Pursuit of Happiness?

Last week the news broke that Americans spent about $9 billion on Halloween. That’s over twice the budget of the entire National Park Service and included almost half a billion dollars on costumes for their pets.

My first thought on hearing this was that people must be feeling pretty good about their life and their personal economic situation if they are willing to spend so much celebrating what years ago used to be a time for homemade costumes for kids going door to door. Now it has become a full-fledged manufactured holiday along the lines of Valentines Day. 

The overall spending level on Halloween has been consistent for at least the last eight years.

But the original story decries it as out of control consumerism. The writer labels that much spending on a non-holiday as a sign of conspicuous consumption. “Conspicuous consumption is designed to show others you are rich, smart or important.” It used to be a case of having a bigger house or fancier car than the neighbors. Today it’s having a better picture of themselves or their pets on Facebook or Instagram and garnering more likes.

That is also the conclusion of this Fox Business article: “Social media 'pressure' drives Halloween spending.” Their conclusion is based on a survey showing that “48 percent [of millennials] admitted to purchasing Halloween items solely for posting online, and four in ten millennials felt a lot of pressure to spend that money.” They were not alone. Over thirty percent of the generations that bracketed them admitted to having the same motivation.

This idea of conspicuous consumption goes beyond dressing up for selfies as this Forbes article explains in: “What Handing Out Full Size Candy Bars on Halloween Says About You, According to Behavioral Economists.” Stores this year were stocking more packages of full-size candy bars in anticipation of the pressure to out-do or at least keep up with the neighbors. “Your Halloween treats can signal not just what you have, but aspects of your character, such as your generosity.” It’s about social signaling, how we try to shape what others think of us.

This whole dynamic, too, is amplified by social media, the way it sets expectations and the way it makes the spread of a reputation, positive or negative, so much faster and easier.

So it’s conspicuous consumption, a sign of insecurity, that drives people to dress the dog like a cat or a box of cereal. It doesn’t sound like they are spending for the sake of a good time or to celebrate happiness at all.

Finally, this Washington Post story from last March confirms that notion: “Americans are the unhappiest they’ve ever been, U.N. report finds.” The US dropped for the third year in a row to 19^th place among 156 countries in the United Nation’s World Happiness Report, an annual ranking of overall happiness. 

“By most accounts, Americans should be happier now than ever,” writes Jean M. Twenge, one of the report’s co-authors. “The violent crime rate is low, as is the unemployment rate. Income per capita has steadily grown over the last few decades.” It’s hard to believe, except that the news media rarely reports this type of good news. Instead they dwell on the negative, the scary and the sensational to incense the audience and attract clicks and eyeballs. 

Commenters on the report blame the trend toward unhappiness in part on the rise in addiction, but isn’t that more of a symptom than a cause? Is it an increase in screen time, activities that have been linked to increases in depression?

Perhaps one key can be found back in the full-size candy bar story. “Our satisfaction is very subjective…it’s not absolute, but driven by what we expect.” Expectations are set by perspective. If we lack perspective we allow others to judge us and set our expectations, and that can only lead to unhappiness.

Lack of Perspective and Critical Thinking

The news sure keeps us on our toes. There are always examples of perspective issues. Likewise, some information is just passed along by the talking heads without applying any critical thinking. Here are a few examples.

In England, “Kleenex will re-brand its ‘Mansize’ tissues after consumers complained the name was sexist – touching off a social media conversation about what's in a name.” True, this is a story from London and not directly related to a Real American Solution, but it’s not a stretch to imagine the same kind of thing happening on this side of the ocean. These tissues have been going by the same name for over 60 years, and suddenly someone is offended and contacts the company. The company folds under the pressure even though about 99.9% of their customers probably don’t care.

This is a typical case of one or two people having too much time on their hands and not even appreciating the fact that being offended by a tissue box is a much smaller problem than most of their neighbors are facing. Clearly, in this case, perspective has taken a long holiday.

Meanwhile back in the US, “Pet owners will spend nearly half a billion dollars on animal costumes this Halloween,” according to Marketwatch.com. Just admit it, pet costumes for Halloween have got to be in the luxury category, clearly a want and not a need. But it doesn’t end there! “The National Retail Federation says Americans will spend $9 billion celebrating Halloween this year.” 

Things must be pretty sweet, if we can afford to drop $9 billion on one day of celebrating what was originally a pagan holiday. Despite an average credit card debt per household of $5,700, Americans can’t seem to help themselves.

