Happiness and the cool people

Red buttonScott Adams is for me one of the coolest person living on planet earth. I read Dilbert every day like a bad habit.  He has created a blog (of course I also read it every day! duh!) and there he writes about things in a way I can only wish to reach in a hundred years of writing.

Anyway, the guy, recently published an article called Happiness Button. I will reproduce it, since it goes right into the alley of my Midlife Crisis rant.
Can you imagine a world where you can ask a person “Do you want me to push your buttons?” I would become a professional button pusher pleaser.
Enjoy:

 Happiness Button
Suppose humans were born with magical buttons on their foreheads. When someone else pushes your button, it makes you very happy. But like tickling, it only works when someone else presses it. Imagine it's easy to use. You just reach over, press it once, and the other person becomes wildly happy for a few minutes.
What would happen in such a world?
You could imagine that everyone in the world would be happy just about all the time. People would make agreements with each other to push each other's buttons on a regular basis, thus guaranteeing the complete and utter happiness of all humans.
No, I can't imagine that either.
The first thing that would happen is that we'd create some rules of etiquette saying you can't press anyone's button without explicit permission. That makes sense, since sometimes you need to get some work done, and happiness can make you lose focus. You wouldn't want people making you happy against your wishes.
The next thing that would happen is that people would realize they can sell the button-pushing service. People would stop giving it away for free. You'd be begging people to press your button and it would just seem pathetic. You might get some takers for a brief button-pushing fling, but it would get tiresome to push another person's button every few minutes all day.
Perhaps some people would give their button-pushing services away for free, to anyone who asked. Let's call those people generous, or as they would become known in this hypothetical world: crazy sluts.
Button pushing would become an issue of power and politics within relationships and within business. The rich and famous would get their buttons pushed all day long, while the lonely would fantasize about how great that would be.
I can't think of any imaginary situation in which long term happiness could come from other people. The best you can hope for is that other people won't thwart your efforts to make yourself happy.
El Tulli

Es un sarcastico-tecnologico. La especie mas peligrosa de toda la web. Es el culpable de todo lo que pasa aqui. Ha jodido a America (la mujer del vecino, ahora le dicen "la Tullía"), la Res (que es pública), al Santo (de apellido Domingo que vive en la capital), a Bonao (perro del pulpero- buen perro ese-)y lo joderá a usted tambien si se descuida.

4 Comments

Opine lo que le dé la gana. Le responderemos de la misma forma...
Say whatever you want, we can take it.

  1. I started collection the Dilbert books, and have quite a few of them. However, I stopped a while ago. Yes, the guy is funny through his comic strips.

    How about a self-pushing button that cannot be exploited for marketing purposes? What if we didn't have to depend on others to make us happy all the time? Isn't there such a thing as inner happiness? But then I guess that would not be funny anymore. Come on! Make a joke and push my happy laugh button.

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  2. Diarrhea, cha-cha chá...
    Diarrhea, cha-cha chá...
    Diarrhea, cha-cha chá...
    I loved Bevis and Butthead...
    They grew up.

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  3. OMG! It's been forever since I last thought about Beavis and Butthead! Haha! You have certainly pushed my button! Thanks! BTW, you might want to think about relocating the title bar and the picture, since it's a little hard to read the text due to the white-on-almost-white thing. I like your redesign.

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  4. And oh, don't forget Bill Watterson's cartoon, Calvin and Hobbes. Me LOOVVEES IT! Not office satire, but life satire.

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