In many ways, I feel like we shouldn’t be happy with what we have. We live in a world of tremendous inequality and cruelty, running towards an environmental wall. Not just that, but some of the best people I know are chronic persistors: they know how not to accept the unacceptable.
But we also live in an economy that profits from and purposefully generates private feelings of lack, want, comparison and envy. Somewhat counter-intuitively, this envy often spurs on the feelings of lack and want, rather than the other way around. This is the genius of advertising: to generate “perceived” (aka fake) needs. I see someone living a “good” life – exciting, sexy, creative – and now I want what they have: the shoes, watch, holiday, you name it.
