Essay: Are People Designed to be Unhappy?

The television presents an interview with a mother in Syria. She claims to have lost two children to famine and national catastrophe. An infant appears almost lifeless in her arms. Existence is so brutal that they are living among terrorists who the mother believes could kill her at any time. But this is where the food is.

A few friends share a link on Facebook. It’s an interview with Darcus Howe in London, someone BBC’s Fiona Armstrong introduces as a broadcaster. He’s a black man with a vaguely Middle Eastern accent. To me, he looks very tired. He derides England’s police system for abusing the young. While he won’t explicitly condone the rioting and massive property damage, his vitriol is for the government that shot an armed young man.

Not five minutes later, I’m sent another video. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist I hold in high regard, rants on NASA’s budget cuts. He is in what looks like an expensive suit, sitting as one of three guests in an air conditioned studio with an audience that applauds at every pause he grants. To me, he looks very well groomed. He is irate that we aren’t going to the moon anymore. How dare we say it’s too expensive to afford “the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.”

I watch all three interviews in the same hour. They transpired in the same week. Lumped together, they are irreconcilable. My mind stretches for a simple explanation as to how someone like Dr. Tyson can be unhappy at all, let alone demand space travel when earth-children are starving. It seems insane that Dr. Tyson should say going to the moon is the sole source of hope against the backdrop of global emergencies. You can’t possibly think that Syrian mother or British broadcaster are dreaming of space travel tonight.

But if I’d only been reading astronomy and cosmology, how would I feel? Dr. Tyson and Mr. Howe don’t live in Syria. They see very little of it, and like most people on the planet, think very little of it. When it comes up it’s grave, but then it goes back down. They see and think as little of it as I do. It’s a damning epiphany.

In the next few hours I’m furious with my ISP for sending the wrong brand of router. I have to plug into it to access my high speed internet; there’s no wifi. That’s what preoccupies me. Something small that’s close preoccupies so much more easily than something enormous that’s distant. For Dr. Tyson, who spends so much time on the sky, the moon is closer than Syria.

Is it the condition of humans to always adjust to our circumstances and find something in them that displeases? Is that what makes millionaires go into debt over buying still more yachts? Is that what makes modern atheists compare themselves to African American civil rights pioneers? In their videos, Dr. Tyson appears absolutely as angry as Mr. Howe. I think back to Otakon in Maryland, and to the many miserable-looking people I saw in the hallways of a cartoon convention. And if I prowl Youtube, I’ll find tweens filming themselves in tears over their parents not buying them the latest Apple gadget. This is what preoccupies them.

It’s not a matter of seeking the thing that makes them unhappy. It seems as though people find these things on instinct. Was the evolutionary imperative to constantly seek out threats so strong that we have to be this way? It feels like it shouldn’t be. I’ve observed my behavior and modified for the positive before. But tomorrow, and next week, and next year, what will preoccupy me? How far away will the worst place in the world be?