Generation Bubble

Joy Division: The Culture of Militant Happiness

How do you get a generation reared on relentless manic cartoon optimism, which assures them that everything is fine, that there’s nothing to worry about, that nothing scary or bad will ever happen, to reinvest the world with a “creative social energy”? If anything, the culture of pathological happiness that currently afflicts the United States has effected a great drain on any creative social energy. Just look at the anemic public response to the bailouts and bonuses this past year. How, pray tell, should creative social energy be expended to make this unhappy tale palatable? Should people imagine Wall Street crooks as knights on a quest, searching for a treasure that by rights as theirs, and the citizenry as just do many orcs out to deny them this very thing?