A Harvard happiness expert has discovered that human beings require other human beings to not be miserable. This is groundbreaking research that flies in the face of everything we knew about mammals being social creatures for the last several million years.
Only 35% of U.S. adults think community matters for the American Dream. The other 65% apparently believe the American Dream involves sitting alone in a studio apartment watching their Robinhood portfolio bleed out while eating microwaved Hot Pockets. They're not wrong about the portfolio part.
The expert says without community, life is pretty grim. Which raises an important question: did Harvard pay this person to state the obvious, or did they do it for free? Either way, someone should check if they also published a study confirming that water is wet and fire is hot.
Retail traders have been testing this theory for years by replacing human connection with Discord servers full of strangers telling them to hold GameStop at $347. The results have been conclusive. Turns out spamming rocket emojis at 2 AM does not fill the void left by having zero friends who respect you.
The American Dream now costs $4.4 million according to some estimates. Community costs zero dollars. But sure, let's focus on the thing that's free while complaining we can't afford the thing that's impossible. This is the same logic that leads people to buy fractional shares of Tesla instead of talking to their neighbors.
Here's what Harvard won't tell you: community requires you to be someone other people want to be around. That means logging off, showering, and developing a personality that isn't built entirely around hating your boss and worshipping Elon Musk. For 65% of Americans, that's a harder ask than making seven figures.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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