are you happy?

Happiness is everywhere in a capitalist society. Well, almost anyway. Think advertisements. After all, the main emotion they are selling is happiness. It's an over-hyped emotion that has been packaged and flaunted in shopping centers, on the streets and in between your favorite TV programs.

Perhaps, because happiness is advertised and shoved into our faces so much, we become sad. For every corner we turn, we are reminded of the disjuncture between the ideal of happiness and our own innermost emotional state, and that makes us feel worse about ourselves. Happiness is a model state of being that we are not experiencing, can't seem to reach, and is supposedly, the default mode of feeling - if nothing is wrong and everything is well, okay.

So if you're not happy, something must be wrong. Which may not be true. The fact that you're not happy doesn’t necessarily mean you're sad either.

In sum, maybe advertisements should feature the melancholic and the depressed. That way, we'll won't feel the need to be happy, or think something is lacking when we're not. In fact, we might just feel much better about ourselves. Happier, even. I'm not quite sure whether the products being advertised will sell then, but the possibility is there. After all, a lot of people are attracted to sadness, and sometimes, even seem to want to be sad. (That is perhaps why sad songs in general always sell better than happy ones.) But this draw may be because sadness has been repressed too much by a society that has overemphasized happiness. If ads showcase depressed people instead of happy ones, it may dilute or disappear.

But anyway, bring on the frowns. Don't try too hard to smile. We might all be happier.