I think Augusten Burroughs has too much time on his hands.

Actually, I think we all do.

Late-stage capitalism.

In this day and age, "happiness" is quite a heavily exploited condition. I mean, shit, people will take out multiple loans to get that fancy house, or whatever object they've been led to believe is the answer to their unhappiness. It may also simply involve a trip to the gas station for more sugar water to fuel that codependency. From an eastern philosophical POV: the end result is all the same....cyclic attachment.

building off the eastern POV - adding notes of western rationale, you could make the same conclusion about happiness: It's what you make of it.

Disclaimer: I'm a lunatic. My premise here- I believe there's a real tech bubble surrounding all that has gone up in the last 25 years. It has not been discussed openly as this archetype is part of the same unsustainable system that has brought up a host of 'unhappy' consumption-fixed mouth breathers - inundated with generic concepts, until they become generic enough to become part of a system that is as unsustainable as ever, and needs more and more to even turn over now. How does this even relate to the topic? Because late stage capitalism.

It has engineered A LOT OF MOO COWS>>> and you can see the real counter-balancing forces that have risen from this breaking system. But, on the topic of happiness... I'm happy right now to even have the freedom to talk about happiness, that is a luxury to me. Most other people I live around have either spent much of a life busying themselves with such debates, and have nothing to show for it but a lifestyle that favors a commitment to ever-complex theories, or have no freedom of thought, because they are working all the damn time.

Many of them chose to work all the damn time.

Usually the ones who think the most about themselves are most likely to think ill of themselves, too. It's just a balancing effect, I thinks.

It's happening: the current debt cycle we're experiencing is going to end sooner than later. Lol, so many people are going to, if their lucky, look back and wonder how we all took the luxury to create our own reality, and forget about the simple necessities that drive us all.