is the right to happiness a fundamentalism...a new kind of dogma?

I was recently reading an article in the New Yorker called "Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness" by Jennifer Senior.

Here are some key demographics from the article:

Other findings from the emerging field of happiness studies: Married people are happier than those who are not, while people who believe in God are happier than those who don't. On the former point, Seligman's book cites a 35,000-person poll from the National Opinion Research Center, in which 40 percent of married Americans described themselves as very happy, compared with just 24 percent of unmarried Americans who said the same. (Of course, he allows, happy people may be the ones who get married to begin with.) On the latter point, he cites a study showing that the faithful are less likely to abuse drugs, commit crimes, or to kill themselves. The act of worshipping builds community, itself another source of happiness, —and belief systems provide structure, meaning, and the promise of relief from pain in this life.
Smarter people aren't any happier, but those who drink in moderation are. Attractive people are slightly happier than unattractive people. Men aren'’t happier than women, though women have more highs and more lows. Surprisingly, the young are not happier than the elderly; in fact, it'’s the other way round, with older people reporting slightly higher levels of life satisfaction and fewer dark days.

And another main finding? Well, that New Yorkers tend to be rather unhappy, of course!
And relating to my previous blog on choice feminism, one of the main points from this article is that
"Choice creates unhappiness, argues Barry Schwartz, so New Yorkers should probably be the unhappiest people on the planet. On every block, there's a lifetime of opportunities.” "
I've actually read this before. I recently read this sociology book on why so many blue-state Americans are waiting so long to get married or not getting married at all, and one of the main reasons is that there were too many choices. If there are so many opportunities, so many potentially perfect mates out there, why chose the one you've got, especially when you've reached the point where you realize they are less than ideal?

However, the article also notices that maybe having this hope is what happiness really is.

And maybe, too, there'’s something to all this abundance, all this aspiring, all this choice. For all its confusions, choice is also a source of hope, and for many of us, hope is itself happiness, whether it's predicated on truths or illusion.

The author than quotes Flaubert's Parrot saying, "“Isn'’t the most reliable form of pleasure . . . the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfillment's desolate attic?"

I guess another thing I have been considering lately is the idea of happiness in the context of survival. back in the day when the life expectancy was 35, the only real care in the world was living to see your next birthday and trying to procreate.
Now we are in a society where our next birthday is a given (we are dreading how old we are) and children arinconvenienceseless inconvience, apparently we are so overpopulated, some countries like China are limiting how many kids a family can have.
So basically, we already have survival as a given, we are greatly blessed by that, and yet we still want more, we think we need more. the more you have, the more you want. it is never good enough. it feels like "settling". why would i want "this" when i can have "that". According to Aristotle, happiness is "an activity of the soul that expresses virtue."
but is happiness really so virtuous? why do i want to be "happy" and what even is it?

the article continues with this interesting bit which goes along with my survival idea:

Until extremely recently, happiness wasn't even a value, much less an inalienable right. Instead, it was something one got to experience only in death, after leading a virtuous, and often self-denying, life. As McMahon points out in Happiness: A History, the words for happiness in both ancient Greek eudaimonia and every Indo-European language include, at the root, a cognate for lhappy” In English, it'ss happ, or chances as in happenstance, haphazard, perhaps. The implication is that being happy means being lucky. And luck is not something we can entirely will.
"Happiness is fine as a side effect,"says Adam Phillips, the British psychoanalyst and lay philosopher whose latest work, Going Sane, examines functionality and well-being, but from a much more literary and ruminative perspective. It'’s something you may or may not acquire, in terms of luck. But I think it's a cruel demand. It may even be a covert form of sadism. Everyone feels themselves prone to feelings and desires and thoughts that disturb them. And we're being persuaded that by acts of choice, we can dispense with these thoughts. It's a version of fundamentalism.

Many may not realize that John Locke's version of "right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" did NOT include the word "happiness". It was not "happiness" in his philosophy, but "property". For some reason, I do not know why, the founding fathers changed their version, in the Constitution to "happiness". Has vexed the western world considerably or helped it? I am often not sure.
One author states in the article, "“It seems to me that if you were to take a rather stringent line here," concludes Phillips, "“then anyone who could maintain a state of happiness, given the state of the world, is living in a delusion."

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I do feel that you are setting your self up for quite the let down if you expect yourself to be "happy" in your own definition most of the time.

sometimes i truly think that ignorance is bliss, as Thomas Gray so eloquently wrote in 1742.

but regardless, I'm beginning to think that conforming to the standard new york lifestyle probably isn't the best way to go if you want to be happy. but do i really want to be "happy"? is "happiness" the goal, the end, the ultimate pursuit beyond life and liberty? That's a good question.