Already in the American Declaration of Independence was the talk of the "pursuit of happiness" - precisely this compulsion to be happy makes the Americans so unhappy.
The social imperative in America is: Be happy! The pursuit of happiness is even an anchored birth right in America, a treaty that ties Americans with life from the very first cry.
In Germany everything is possible in the basic law: freedom, equality, fundamental rights. The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights agreed on "life, freedom and security". But happiness? Does not count to our official national targets. The individual has to look for happiness on his own.
In America, on the other hand, "The Pursuit of Happiness" is the fuel that keeps the nation rotating. The hunt for this eternally volatile, very volatile ghost is the contemporary variant of gold noise in America. The promise that each and every one can create the zenith of bliss is engraved in every American heart.
Bill Clinton was a half-whim from Hope, a kaff in Arkansas, the son of a lonely nurse and later an alcoholic stepfather before becoming the most powerful man in the world. Oprah Winfrey was born as a daughter of a teenager in Mississippi, put into her potato bags by her grandmother because she did not have any money for clothes, and got pregnant at 14, but got a scholarship and became the most influential (and richest) media mogul in America. No wonder the true story of Chris Gardner, the bankrupt, homeless, single-parenting father who worked his way up to a successful stock exchange, was filmed with Will Smith in the lead role and became a cash box. The title, of course, "The Pursuit of Happyness" (the unusual spelling goes back to a graffito).
These modern fairy tales really exist. I was shocked when my friend Veronica Everett-Boyce told me about her life story. The always top-styled African American in her design etuikleidern had lost her father by suicide, grew up in various homes, could not read to the tenth grade and was temporarily homeless. Now she is doing her doctor and is running Urban Fitness 911, a mentor program for young people from difficult circumstances as she once was.
Look, it's all right, the Amis say. "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" Is a winged speech, which means something like pulling your own boots from the swamp.
The promise that always resonates: everything is possible. Everything! It is! Possible! You just have to want it.
Why Thomas Jefferson, later America's third president, came up with the idea of writing "life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 will remain forever its secret.
He has never explained it, as far as we know.
It did not help either.
For in truth, America is not the happiest country in the world. By far not. Yes, it is not even among the top ten in the competition. In the World Happiness Report, America ranks 13th, behind Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Canada. (For Germans, however, no reason for arrogance: Germany beat in the final classification still further behind: 16th place)
Moreover, since 1972 fewer and fewer Americans - less than a third - have described themselves as "very happy". The proportion of Americans who are optimistic about the future also fell from almost 80 to 50 percent. Senator Marco Rubio from Florida says that America does not share in "haves and have-nots," but rather in "haves and soon-to-haves," that is, rich and future-rich. The promise of the American Dreams: Soon you too. This is a nice campaign slogan, but far from reality.
The pull of the Rags-to-Riches Stories has the disadvantage that America has very little compassion (and hand-held support) for those who do not manage to free themselves from a miserable childhood, poverty, or homelessness. In Los Angeles alone, more homeless people live together than in the whole of Germany. Those who are seriously ill, such as cancer, usually lose their jobs. Whoever is out of work, usually loses his health insurance, and so a fatal blow can be a slider straight into poverty much faster than in Germany. I have not understood for a long time why the Americans are so desperate about their jobs, even in the case of illness with clenched teeth go to the office and often do not even leave the legally prescribed two weeks of vacation. Meanwhile, I understand it very well: The social network has many, many holes. A disease suffices to fall through. Obamacare has not changed much.
There is a downside to this one-sided American blessing of happiness that bursts from TV spots and magazines: If you are not doing well, something is wrong with you. As if suffering were an unsightly spot, which we could wipe away if we were eager to rub the proper cleaning agent. Or swallow the right anti-depressant.
A quarter of American women are taking anti-depressants, more than a third of Americans suffer from anxiety, and Americans are world champions in pain. Each day 40 people die of painkillers in America. The Amis swallow 80 percent of global production of painkillers, including more than 108 tons of Vicodin per year. It would be enough to stun each American for a whole month round the clock.
The psychologist Iris Mauss from the University of Berkeley has shown in a highly respected study that the pressure to be happy makes people unhappy. For a society that lays happiness as a yardstick can be quite pitiless when people despair. Then we are not only unhappy, but "ashamed to be unhappy," acknowledged the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. "It is the hunt for the happiness that drives away happiness."
The undisguised radiance, the immeasurable optimism of many Americans, the "Yes, We Can!" Power is great and contagious as long as it is genuine. To get rid of a smile, even if one is crying, can lure us and a protracted situation, and realistic optimism is an excellent compass on the voyage of life. But beware: optimism to force has probably exactly the opposite effect.
Thus America becomes an eternal self-improvement and optimization machine, which constantly stirs and rushes and in which one must always be careful not to pull the shortest. No wonder that happiness has become a 10 billion dollar industry. Happiness has a very similar budget as the Hollywood dream factory.
Americans are increasingly marginalized by the pain which average Americans do not want to enter: hospices, homeless shelters, prisons. In America the exclusion is far more severe than in Europe. Is it coincidence that America is blocking more people than any other country? In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the responsible parties at the end of 2014 have even passed a law that punishes the public distribution of food to the homeless. The sheriffs also arrested Arnold Abbott, the 90-year-old war veteran, who every week organized a homelessness with his neighborly love for your neighbors. He could feed the homeless in there, where no one sees them, only in God's name not on a Sunday before his church. We live in a world where an American shoots an unarmed black man and is not even accused of doing so, but another must be in prison because he handed a plate of vegetables to a homeless man. Americans prefer to keep people away. From the eyes, from the heart, from the mind. Viktor Frankl has therefore proposed to carve a sister to the famous Liberty statue of New York (which is celebrating its 130th birthday): a "statue of responsibility" on the west coast.
"Freedom," said Frankl, "is not the last word. Freedom is only a part of history and half the truth. Freedom even runs the risk of escaping in recklessness if it is not lived under the responsibility. I therefore propose that the statue of liberty on the east coast be supplemented by a statue of responsibility on the west coast. "
The sculptor Gary Lee Price has already built the prototype - hands that interlock. Now only the right location has to find the 93-meter high statue in San Francisco or San Diego really to the sea.
In any case, it means that we strive for "life, freedom, happiness and the responsibility to do everything we can to share this life, freedom and happiness with all other human beings."
