Darrin M. McMahon

“What if virtue, work, all our striving and sweat was simply not enough to make the animal man a happy creature?”

“Like Rousseau, Hegel appreciated quite early on that in modern commercial societies, individuals' desires and needs were generated by the desires and needs of others. Implanted by advertising, dictated by fashion, and determined by style, individual desire was always socially determined, shaped by the particular contexts in which we live. [..] Hence the need for greater comfort does not exactly arise within you directly; it is suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation.”

“No one could work harder to be happy," Tocqueville observes of Americans, marveling at the ceaseless, restless energy they expand in search of a better life. Rushing from one thing tho the next, an American will travel hundreds of miles in a day. He will build a house in which to pass his old age and then sell it before the roof is on. He will continually change paths "for fear of missing the shortest cut leading to happiness.”