Reading through contributors' comments here, I was just trying to remember what country I once read had the highest suicide rate in the world (suicide often being attributed to depression)--I think it was Hungary. Now, that was some time ago, so I don't know if it would be accurate today.
Material success and comfort are certainly no guarantees of happiness. Brokeback Mountain illustrates that through the depiction of Jack and Lureen's compromised marriage. And we know that Jack would have given that up in a heartbeat to make his life with Ennis, even if their home had been the tiniest and loneliest of trailers.
On another tangent, has anyone else noticed that we tend to reify and privilege moments of happiness as indicative of how life should be or somehow really is, while moments of depression or horror tend to be treated as problems to be overcome? I have sometimes wondered, in my more philosophical moods, if sorrow and horror might not be more accurate or appropriate responses to our world, and that we might willfully overlook this because the emotional burden is too overwhelming to bear. In my level-headed frames of mind, I tend to see the world as a neutral plane onto which we project our biases, fears, and desires, and that life is really neither "good" nor "bad", but simply what we make of it. But I think it's quite telling of what kind of creatures we are that we tend to shun sorrow and horror in the pursuit, sometimes blindly, of whatever we perceive to be joyful or comfortable.
Scott
