Lifestyles && Aspirations

I was listening to a discussion with my parents in the car about the how different the people were in North America as opposed to back home. The basic premise was that most people in NA are driven by the American Dream. That is, the dream to make money (ie. get a good job) and then buy progressively better material things that they apparently need. For example, a big house, fancy cars, swimming pool, yachts etc etc.

This was definitely in contrast to the Caribbean way of life where a job is merely something you need to live comfortably and the lifestyle is more focused on working towards the weekend - where you party/drink and have fun with family/friends. I don't want to say that obviously everyone in NA or The Caribbean conforms to these mindsets since I'm sure there's exceptions. But I think its safe to say, living in Canada after all, that there's a definite push towards the American Dream. Ever since we're young we know the goal is to get a job that pays well...but then what? Then we use to money to buy useless things, it seems. To use the quote from Fight Club:

"Advertising has got us working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need"

Of course, that quote kind of exaggerates things as I'm sure not everyone in America hates their job. But its just the total capitalist mindset that I don't like. Initially, I thought like the Caribbean way of life seemed much more appealing and something I should strive for. I don't want my happiness to be dependent on material possessions which can be so fickle. But at the same time, why should happiness that's based on socializing with a person/people be any better? A person is perhaps just as fickle/fragile as a material object...maybe even more so.

I guess it doesn't really matter how you attain happiness as long as you're...happy by whatever means you've obtained it (no pun intended). But personally, it seems like it'd be more stressful to try the American Dream route. It's stressful enough to try and land a stable job without worrying about how to constantly acquire more wealth and buy more material things. Or maybe the best way would be a compromise between both things. Material things do make one happy once in a while but I feel like they only make me happy in a very shallow kind of way. But why should people make me any happier? Are we just wired this way? I guess humans inherently want to bond with others...or else society would never happen.

Of course, I guess there's lots of other paths to happiness. I just think its interesting how paths to happiness can change so drastically across cultures/age groups/geographical regions. There could be things like religion that people could claim lead to happiness. In the end, what if happiness is just some neurotransmitter in the brain? What if it's really not as deep as our brains seem to think it is? What would be the point then, in order to work in some way to achieve this so called happiness?