A Reprise

I really liked these paragraphs I read this morning in Reviving Ophelia: "The junk values of our mass culture socialize girls to expect happiness and regard pain as unusual. Advertisin suggests that if they aren't happy, something is wrong. Pain is presented as something that can and should be avoided by consuming the right things. It's treated as an anomaly, not an intrinsic and unescapable part of being human. Contrast this worldview with Thoreau's line: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Or with Buddha's statement: "Life is suffering." "America in the 1990s places enormous emphasis on the gratifcation of every need. It hasn't always been so. When Robert E. Lee was asked the best message to teach the youn, he replied, "Deny thyself." Freud wrote that happiness was the experience of loving and working. He believed that the gratification of all wants was impossible and would be dangerous to individuals a