The Pursuit of Happiness

And yet we, whose forebears were peasants, refugees from the British Empire, African Americans whose ancestors were shipped here as slaves, Native Americans and the myriad others who count themselves lucky to be Americans, will gather on July 4th and celebrate the mythography of the nation. Or not. We live in a modern and thoroughly malignant construction of reality where many remain in the frantic pursuit of the sugar rush of happiness. Can we instead take this holiday as a slightly belated Summer Solstice Festival, barbecue the same food and drink the same (craft) beer and begin to fully understand that property is indeed theft and the notion of linear time is the means to larceny; a festival where the erstwhile holism of the nation’s immigrant peasants and of its native peoples is celebrated as a possible gateway to our living in the universe as fully sentient beings?

-- John Davis

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