What about the creativity and promise that created the suffering and despair
Or, what is more common, the suffering and despair that creates promise and art. Face it happy people make junk art, its not Van Gough, its Thomas Kinkade or some other kitch crap. Happy people do no make great change. Dissatisfaction does that.
Reminds me of a cartoon that hangs in my office where the line is "Blues is a kind of music that people made before Prozac."
Sure, "don't worry, be happy" (repeat ad nauseam, - literally - because that's all the lyric there really is,) has a hard time competing with:
Darkness at the break of noon.
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.
As the poet once said, "Genius is pain."
And sure, I work my people like the dogs they are. I ride them hard, put them up wet, and when they call me a 'perfectionist bitch' I look at them and remark "you say that like it's a bad thing." But I do make sure they get paid, and paid well. No slaves here.