The vexed problem of ‘contentment’

I don’t know if The American academic Daniel Boorstin was having a good or a bad day when he wrote this searing critique of today’s expectations.

“When we pick up the newspaper [or go online] at breakfast, we expect – we even demand – that it brings us momentous events since the night before…

We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless.

We expect a far-away atmosphere if we go to a nearby place. We expect new heroes every season, a literary masterpiece every month, a dramatic spectacular every week, a rare sensation every night.

We expect anything and everything.

We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical.

We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive.

We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy…to go to ‘a church of our choice’ and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God… and to be God.

Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.”

I suspect old Daniel might have been having a bad day … but I hear what he’s saying.

I am drowning in information … and not all of it is making things better.

Contentment: maybe we’re looking for it in all the wrong places.