In today's SF Chron, several researchers, including one from unsmiling Bulgaria, consider whether American pressures to appear happy are really quite healthy for all.
Adjacent in the print edition of the paper: the starving children in India. Out of fashion as a reminder to American kids to eat their vegetables with gratitude -- but apparently still starving nevertheless.
Posted by Martha Bridegam at March 5, 2006 02:03 PMHowever you want to spin it, the denigration of cheerfulness is the kiss of death in American politics.
Posted by: Alan Allport at March 5, 2006 02:10 PMLuckily, we're not all politicians. They can have the stuff.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 5, 2006 02:14 PMYou might not be a politician but you most certainly are political, which means amongst other things that you are a representative for the causes you espouse. I am merely pointing out that this cult of sourness that you seem to be nurturing is doomed. Please understand that I am not from a strictly objective point of view displeased by this, as I think some of your opinions, if empowered as policy, would fall somewhere between absurd and disastrous; but I think it's only fair to warn you anyway.
Posted by: Alan Allport at March 5, 2006 02:22 PM;-p
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 5, 2006 02:36 PM...so what I think we've arrived at is that cheerfulness is an important marketing tool, and good marketing is necessary to political success, but cheerfulness can also be a sign of lack of empathy.
That explains a lot of things.
/M, exercising my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of grumpiness.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 5, 2006 03:23 PMCheerfulness can also be a sign of lack of empathy.
Certainly. But I'm not convinced that unhappiness is always the virtue you've been making it out to be either. Quite often it would seem to me nothing more than a kind of vanity - I'm so goshdarned good that the world's sins just weigh down on me. Playing Atlas uninvited is pretty conceited in its own way. Whereas there's a humility to be found in trusting in the ultimate good faith and sense of our neighbors and in the extraordinary resilience, tested over millennia, of the human race.
Posted by: Alan Allport at March 5, 2006 05:12 PMPlaying Atlas is pretty conceited in its own way.
Oh, no argument there.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 5, 2006 05:28 PM