‘When one is entitled to the pursuit of happiness, and happiness is tied to money, safety protocols get conflated with “enslavement” ‘-Andre Gee.
“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy” -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The nice thing about Grains of Wrath’s Overkill IPA is that it wonderfully illustrates how you can have grapefruit flavors in a beer without having that beer be hazy, nor sweet.
The nose gives me a pink grapefruit quality, and that follows through to the finish. There is a bit of sweetness in the middle, but not much. The bitterness is far from zealous, which is nice but it does almost have that grapefruit tart quality.
Here’s the big drawback: I don’t particularly like grapefruit. So this beer falls squarely into the ‘excellent, but not for me’ category.
I read Mr. Gee’s article a couple weeks ago and not long after that, I recalled the wry comment Mr. Adams had on money. Ever since, those statements have been two ghosts in my head.
I don’t hate money. It’s a convenient tool to use-I would much rather give someone money for a beer, than work in the bar for the approximate time it would take to earn said beer.
A tool cannot make you happy. Hell, nothing can permanently make you happy, so let’s just throw that out now. Content, though. That’s a thing that we can sustain. Happiness can come and go.
The tool can make a lot of things easier and it can certainly qualify for making things better. Those ends can be a part of happiness. It absolutely can be key to creating contentment. But it still can’t be either of those things.
One quality about being content is that you don’t need more. At some point, more is useless. More is something that should be given to someone else, who wants or needs it.
The thing about being happy is that I want to share it-with as many people as I can. Being happy because someone else is happy is a real thing-but again, I’m not out to make more. I’m out to share it. Because once I’m happy I don’t get more happy-I have a state of happiness! Sharing that doesn’t lessen it but it does extend my happiness.
Maybe, amongst the other things the founders got wrong, they also fucked up with that phrase ‘pursuit of happiness’. Getting us to run down a dream that is more like chasing a dragon than building a community.
And the dragon…well, the dragon will just keep you in the cave, part of its horde. The community might just save your life.
Just something to ponder, while I finish off my beer.
Today’s second pint goes to Cajun Navy Relief.
A pint for Dionysus 