Striving For Carrots
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Happiness is a state of well-being and contentment that should be found at home, at the work place, and within ones self. This would make available an individuals basic rights stated in the Declaration of Independence of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” William Greiders “Work Rules” and Jon Gertners “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness” exemplify their own ideas on how culture could become happier. Jon Gertners essay explains the underlying truth behind happiness and the mistakes societies make on its journey because they never really know what they want. He argues that political journalists for example like William Greider try to predict forms of happiness. William Greider makes a case about a moral economy with a collective group of workers in society that govern their own company because he wants to present a happier workplace environment for Americans. He feels the Constitution has lost its value by forming a “master-slave” relationship between a boss and worker by making workers suspending their control to the boss. By relating Greiders argument to Gertner, we realize it is a problem because how do you plan a way to make society happier, when people never really know what will make them happy? Greiders essay presents that workers are not happy because they can not govern their own work, but that is not possible because happiness is a very broad feeling that most people do not understand. A moral economy can have a decent sense of right and wrong in a worker-owned workplace or in the normal nation wide work place. It is impossible to predict which economic model will satisfy its workers in a society with individuals who are guilty of “miswanting” forms of happiness .
By attending an American school system, all students played roles on “Occupation Day” or some holiday celebrating different professions, as the careers they would like to have when they grew up. The typical ones were lawyers, doctors, writers, teachers, or actors. I do not remember an elementary student every answering the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “A janitor, or maybe a seamstress”. Since our youngest years we were taught what jobs hold honor and prestige and indirectly taught what occupations we should not sought after. Was society worried about the amount of happiness a certain occupation might give us, or the amount of salary we might make? William Greiders ideal moral economy would not be biased against any career or profession and therefore would satisfy all of the workers. Although it is not right to say that a person should be judged by the career he chooses for himself, it is right to believe that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be better than someone else and trying to achieve a higher position, if it is done in a honorable manner without corruption. If a person does not take a stand to achieve his personal goals in a society, goals that he thinks will make him happy, then he is taking away from his own rights given to him by the The Declaration of Independence to have the right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” ?
Gertner and Greider both agree about societys desire to work at stereotypically good jobs (such as lawyers or doctors) because society has taught them that it will make them happier in the future. “The average person says, I know Ill be happier with a Porsche than a Chevy. Or with Linda rather then Rosalyn. Or as a doctor rather than a plumber. That seems very clear to peopleThe real problem is figuring our which of those futures is going to have the high payoff and is really going to make you happy”(Gertner 169). Todays culture has made a stereotype about the importance of jobs based on an artificial hierarchy of occupations, and that there is no truth to the importance of each occupation or the amount of happiness it will provide you based on this hierarchy. Greider writes, “The point is, the cultural stereotypes attached to work are arbitrary and create their own destructive social divisions. They are generally wrong–inferences made at a distance about people whom we do not know, based upon their status in the occupational hierarchies” (Greider 219). As research from “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness” shows, it is unlikely for society to understand what they want in life, or even what occupation will really give it to them.
Each American worker in our economy is identified by their occupation and responsibilities. Most work environments include a master-servant relationship between workers and their bosses. Greider writes, “A recognition of these underlying terms seems jarring only because the relationship is so deeply internalized in nearly everyones life expectations, just the way things are and probably immutable” (214). People have turned their individual identity into servants for bosses in the work place. He continues, “How can genuine individual freedom ever flourish except for a privileged few-or democracy ever be reconciled with capitalism-so long as the economic system functions along opposite principles, depriving people of rights and responsibilities, even denying their uniqueness as human beings” (Greider 220)?
To solve this problem of what Greider considers Americas conformity to society, he recommends non-standard jobs where he wants people to “own their jobs” and a company together. To me, there is no individual decision making or uniqueness when owning a company with people who are equal to you. Rather, you become a servant to your job never amounting to anything more then you were, when you first started working. Greider believes that people can find happiness with this compromise to work in a job that tries to bring unity to each job. In Gertners essay, “Happiness is a signal that our brains use to motivate us to do certain things” (Gertner 171). He continues to say, “When it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong” (167). My point here is, although Greiders intentions of a unified work place and happiness is honorable, it is also impossible. The amount of happiness an individual might experience in an occupation can not be compared to anothers. One persons idea of happiness might be a job where they have individual identity (may it be as a servant to another) and anothers