What is true happiness? Well, one approach can see it as being in a physically and mentally stable position where you see yourself as living the “good life”. Adam Curtis brilliantly argues by showing how Edward Bernays influenced the lives of so many just by the way people thought and acted; it gave the masses a sort of freedom to express themselves and act out their aggressions and desires. A perfect example being the females in society smoking and wearing shorter skirts— a clear attempt to gain a form of freedom, by crowd pleasing attention. I was surprised when I realized how much society has been shaped and influenced do to the works of so few. It makes you think if we really are happy and content with our lives today, or if we are just sewing our ego on our shirt and pretending that we are truly happy with what we have.
I would agree beforehand that I was truly happy and living in a position where I had many benefits in my favor such as educational funding and health care. This, however, didn’t last long as questions arose after reading Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Freud argues that what we deem as happy is actually a temporary fix of happiness to fill the void that we can not truly be real. In other words, we hold back our true ambitions and desires to be happy because society’s norms have deemed it as such. Freud describes this as the pleasure principal: We cannot just run around and do as we please, but instead we act out in certain ways to please ourselves temporarily and convince that we are truly happy with it. Are we actually experiencing happiness or are we tricked into a false consciousness?
This false consciousness, could be due to the material desires and labels we so much desire in our day to day lives. Freud quotes Schiller saying, that “hunger and love are what moves the world” (Freud, 104). Hunger is defined as an ego-instinct (satisfaction of internal needs), whereas love is directed toward objects external to the ego. Would marriage be an appropriate label to measure and fill in the love/sexual satisfaction? From personal experiences, the materialistic drives and wants of my self happiness essentially put me in a position Freud argues that happens to so many of us. We make ourselves believe that we are truly happy, when in fact we are just a product of society and not happy at all. Thus, concluding that it is possible to be happy, but only temporarily.
This is a strong engagement with the ideas of both Curtis and Freud. Plus, you include some useful examples throughout. To make this even better, I would try to flesh out your concrete real-like examples in more detail. Great work, overall! :)
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