Tanith Carey

Why modern life doesn’t make us happy

Joy is designed to be a fleeting state, not a constant one

  • From Spectator Life
[Alamy]

The greatest delusion ever sold to us by modern advertising is not that we need to buy water in bottles or that rocks make good pets. It’s the delusion that we should expect to be happy all the time.

This idea certainly would have been news to our ancient ancestors. Over millions of years, they became the dominant hominid on the planet because their brains evolved to be survival machines, not happiness generators.

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