Will le Fleming

This post has a simple and easily defined aim: today we identify everything that is wrong with the world, and how to fix it. And in honour of the forthcoming US elections, we do so in terms that have an American, almost political flavour.

Now I know you may be thinking that, as ambitions go, this is on the bold side: but hear me out. The great problem of modern society is not inequality, nor debt, nor crime, nor lack of social cohesion; it isn’t TV, nor even Jimmy Savile; it is neither the yoof, nor the tottering ranks of the elderly. It is happiness. Specifically: the pursuit of it, as laid out in the US Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right of mankind.

Image: flickr.com/amslerPIX

The phrase ‘pursuit of happiness’ has sunk deep roots in the modern consciousness, to the extent that to challenge it sounds either miserabilist… Continue reading →