Science and The Pursuit of Happiness

Happiness, Bhikku, is like an Iraqi nuke. There is no such thing. And if you perversely go looking for it, you'll only get your ass whipped.

-- The Buddha's Diary, a Friday in June, maybe 511 BC

Note: Bhikku = Bhikshu, roughly the same as Monk.

The Hindu Jihadis have spoken. The Vedic Era, they wistfully whisper with tender nostalgia, was a rare Golden Age in Brownistan's history. Those glory days, they declare, were a long orgy of universal contentment in Brownistan. For once, they speak the truth. All brown people were satisfied in Vedic times. The men satisfied themselves by beating their wives. The women satisfied themselves by bullying the oldies at home. And while noone really cares what oldies think, even they were satisfied because they knew they'd die soon and go to Heaven or Hell, either of which could only be an improvement on Brownistan.

Contrast this Utopia with our own decadent times: Wife-beating is regrettably passe', and old people are indefinitely kept alive somewhere in Florida, instead of being slowly killed at home. Everyone, as a result, is thoroughly dissastisfied.

Sadly, this is not an isolated instance. Nay, it is part of a tragic pattern. Modern man, particularly in the West, is in a million ways more miserable than his forefathers; and the primary reason for his profound gloom is Science.

Let not the reader consider me ungrateful. I freely acknowledge that Science has given us much: Viagara to create real men, surgery to create unreal women, MPEG video to capture the combo in action, broadband internet to download the said video with, and Prozac to soothe the depression when blokes gets bored of porn, as blokes eventually do. (I am not talking here of my old friend SC. He never tired of porn, and probably never will. But he is a genius at lechery, while you, gentle reader, are only a genius at not being a genius.)

I salute Science: it is the giver of plenty. Nevertheless, it is also the root cause of the West's woes.

The problem with Science is that it fixes stuff that ain't broken. Like Rahul Dravid, it performs spectacularly under pressure, after first going through great trouble to create the said pressure. Note that Science heroically cooks up miracle cures for strange new diseases. It need not. If it had instead let sissy blokes die of urinary infection, they would not have lived to get these high-end diseases. Note that Science constantly develops ever more complicated and controversial theories about the universe. It need not. It could instead accept the entirely self-consistent claim that the Universe is Allah's third wife. Two damning examples already, and I have not even got to SMS messaging, iPod, TiVo, toilet paper, low-fat peanut butter, and remote-controlled microwave ovens.

Indeed, I submit that most scientific innovation is not only unnecessary, but decidedly detrimental to the Human Condition in some way or the other.

The apologist for Science might point out that this is not really an indictment of science. Innovation, like liberation, comes with a price tag. When one develops an extra-whitening toothpaste, one should not be begrudged a little carcinogenic effluvium. Bah! most human misery is but collateral damage, as Donald Rumsfeld constantly reminds us.

This is arguably true. However, it is besides the point. The real problem is not merely with the process or its side-effects, but lies at at the very core of Science. The nub of the matter is that Science has raised the bar. Before the Scientific Revolution, Man's highest hope was that his neighbor, and not he, would get the plague. Contentment was easy because expectations were low. Along came Science, and led white people to mistakenly believe that

(1) There is a thing called happiness.
(2) If only they tried, they can get it too.

The effects of the deception are manifold and profound. Nobody is better placed to see this than me. The great land of North Texas, where I roost at present, is a land of such dreadful monotony that even hurricanes and earthquakes do not come here. The only natural disaster that frequents these parts is George W. Bush. He has his points, but you'll agree he's not quite the same thing as a tornado. Yet, people regularly ask me what plans I have for the weekend. When I first moved in here, I found this quite hilarious. "Charming devils," I thought, "How wittily they allude to the storied Dallas dullness!" I was wrong. These blokes actually make plans for the weekend, and execute them. Their interests include, hold your breath,

(1) indoor suntan with discount rates for extra UV-protection
(2) kayaking in a large-sized artificial puddle, nay lake
(3) white-water rafting in the same puddle, nay rapid
(4) hunting imported African animals in a fenced-in mock-forest, and
(5) hand-gliding from nowhere to nowhere over miles and miles of nowhere.

One evening, I was driving to the grocery store when I chanced to see one of these blokes about to take off on his glider. (The highest point in North Texas is the overpass of Highway 635 over Highway 75. Taking off from there guarantees 20 miles greater range.) Unable to contain my curiousity, I asked him, "Why?". He looked at me, shrugged, and with a faraway look in his green eyes, whispered : "To have fun". It was then, my friends, that I saw clearly the canker that eats away at the hearts of my hand-gliding brothers, for a man who seeks fun in Dallas is a man whom not even Prozac can rescue from the loony bin.

But that man is not alone, nor is Dallas unique.The white man today, all over the world, is a pilgrim seeking the Holy Grail of happiness. All the world to him seems a veritable Paradise, except the place he currently lives in. And armed with the gizmos that Science constantly cooks up for him, he goes forth to find this Paradise in ever more unlikely places. He flies to the Grand Canyon to get married, because the old church wedding isn't fun anymore. He fights for Zion, because DisneyLand isn't fun anymore. He kills brown people, because killing bears isn't fun anymore. He turns gay, because being straight isn't fun anymore. He buys organic, because buying sex toys isn't fun anymore. He goes to Alaska, because going to the bar isn't fun anymore. He does yoga, because doing drugs isn't fun anymore. He loves Jesus, because loving the neighbor's wife isn't fun anymore. And in seeking greater and greater happiness, he only sinks deeper and deeper into his misery.

It does not have to be thus. Dark is the night, but the white man only has to look to the East for light. The trick is to accept, as colored people do, that life is a bad deal. If you aim for the stars, you'll only get to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder. If you aim for the treetop, you'll at least get a few squirrel-eaten fruits. The white man wants to use science to create Heaven on earth. He fails, for it is beyond him or anyone else. The brown man, on the other hand, only wants help in making babies. If science will not give it, he knows that Swami Premananda will.

This is not mere theory. A few years back, a survey was conducted to find how happy people from different nations were. To some people's surprise, the survey found that the happiest people on earth were the Bangladeshis. White people were deeply consternated, if that's the word I'm looking for. There was a mad scramble to locate the damn place on the map. Bangladesh is, after all, a nation that has both Allah and poverty but neither Al Qaeeda nor oil. Naturally, white people had formerly ignored it. When they dug up some more dirt on it, they found that it had once been rescued from cow-eating brown people by grass-eating brown people. They also found that it was the only of China's neighbors that China did not want to annex, because Chinese people know a bad deal when they see one. Such a land, said white people, cannot be happier than God's Own Country, and so saying they dismissed the survey as faulty.

They were wrong. Here is what really happened, as I found out from a reliable native.

The surveyors went out and asked the natives if they lacked anything they wanted. The natives said, "No". You see, it was the month of Ramadan and though they didn't have food, they didn't want it. The surveyors then asked the natives if they were happy. The natives laughed, because they found the question funny.

Naturally, the survey gave Bangladesh an A+ for sheer joie de vivre. Any survey would have, under the circumstances.

Somewhere in this story, gentle reader, there is a lesson for mankind. I wish I could tell you what it is, for you clearly lack the brains to see it yourself. But right now, I don't have the time. I need to suit up and go indoor wind-surfing. They tell me it is fun.