Herbert Marcuse on Happiness

I think I'm pretty happy playing through 1994's Phantasy Star IV for Sega's MegaDrive, but if Herbert Marcuse was still around he probably wouldn't concur.

Disposal over material goods is never entirely the work of human industry and wisdom. For it is subject to the role of contingency. The individual who places his highest goal, happiness, in these goods makes himself the slave of men and things. He surrenders his freedom. Wealth and well-being do not come or persist due to his autonomous decision but rather through the changeable fortune of opaque circumstances. Man thus subjects his existence to a purpose situated outside him. Of itself, such an external purpose can vitiate and enslave men only if the material conditions of life are poorly ordered ... if their reproduction is regulated through the anarchy of opposing social interests. In this order the preservation of the common existence is incompatible with individual happiness and freedom. Insofar as philosophy is concerned with man's happiness - and the theory of classical antiquity held it to be the highest good - it cannot find it in the established material organisations of life. That is why it must transcend this order's facticity. (Negations 1972, p.89)

More on Marcuse here.