why new york is so unhappy

The large points first: Most happiness researchers agree that being surrounded by friends and family is one of the most crucial determinants of our well-being. Yet New York, as surprisingly neighborly a city as it is, is still predicated on a certain principle of atomization. Being married would help in this instance, obviously. But New York City’s percentage of unmarried adults is nine points higher than the national average, at 52 percent.

Then there’s the question of the hedonic treadmill, such a demonic little term, so vivid, so apt. Isn’t that what New York, the city of 24-hour gyms, is? More charitably put, one could say that New York is a city of aspirants, the destination people come to to realize dreams. And of course we should feel indebted to the world’s dreamers (and I thank each and every one, for creating jet travel, indoor plumbing, The Simpsons), but there’s a line between heartfelt aspiration and a mindless state of yearning. Darrin McMahon, the author of Happiness: A History, shrewdly points out that the Big Apple is a perfect moniker for the city: “The apple is the cause of the fall of human happiness,” he says. “It’s the symbol of that desire for something more. Even though paradise was paradise, they were still restless.”

Which is where the subtle thesis of Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice comes in. He argues, with terrible persuasiveness, that a superabundance of options is not a blessing but a certain recipe for madness. Nowhere do people have more choices than in New York. “New Yorkers should probably be the most unhappy people on the planet,” says Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore. “On every block, there’s a lifetime’s worth of opportunities. And if I’m right, either they won’t be able to choose or they will choose, and they’ll be convinced they chose badly.”

Economists have a term for those who seek out the best options in life. They call them maximizers. And maximizers, in practically every study one can find, are far more miserable than people who are willing to make do (economists call these people satisficers). “My suspicion,” says Schwartz, “is that all this choice creates maximizers.” If that’s the case, New York doesn’t just attract ambitious neurotics; it creates them. It also creates desires for things we don’t need—which, not coincidentally, is the business of Madison Avenue—and, as a corollary, pointless regrets, turning us all into a city of counterfactual historians, men and women who obsessively imagine different and better outcomes for ourselves.

~ excerpts from an article I didn't finish reading because it was too long, but seems to have some fairly good things to say

New York is an unhappy place because it trades the deep and meaningful relationships for endless nights of restaurants, clubbing, bar hopping, and consumption of 'interesting things to do' and 'interesting things to see.' It is precisely, a city of interminable choice. It is a city for consumers. You come here. You take what you can get out of it and you leave (and probably go to Jersey). *

New York is not a city of neighbours. (Who knows their neighbours?) Neighbours care about the place where they live. People don't come to New York because they want to contribute to making this place better, help the homeless or get to know the people who live next door to them. No, they come here because they want to experience New York City. To soak up its sights, its sounds, its foods, its drinks, its clothes, its people and then return to their overpriced, shoe-box sized apartments..... But if you are constantly taking, you are inevitably going to leave empty.

It is with cities as it is with sex. We seek the physical city and find only an agglomeration of private cells. In the city as nowhere else we are reminded that we are individuals, units. Yet the idea of the city remains; it is the god of the city that we pursue, in vain.

Its heart must have lain somewhere. But the god of the city was elusive. The tram was filled with individuals, each man returning to his own cell.

V.S. Naipaul wrote that about London. Perhaps this is also true about New York. Except every city has a different god. For New York, the glittering, flashing billboard forever reminds you that if you buy the rights things, see the right shows and go to the right restaurants, you will indeed experience New York City.... **


* Obviously, I'm not saying that everyone has no true friends in New York. In fact, alot of people I know have close friends in the city. But what I'm referring to, is a general spirit of the city, and the millions of people that come filtering in (and out) each year.
** But what is New York City? Does it even exist? Is it not just an elusive idea? A vain myth? If you follow the chain of signs, you'll soon seen that it only returns back to itself, and never leads to anywhere real.