The contrast of the two images in HBB's original post is really compelling. It's somewhat hyperbolic, of course, but we are just not doing a good job of keeping our country beautiful. We let our urban centers decay, and we do stupid shit like blowing the tops off mountains and mining wilderness with toxic chemicals for trace elements.
I am not a religious man, but I agree with the Dalai Lama when he says that happiness is the meaning of life. In one of the few
studies of happiness, Adrian White at the University of Leicester found that the United States doesn't even make the top twenty for happiest countries. Materialism is not the path to happiness, or at least it's not my path.