Love People Not Pleasure: Movie Analysis

What comes to mind when people think of the word happiness? Is it community, materials, wealth? In our society we define happiness as having all the money and materialistic things that the heart desire. Our society bases happiness of having more things instead of spending time on family and community. Arthur Brooks wrote an article titled “Love People Not Pleasure”, in this article he explained that our society focuses on our extrinsic goals like financial and material success, instead of focusing on intrinsic goals like community and family. We as a society place more importance on materials than everything else. For example if someone does not have the newest source of technology like the iPhone, those people are deemed less successful than …show more content…
An individualistic environment focuses on the phrase “every man for himself”, and people tend to care only about what happens to and for them. In a community environment, people are more inclined to do things for others, and give more to the lesser fortunate, and because of that people in a community environment are more likely to give to someone who is less fortunate.In the movie Happy produced by Roko Belic, the movie follows several countries that show the different forms of happiness. In environments such as Denmark they focus more on family values and less on materials and self improvement. In Denmark the movie followed a mother and her children who lived in a joint community house and they were much happier due to the fact that they lived with other people. (Belic) In America and in certain places around the globe people focus on their own social status or well being, rather than their community as a whole. These values have created what we see as an American culture. An individualistic person can not be a part of a community because they have extrinsic values that will make them disconnected from the community. In contrast, a person who includes themselves in their community are focused in intrinsic values, which makes them more connected to their community. In Japan there is a condition called Karoshi, why work themselves to death when they won’t be able to use that money they earned …show more content…
Our culture focuses on the fact that a person needs money in order to be successful, and in order to be happy people have to have money and success. People in America are more inclined to try and make more money than the person next to them, rather than trying to go home to their family at night. In America and countries that have a good economy there is more people that work longer hours than countries with a lower economy. When working longer hours that means that families spend less time together and that creates for a lower happiness level not only in adults but also in children. The movie Happy follows a family in Japan who has a father that works out of town and long hours. He spends a long time away from his family and he has a small daughter. Due to the fact that he leaves so often his daughter does not remember him when he comes home from one of his business trips. (Belic) This goes to show that making money and gaining success does not mean as much as people think it does. Why is it necessary to work so hard that your happiness levels go down? This has been a problem in the world since the industrial revolution, examples like this one are the reason that people need to change the priorities that they have. Additionally, Arthur Brooks the author of “Love People Not Things”, explained that people put too much emphasis on materialistic things. He explained that