way of means. By the time the average American is able to grasp the choices and opportunities that Jefferson and Paine and his ilk so desperately fought for and advocated, they will not have any means or freedom with which to pursue them.
But, I'd argue, our sadness goes even deeper, punctuated by a crippling lack of the time, space, silence, energy, and/or capacity for critical self-reflection that life in the twenty-first century has brought upon us. In this culture, one discovers an alarmingly high rate of unhappiness. Some of this unhappiness is chronic; one finds some subjects to be wholly unhappy. For many, many others, most of my subjects, in fact, the breakneck pace of change in the past eight years, coupled with national leadership that is fumbling, frustrating, and frightening, has made them absolutely terrified of reflection. Pausing to think—i.e., unplugging the computer, the phones, the BlackBerry, the Facebook—is horrifying. When one does such a thing, one is visited by unhappy images, thoughts of doom and woe, the thumping footsteps of melancholy, and the assurance of global tragedy and destruction. Quickly, the self-reflection impulse is stifled. And that lack of self-reflection makes it nearly impossible for us to find our authentic selves and our true callings, especially ones unfettered from institutional hierarchies and dependence. Thus, we sit, like scores of drug-addled teens with distant parents, inundated with college catalogs and ineligible for financial aid.
I have many other secondary hypotheses about our unhappiness—it stems from constant war, environmental degradation, chemical toxicities and food additives, the underfunding of cultural programs, the student loan industry, et cetera. The companion essay for the oral history project was supposed to be a five-page overview but has become a three-hundred-and-sixteen-page document titled
Why So Vague?: An Introduction to the American Unhappiness Project. Why so vague
is a question I once heard a man ask the author Charles Baxter at a fiction reading (GMHI mini-grant #02-898:
Surprised by Joy: The Unhappy Midwest of Charles Baxter
). The open-ended obtuseness of the question has always stayed with me: yes, so much malaise, so much heartache, a mountain of woe—but who can define it? Why so vague? Indeed!
I suppose the idea for my project came to me shortly after college, when I was rather absent-mindedly thumbing through a copy of
The Portable Chekhov,
during a register shift at the bookshop where I once worked. Rereading the story "Gooseberries," I came across these lines: "There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a little hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others."
It was during a time in my life when I wanted to do something revolutionary, or at least vital. I wanted to serve some greater purpose, to create something that changed the way humankind viewed itself. Having also just finished reading a slim volume called
Let Your Life Speak
by Parker Palmer, I was quite open to signs and symbols; I was sort of anticipating an epiphany about what I would do with my life's work. And there, buried in one of Chekhov's masterpieces, was my calling. I would be that little man with a hammer, constantly tapping away on a happy nation's door.
In subsequent years,
An Inventory of American Unhappiness
has led to my interviewing over five hundred Americans about the nature and rubrics of their discontent. I've also collected thousands of e-mail responses to the question
Why are you so unhappy?
In my grandest moments, I imagine it will eventually be a seminal work that helps us understand our culture in a new and promising way, something along the lines of Studs
But, I'd argue, our sadness goes even deeper, punctuated by a crippling lack of the time, space, silence, energy, and/or capacity for critical self-reflection that life in the twenty-first century has brought upon us. In this culture, one discovers an alarmingly high rate of unhappiness. Some of this unhappiness is chronic; one finds some subjects to be wholly unhappy. For many, many others, most of my subjects, in fact, the breakneck pace of change in the past eight years, coupled with national leadership that is fumbling, frustrating, and frightening, has made them absolutely terrified of reflection. Pausing to think—i.e., unplugging the computer, the phones, the BlackBerry, the Facebook—is horrifying. When one does such a thing, one is visited by unhappy images, thoughts of doom and woe, the thumping footsteps of melancholy, and the assurance of global tragedy and destruction. Quickly, the self-reflection impulse is stifled. And that lack of self-reflection makes it nearly impossible for us to find our authentic selves and our true callings, especially ones unfettered from institutional hierarchies and dependence. Thus, we sit, like scores of drug-addled teens with distant parents, inundated with college catalogs and ineligible for financial aid.
I have many other secondary hypotheses about our unhappiness—it stems from constant war, environmental degradation, chemical toxicities and food additives, the underfunding of cultural programs, the student loan industry, et cetera. The companion essay for the oral history project was supposed to be a five-page overview but has become a three-hundred-and-sixteen-page document titled
Why So Vague?: An Introduction to the American Unhappiness Project. Why so vague
is a question I once heard a man ask the author Charles Baxter at a fiction reading (GMHI mini-grant #02-898:
Surprised by Joy: The Unhappy Midwest of Charles Baxter
). The open-ended obtuseness of the question has always stayed with me: yes, so much malaise, so much heartache, a mountain of woe—but who can define it? Why so vague? Indeed!
I suppose the idea for my project came to me shortly after college, when I was rather absent-mindedly thumbing through a copy of
The Portable Chekhov,
during a register shift at the bookshop where I once worked. Rereading the story "Gooseberries," I came across these lines: "There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a little hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others."
It was during a time in my life when I wanted to do something revolutionary, or at least vital. I wanted to serve some greater purpose, to create something that changed the way humankind viewed itself. Having also just finished reading a slim volume called
Let Your Life Speak
by Parker Palmer, I was quite open to signs and symbols; I was sort of anticipating an epiphany about what I would do with my life's work. And there, buried in one of Chekhov's masterpieces, was my calling. I would be that little man with a hammer, constantly tapping away on a happy nation's door.
In subsequent years,
An Inventory of American Unhappiness
has led to my interviewing over five hundred Americans about the nature and rubrics of their discontent. I've also collected thousands of e-mail responses to the question
Why are you so unhappy?
In my grandest moments, I imagine it will eventually be a seminal work that helps us understand our culture in a new and promising way, something along the lines of Studs
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