Happiness in America by Lawrence R. Samuel

Author:Lawrence R. Samuel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2018-08-29T18:49:16+00:00

5

Are You Happy Yet? 2000–2009

Have a very active left prefrontal lobe day. —George Mason University psychology professor Todd Kashdan, 2007

In March 2003, USA Weekend, a Sunday supplement included in about six hundred newspapers across the country, announced it had big news. The publication had found who it called “The Happiest Man in America,” naming a forty-five-year-old Virginia Beach, Virginia, stockholder as the winner of its nationwide search. J. P. “Gus” Godsey had beat out the likes of President Bush, Bill Gates, Tom Cruise, and Bruce Springsteen, a reporter informed readers, with editors of USA Weekend using “a combination of science, sleuthing and surveys” to make their choice. Godsey had endured a series of interviews and psychological tests as part of the selection process, but the man felt it was well worth it. “It’s real cool,” the big-smiling, fast-talking Godsey told the media, with an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America already scheduled and Regis, Oprah, and Letterman also interested. Godsey did volunteer work and was deeply involved in the Virginia Beach community, but it was his remarkable amiability and extremely positive attitude toward life that pushed him over the top. “We wake up every morning full of choices and your state of happiness is something you can do every single day,” the happiest man in America observed, promising not to get caught up in all the hype.1

Many Americans could only wish for Godsey’s upbeat take on life and cheery disposition that even perfect strangers could immediately detect. It was a new century and new millennium, but most Americans were waking up and going to sleep in a much different mood than that of the happiest man in the nation. Midlife crises were wreaking havoc with the happiness of aging baby boomers, for one thing, and it was not helpful to learn that Iceland, of all places, was populated with much happier citizens than the United States.2 Worse news, perhaps, were new findings suggesting that ignorance really was bliss; more knowledge was correlated with less happiness, according to the study, implying that an educated public was an unhappy public.3 “Are you happy yet?” Andrew Delbanco asked in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in May 2000, the answer for most Americans likely no.4 Was it was even possible for Americans to be happy people, one had to ask, or was broad happiness simply not part of our national character?

Happy Days Are Here Again

With such a question being posed, theories regarding the dynamics of happiness and treatments intended to boost it flourished in the early 2000s. One theory postulated that individuals have different selves or personalities, making it incumbent on each person to find and “occupy” the happiest one. This idea went further by asserting that this character was the “real” you, and that one thus had to eradicate the less happy pretenders.5 A twist on this theory was that there have been happy and less than happy times in each person’s life, and that individuals should rediscover the happiest period and occupy that self.

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