Four Outdated Social Narratives that Still Govern Our Lives
It’s an age-old recipe: Get a degree, land a well-paying job, find a loving partner, start a family. But have you ever stopped to think whether it actually works?
I recently finished an interesting read entitled Happy Ever After. In it, Paul Dolan takes aim at several of the “social narratives” we’ve been conditioned to accept as gospel over the generations.
He digs up plenty of data to show how each of these well-accepted ideas of a good life has little or no effect on our happiness. Whatever little positive effect there may be, he argues, comes mainly from the acceptance we get when conforming to societal norms, even useless ones.
That’s big news. The social narratives covered in the book dictate the lives of billions of people worldwide. All these people spend huge amounts of time, energy, and resources in their efforts to follow the recipe.
This article will take a quick trip through the four most influential narratives from the book: education, income, marriage, and children.
