BARS
Al’s & Vic’s and James Bar
photo by Chad Harder
Happiness is A sophisticate’s ode to the post-work drink by Nick Davis Back in 350 B.C, Aristotle noted it to be the only state of being that humans crave for its own sake. Some 2,000 years later, our founding fathers shoehorned the pursuit of it into the Declaration of Independence on the heels of life and liberty, two far more quantifiable objects. Like most emotional states, it’s a slippery devil, both in attainment and in measurement. But that doesn’t stop people from chasing it, especially in societies that largely inoculate their inhabitants from more pressing biological needs like food and shelter.
Hey, man, all we’re looking for is a little happiness. Recent economic downturns and foreign policy imbroglios aside, you’d think Americans would have more reason to feel happy than just about any other people. Comparatively speaking, we’ve got loads of money, an excellent civil infrastructure and a fair piece of personal freedom. And we invented baseball. Despite all that, though, discontent seems as healthy a strand of this country’s DNA as hot dogs and apple pie. According to Wikipedia (and really, how could millions of self-appointed experts be wrong?), contem-
porary research indicates that happiness is 50 percent genetic, so next time you get the blues feel free to lash out at your family tree. Another 10 to 15 percent of the happiness pie comes from varied things like social status, health, income, marital status, etc., so if you’ve got the downtrodden-sick-poor-single blues, go ahead and rail at The Man for keeping you down. The remaining 35 to 40 percent is comprised of individual actions deliberately designed to increase happiness—going to a baseball game, for example, or sending flowers to your grandma or kicking some anonymous person’s ass in an online game of Feast 2009
Missoula Independent
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