But the situation is similar to the offensive tissues. When this kind of spending tops the to-do list, perhaps it’s time to appreciate how good we have it instead of fighting over trivia on social media and agonizing over petty annoyances. That's what lack of perspective looks like - taking all we have for granted while focusing on the trivia.

Finally, there was this story to challenge critical thinking from AAA. The opening paragraph reads like this: 

"As National Teen Driver Safety Week kicks off (October 21-27), the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has released new research which found that when a teen driver has only teen passengers in their vehicle, the fatality rate for all people involved in a crash increased 51 percent. In contrast, when older passengers (35 or older) ride with a teen driver, overall fatality rates in crashes decreased eight percent. Considering the increased risk created by a combination of teen drivers and teen passengers, AAA emphasizes the need for teen drivers to gain adequate supervised training, especially in different driving scenarios, before taking what could be a fatal drive."

All of the reporters read it pretty much word for word.

Does this report actually present any evidence that teens riding with teens are more dangerous? I would tend to believe it is true, but this tells us nothing about it! They didn’t look at the different scenarios: teens with teens, with young adults and with people older than 35, for all miles driven or all trips. They only looked at the crashes to see how many people were killed.

That only means that when a crash happens it’s more dangerous, but it doesn’t mention the frequency of the crashes and is mute on the instances of teens driving alone. Their conclusions and recommendations assume that frequency is higher, but the analysis does not show it. Nice try, AAA. 

Why does no one else raise this question? Could it be because it fits their model of the world – that teens really are more dangerous? That probably is the case, but the news media aren’t paid to think or question, just to pass along information, accurate or not.

Have a Correct Halloween

Speaking of tolerance, as I did last time, along comes news of offensive Halloween costumes.  They are not offensive in themselves, but have been declared offensive by various groups of teachers and other authorities.

As we learn here, “From first-graders to college seniors, schools are cracking down on a wide swath of Halloween costumes.”  The list of banned costumes is long and varied.  Anything considered controversial is disallowed.  Some elementary schools have cancelled Halloween in favor of an “orange and black” celebration with no costumes involved.

The schools are walking on eggshells prohibiting any dress that can be considered racist by anyone!  Superhero costumes are discouraged for violence or carrying pretend weapons.  “Tufts University last year threatened investigations by campus police against any student whose costume was deemed offensive, especially if the outfit is thought to be culturally appropriated or ‘relating to tragedy, controversy, or acts of violence.’”  Imagine being detained or arrested for your choice of costume based on one administrator's hypersensitivity!

Halloween is a big holiday.  Last year spending on candy, costumes and decorations was projected to be $9.1 billion in 2017.  But maybe the fun is coming to an end.

The only fun left seems to be trying to guess what is acceptable and what will get you sent home, or worse.  Based on the vague guidelines one writer opined that students are “presumably restricted from dressing up as samurais, hombres, geishas, belly dancers, Vikings, ninjas, rajas, French maids, Bollywood dancers, Rastafarians, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Zorro, or Thor.”  The list goes on.  It reminds me of the story about magician Penn Jillette going to his daughter’s preschool party dressed as a ghost and suddenly realizing he might be mistaken for a Klansman.

“The company HalloweenCostumes.com recently pulled an outfit of Holocaust victim Anne Frank from its website after it was hit with a slew of criticism.”  Personally, I wouldn’t recognize an Anne Frank costume if I saw it, but someone objected.  Clowns are out, because of recent creepy-clown incidents.  A hobo was a favorite years ago, but it could be interpreted as disrespecting the homeless.

Remember from last time:  It’s more acceptable to say, “I’m offended” than to admit, “I’m intolerant,” but it boils down to the same thing.  What one person thinks is cute or funny, can be banned by a single complaint.  What’s worse is that the “injured party” is free to go on social media to try to exact revenge by destroying a reputation or a business or even indirectly calling for violence.

The reaction to this by schools is understandable.  They too are required to guess what a single person might find objectionable and do “everything possible” to avoid it.  (These are the institutions with zero tolerance policies.)

Think of how well off one has to be, how unconcerned with survival, how sheltered from conflict, to let someone else’s choice of a Halloween costume for a day out of the year cause such upset as to drive that person to complain!  But being offended and complaining is the new national pastime.  Some are so needy that they will be offended on behalf of a group they don’t even belong to.  Where is the perspective?  Where does the insanity end?