chance at changing the current
state of the American psyche, it will require taking a look at our educational system.
Americans have too many dreams. As Roger Soder says in his epilogue to Romances
With Schools, we like to be positive. In terms of persuasion, positivity it vitally important in
order to get others to agree with what you are trying to persuade them of. However, too much
positivity can lean to ruin. As Jean Twenge writes in Psychology Today, Americans set
unrealistic goals for the future. When asked if they are looking to pursue a graduate or
professional degree, nearly sixty percent of high school students say they expect to succeed in
obtaining these degrees. In reality, only about ten percent of high school graduates actually
achieve said degrees and this number has remained mostly stagnant for the past fifty years or so.
As we can see through this example, expectations have continued to rise within American
society yet the follow through has not changed. Naturally, as a result, happiness has decreased.
As Twenge writes, "positive thinking does not automatically lead to success". As a good leader,
it is important to think positive. Too much positivity may lead to one ignoring the risks. On the
other hand, too much realism would lead to loss of support and hope for the cause. In a good
leader, as well as in a good citizen, there must be a balance of both. We need positivity to
maintain support and hope yet realism to place checks on our expectation. Americans cannot
continue to raise our children upon the hope that they will become doctors, lawyers, and
politicians, all wrapped into one. It is unrealistic and unhealthy for our children. As the standard
of living increases within the United States, our vision for the "American Dream" becomes more
and more extravagant. We no longer want just a house and a steady job; we want to make six
figures and own a mansion. Expectations for the next generation are beginning to get blown out
of proportion. If we continue to build up our hopes and dreams for the future generation, then
more and more people will fail to achieve them. If we can dial back on expectations, we can
increase happiness. If more people can succeed, more people will be happy.
It seems that Americans are destined to be unhappy from the time when they were
innocent children playing on the playground. Our inability to successfully prepare the next
generation for the coming stressors and pressures that come with the world around us. Changing
this trend will start with changing our schools. If we are incapable of coping with the horrors of
the world, then we are doomed to be perpetually unhappy. And with our obsession with
economics, we are unprepared for the vast social deterioration within our country. If we
continually turn the attention of the American public towards other issues, our dismal social
situation will never be addressed. American citizens will continue to be unhappy with the way
things are and nothing will ever be solved. Americans will be stuck in this unbroken cycle of
unresolved sadness.

