The Pursuit of Unhappiness?

For all you apparently struggling Irish people; There is no scientific evidence to suggest an equivalence between happiness and money. This is after  you have secured a basic level of subsistence. By which I mean able to adequately nourish yourself, keep a roof over your head and not be one payment away from the debt courts. And, of course, if you are not securing that basic level of subsistence,  by all means ignore whats to follow. There is a concept in sociology called the "hedonic treadmill", which is used to explain data that indicates that rather than income increase elevating happiness and general well being,  the more money you get the more you raise the bar of what you consider happiness. Unfortunately it means we are more determined by social conditioning than humanists like myself would care to admit. If all our friends pass the time smoking Gauloises, playing chess and drinking rum and coke then you will automatically say to yourself  "I need to make money that will enable me to smoke Gauloises, play chess and drink rum and coke." However, in the process of seeking advancement, you may get a better job, move to a different place and meet new people, people who rather than smoking, playing chess and drinking rum and cokes, like landscape gardening, skiing, sitting on Quangos and only drink wine bought in gourmet food shops. So in the process of social advancement the person has found it has made him no less satisfied, in fact since higher income levels are more difficult to attain it has made him more dissatisfied,. They are still people whose wealth, status and securities  he envies even though he has surpassed his erstwhile enviable peers.  This is called the "hedonic treadmill", that so called social mobility is just one hot, sweaty effort to keep up with the social game. And the best lesson to be learned is live your life the way you want to live it, not how the gossiping Jones tell you how to live it, or like politicians who have become like gossiping Jones' to keep the retail industry going. Still the remarkably prevalent human tendency to follow the mob, bow to social pressure and live by borrowed wisdom and creeds, is, as misanthropes like me have to remind everyone, endemic.