The Happiness animated video by Steve Cutts is combined with Shaggy's Mad, Mad world music video. They All Marveled podcast reviews the Happiness music video in light of Christian principles and the search for the missing piece.

The great pursuit of mankind since the beginning is finding happiness. Adam and Eve believed it would come from the forbidden fruit, but it ultimately comes from the void inside of natural man:

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
– Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” St. Augustine

In this episode of They All Marveled Podcast, Darlene, Ela, and Selen Böcek discuss the music video Happiness and its reflection of pop culture and man’s pursuit of things.

Resources:

Original Happiness video by Steve Cutts, long version animation

Compilation of Happiness with Shaggy Mad, Mad World

Bible Hub: use this resource site to discover the original Greek and Hebrew for the words in the Bible.

PrayerMate App: this is a fantastic app to keep yourself organized and faithful in prayer, and it also has free downloadable devotionals.

Comments from Youtube:

You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after happiness and peace. Don’t you see that it is your very search for happiness that makes you feel miserable?  (NIsargadatta Maharaj)

This is the meaning I took from this. This rat is one of many sad rats discontent with life rushing through it and placing their happiness on physical products. Even when they get these physical products they aren’t happy and fight among themselves. And because they place their happiness on material items their happiness and emotions are fragile. So something as simple as someone vandalizing this rats car is enough to wipe his happiness and he goes in search of what can fix him and give him happiness back. He is marketed drugs and becomes happy but then suffers the after affects. He’s yet again back in his sorry life. It’s not long until he gets the idea he needs money. He chases and chases until he finds himself caught in a mouse trap. There he will stay, unhappy and working for the thing he thinks will make him happy. How ironic —Loc

Feels to me like the real issue is with the system, rather than the product of it’s avaricious teachings. All the rats run, but who made it a race? —Abbi

“The perfect dictatorship would be a dictatorship that would have the appearances of democracy, a prison without walls from which prisoners would not even dream of escaping. A system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, slaves would have the  love of their bondage. ” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

How is it possible that we all watch this, we all agree, we all shake our heads yet we’ll all get up tomorrow morning and do it all over again? SlapShotRegatta

“Humans spend so much of their lives just waiting for things to be over.” – Janet from the good place

Huh, thanks god that this are just rats.. imagine humans were like this. JustTheJust