Our society today consists of many impersonal and desensitized people. These people often are unhappy with themselves and their world around them. When they do find happiness, it is only momentary and not sufficient to completely satisfy the person's unending quest for personal joy. The anxieties and fears that dwell in peoples subconscious overshadow the small amounts of happiness that we do receive from the perilous world we live in. Human natures collective fears prohibit sustained contentment, because of the anxieties that produce ideals which ensures satisfaction is only temporary and keep true happiness out of reach.
Being truly happy is something people quest for all their lives, although, no matter how hard they may try, they never find it. Our society seeks happiness in places where it could not possibly exist. Many people result to buying material goods in order to satisfy their search, while others may go watch horror movies. Some may argue that this is a demonstration of submergence and containment. This may be true, however, at the same time these people are seeking happiness through satisfaction of their fears and anxieties. Even though people seek true happiness, it cannot truthfully exist in our society. The amount of evil in this world keeps true happiness from being an attainable emotion. Our fears and anxieties prey on our daily lives and keep us contained in a gloomy society. The way of briefly dissipating the fears we have that overshadow our lives is through impermanent pleasure. In Shepard's essay, Mall Culture, he suggests there is no such thing as happiness. In a culture of unlimited wants, there is no final fulfillment to our unlimited hunger for material possessions. Because of this, there is no one person in our society that is ever truly happy. Along with the public's need for material possessions, people also search for an unattainable image set forth by the media.