IV. So, what do we do?

We have now drawn connections between key aspects of American culture and linked
them to our unhappiness. Though I am by no means suggesting causation, it is possible that
critical features of American democracy have led us to the unhappy state that we are in today.
So, how do we fix this? A suggestion by Robert Sapolsky is that science and technology will
save us from ourselves. With the improvement of technology, we will be able to develop ways to
help reduce our stress. With access to more, we will have more, and we will be happier. But, as
Tocqueville warned, we will never truly get every single thing that we want (unless we find a
way to cure death, but that is a whole different conversation). Sapolsky also encourages having a
solid social support system so that we are better able to cope with our daily stresses. In our
current culture, we spend much of our time alone. Americans often eat meals alone or in front of
a screen or we are stuck alone in our cars in traffic. Our individualistic culture is beginning to
take a toll on us and our unfettered use of electronic devices has encouraged our continual
isolation. Technology may help with this by increasing the ease at which we can reach our
support system, but it may also distance us even further. Though technology presents itself as a
viable solution for our unhappiness, we must also approach it with caution. If we are not careful,
technology will worsen the current situation. In terms of science, we will develop better and
more effective treatments for depression and perpetual unhappiness. In the future, perhaps more
people will be unhappy, but more of these people will be happier because of drugs. Science will
help people be happier through the chemistry within our body. Though having a large portion of
the American population on drugs is not the most appealing image of the future, advancements in
medicine and science in treating unhappiness is an extremely likely version of the future.
Prescribing a larger proportion of the American public with drugs cannot be a long-term solution
for our unhappiness, it is simply a temporary fix. Armed with new technology and new drugs, it
is possible that future Americans will be better equipped to battle their sorrows than Americans
are now.
When we think about democracy, we think of how much we have achieved in terms of
freedom. With democracy, citizens are able to have some semblance of control over their
government. The government is forced to listen to what the citizens want and the ambition of one
man cannot lead to the demise of a nation. However, have aspects of democracy also contributed
to the overall melancholy of the American public? I am by no means trying to argue that a
despotic or authoritarian culture is superior to a democratic one. We should not start censoring
the media or other sources of information. But it is possible that the equality and freedom we so
cherish within the United States has caused some problems along with bettering the lives of its
citizens. Though I am not suggesting that we reorganize our entire political system and oust the
president and replace him with a dictator, I think that it is worth the time to take a critical look at
how our country operates. I know that we are already trying to equalize the playing field by
passing education reform plans and putting into place organizations to help those below the
poverty line. However, I do not believe that these measures will help alleviate the problem. Like
Tocqueville said, equality of opportunity and social mobility within the United States are some
of the causes of our restlessness. I will not pretend like I have a solution to this problem, but I
believe that we need to take a look at the values we hold so dear to our hearts.
As of right now, the overall woefulness of the American public is something that we can
clearly see within society, but it is not really being seen as an issue. It is something that Alexis de
Tocqueville noticed almost two hundred years ago when he visited from France and is still a
topic visited on by the media today, yet we have not done much to change anything about it. As
Jeffrey Sachs notes, this social crisis is one that is duly noted within the United States yet still
has not been translated into public policy. In Romances with Schools, Roger Soder writes in the
epilogue that one of the first steps in getting people's attention about a certain topic is to establish
that it is a problem, not a condition. A condition is a fact of life, it is something we will let be
and it is not something that we want to or need to change. On the other hand, a problem is
something that people pay attention to and will generate action. A quote by John Kingdon that
Soder uses in his epilogue is that "conditions become defined as problems when we come to
believe that we should do something about them". There is also the issue of how to get people to
care. This means that we have to frame the problem in a way that incites action. It might mean
that we have to pose the issue in a way that most people would not think of. As an example that
Stewart Brand uses in The Clock of the Long Now, Brand looks at how re-framing the issue
climate change can have a large impact on people's responses. Consequently, when we look at
the enduring unhappiness of the American public, we must define the topic as not only a
problem, but a problem worth investing resources into a solution. If we continue to look at this
discontentment as simply a fact of life, nothing will be done about it. Something must change in
order for action to ensue.
There is no solution to unhappiness, at least none that I can see applying to the near
future. I do not think that humanity will ever "cure" depression or sadness. I think that we have
our mind synchronized with a set of ideals that we believe will lead to the greatest amount of
happiness for the greatest number of people. I do not believe that we have found that perfect mix
yet. We should not stop improving simply because we think that everything is good enough.
Americans led the way when we established a working democracy that has lasted over two
hundred years now, but there is still so much that we can improve on. It is all about trial and
error, some things will work while others will not. We just have to keep moving forward and not
get stuck in this mindset that we do not have to change anything because we are comfortable.
Perhaps in our prosperity, Americans have become simply an audience rather than a thoughtful
public. We simply have to go back to taking action rather than sitting back and enjoying the
view.

V. Conclusion
The United States is a nation that was founded upon dreams. It is the place where people
go to be who they want to be and achieve what they have always dreamt of. It is a place of hope
and prosperity. But how did we go from dreams to desolation? Perhaps, in our dreaming, we
forgot to look at reality. Perhaps we set unrealistic goals for ourselves that we could never
possibly achieve. We may be so caught up in the idea of this "American Dream", to do better
than the generation before you, that we forgot to be happy with what we have. Amidst the
constant disappointments that face us when we do not achieve all that we want, comes the idea
that maybe what we think we want is not what we actually want. As Americans, we put too much
pressure on ourselves to be the best. We want to be the wealthiest, the strongest, the fairest, but
we cannot be it all. We want too much. It is possible that it is time to re-evaluate what it means
to be an American. And maybe that answer may just surprise us all.