The goal of life might not always be happiness. For own experience, americans (I've worked with them for years) tends to think the goal of life is happiness (precisely perhaps because they aren't). I live in France, and I see (some, not all) intellectuals look for suffering as a way of improvement. Same as Bukowski, Kafka, Jesus, Kant, Stoicism and a large etc. Another signal of happiness here in Europe I find is less consumism: psychologically, you consume because you are not satisfied. Here, while the common pattern is to consume avidly, intellectuals tend to be frugal and simple.

Less consumism means more psychological satisfaction, which means more happiness. Consumism can be a quite reliable indicator of happiness/suffering.

Comments are not for discussion. If you have further questions, post them as such. Any further observations should be part of the post. Thanks.

"Hey, Tommy, we're being sent to F21. Are you ok with that?" "Yeah, sorta. I heard we can go fishin'; should take the edge off being a square peg in a round hole."

@AgentSmith Sent to F21? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F21

Look at Schopenhauer. He regarded almost all (true) religions as necessarily pessimistic with the exception of Judaism

Bruckner's Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy explores these roots in some detail. google.com/books/edition/Perpetual_Euphoria/…

I think it is possible to be satisfied, not over-consume, and not suffer (more than a normal amount). If it wasn't, why would we even bother to think about it? People don't discuss breathing very much.

@ScottRowe Right, I agree.

Question downvoted and asked for closing just after further expressing thoughts in comments, so deleted them.

Focus on hapiness can also be seen as toxic positivity, and suffering or struggle are real, so acknoledging them is just realism. With all due respect wishful thinking seems to be pervasive in amercian culture. I know of no west european country were children have the "liberty" to be taught evolution is not real if their school board so decided.

@armand I acknowledge some aspects of American culture related to happiness and self-made man success are detrimental to well-being and even ethics. This subject is interesting. On the other hand, European suffering-related culture I am depecting here tends to me to be self-fulfilling prophecies, and masochistic

"I know of no west european country were children have the "liberty" to be taught evolution is not real if their school board so decided." I don't see the relation with the topic here. This is related to a greater degree of civil liberty (which of course don't always bring positive things)

The relationship is that the pervasiveness of wishful thinking, religiosity and antirealism ("i dont have to acknoledge the reality of scientific findings if i dont wanna") is IMHO much greater in US than in western europe. It's not a coincidence if QAnon, televangelists, faith healing, gig economy, customized school programs are so developped in US and not in Europe. What you call suffering-related culture and masochism i call it realism. "This is your reality, i choose to have mine" is something i ever only heard in US debates about evolution. In Europe such debates are not even conceivable.

Although de Botton departs from some aspect of Western Europe culture (in particular Romantic love), I would say his overall approach still very belongs to this culture.

It's directly related. Unwillingness to let reality interfere with wishful thinking leads directly to this focus on (almost mandatory) happiness you describe. The opposite leads to the acknowledgement that life is struggle and conflict. The state here is just the emanation of culture. There is simply no sizeable demand in France for fairy tales to be taught in school, if there were laws would be changed.

The US is the number 1 producer of cutting-edge intellectual, scientific and technological knowlede, by very far. This has led to huge improvement in elevation of human suffering, from psychological treatment (for instance Bordeline personality disorder), to medical treatment (cancer), to human-human communication, transportation, etc. improving living standards to levels never experienced in thousands of years of history. Therefore, this statement "Unwillingness to let reality interfere with wishful thinking" is incorrect.

Perhaps it is related to the idea of "Scarcity Culture"? In US happiness could be the pursuit. Not sure what is lacking in Europe. (to me, 'Continental' is always followed by 'breakfast'. Which reminds me...)

It seems ironic to me that 'freedom' should produce disparities and violence. The book "Caste" might be a good resource about those causes.

Then I assert that human problems are not solvable, because we just keep making more new problems, which some day will result in our annihilation.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.