Dickens and Tolstoy both thought is what worth writing a happiness equation; why not Rubenfeld? If happiness equals x and unhappiness equals y and one ingredient contributes to x, then it's opposite must be the key to y. Fiddle with the formula and you have a sentence that plays. "Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness..."
Now what is Rubenfeld offering? Happiness resulting from amnesia and living in the moment. If this were the case then America would surely be finished pursuing happiness and ambrosia; much of the nation would already have caught it and swallowed it. "Spanish American war? Never heard of it. Bataan death march...is that the same as Bhutan? Ronald Reagan laid a wreath at an S.S. war memorial? Meaningless, all of it. Meaning comes from chums... and pop culture."
David Ritchie, remembering that he is always forgetting something in Portland, Oregon
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