Damn! All that doom and gloom gone to waste!

Seriously, it is good to find that Australians are, perhaps, ignoring the muck spreaders of academia and the media.

This article makes a nice change from the moaning and groaning we are too often subjected to these days.

If we are so wonderfully happy then how come there how come so many people at all levels of society use and are addicted to alcohol and other kinds of drugs? Especially people who seem to have it all in terms of the current socially defined "success"!
And how come so many people, including increasing numbers of children, are on some kind of prescription drug to help them get by?---mothers little helper as it were.
And how come so many marriages end in divorce?
And how come there are so many disturbed and abused children?---ask Fiona Stanley.
And how come so many people effectively use shopping as unhappiness therapy?
How many people use eating (and thereby become obese) as unhappiness therapy?
Do genuinely happy and sane people allow degrading garbage via so called "reality" TV to be piped into their "living" room via the insanity machine in the corner----stay tuned for the next episode of dehumanising degradation!

I agree with the author, a well written piece. It is I believe a fair representation of how middle class Australians think and feel. Personally I have never been happier. When I look around I think most people are happy and optimistic at the moment. Sure there are problems, when aren't there. Most things are improving however, including the environment.

"Depending on circumstances, and especially if we are pushed in the right direction, this individual capacity for fear can be turned quickly into a collective capacity for panic. Throughout history humans have panicked about a stunning array of things from race to plague to radio plays."
To global warming...catastrophe!

"People scare each other to gain political support, get funding for scientific research, make headlines, raise money for causes or sell books."
Dare I say global warming again...seems to be the mass panic of choice at this point in time.

"It is in the interests of both the extreme Right and the extreme Left to pretend our values are in crisis. Crisis suits extremists of all persuasions because an impending calamity suggests you must adopt new behaviours immediately to avoid annihilation."
There are numerous posters on these forums that decry our way of life. Continually screaming to everyone about any calamity you can think of. All of them when engaged, allude to the promise of a better and vastly different way of life. In much the same way as the Jehovah's that beat on your door every weekend, they extol their new utopian ideals. Most however, are very short on detail, want to impinge on people's freedoms and generally take us into a neo-dark age.

Cassandra,
I'm happy that you're happy. There a lot of Australians who are not happy, and who are begining to discover that a plasma TV does not bring happiness as the yank consumerism story tells them it should.

It is difficult to pick these days but we are Aussies not yanks, and traditionally we are happiest when we are in the company of family and friends. Workchoices put a stop to that frivolity now we work for a pittance to make someone else ever wealthier instead.

Happy, we are not.

A quote from my favourite "philosopher".

"The human world has become a kind of insane sporting event, at which people threaten one another and carry on in an insane manner---something like the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.It is madness. And TV helps create and also plays to that insanity. Everywhere, people and groups look to get attention by getting themselves on TV---often through the exercise of rotten and demented violence, and through the exercise of an altogether aggravated disposition.

The human world of nowtime is a lunatic asylum, a soap opera of benighted mummers. That absurd soap opera actually CONTROLS THE DESTINY AND EXPERIENCE OF THE TOTAL WORLD OF HUMAN BEINGS---and that benighted world-mummery is, in its root disposition, TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to human life, and to the world altogether.

Narcissus is the nature of human society now. As a result, human society is becoming progressively more and more aggravated, and leading to an absurd and insane life of competitive conflict for the totality of humankind. And that life of competitive conflict has already negatively affected even the natural systems of the Earth---and it is causing, and will continue to cause, terrible suffering everywhere."

See also http://www.dabase.org/coop+tol.htm

It's all relative