The Happiness Agenda

You might ask who we are. We are the people who advertise useless products on infomercials that you ridicule, then buy. We are the people who make you pay through the nose for diets that are clearly scams, because you refuse to believe that you could lose weight by eating less and exercising. We are the people who programme the television, and tell you that the real problems with society aren't guns or drugs, rather music and computer games. We are the ones who weave cults of personality around celebrities, making you care more about their new haircut than about your own wretched life. It is because of us you believe that fiction is more dangerous than fact, and that freedom of speech means you have the right to silence opinions different from your own.

We influence most parts of your existence without your ever being aware of it. We are what paranoids refer to as a "conspiracy". But we don't keep ourselves secret for sinister reasons - we just don't want to bother you. We want your day-to-day life to be as smooth and easy as possible, filled with mindless, predictable entertainment to stop you having to think about the world and your part in it. We want nothing more than to help you forget about all the unpleasantness out there. You know you don't like to think about it.

Our goals are noble, our cause a worthy one. We want to ensure that people are happy. And you know as well as we do that independence and awareness take effort. You know how much easier it is to have someone else do your thinking for you, take responsibility for you. All we want to do is take the effort out of your life. We want to make your life smooth, sterile, passive.

You know that makes you happy.