Now that you have emigrated to this land of milk and honey are you happy?' 'Actually no.'

  In a coun-try like Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s and 1980s, people were,in a way,actually happy:three fundamental conditions of happiness were fulfilled.

(1) Their material needs were basically satisfied—not too satisfied,since the excess of consumption can in itself generate unhappiness.It is good to experience a brief shortage of some goods on the market from time to time (no cee for a couple of:these brief periods of shortage functioned as exceptions that reminded people that they should be glad that these goods were generally available—if everything is available all the time,people take this availability as an evident fact of life,and no longer appreciate their luck. So life went on in a regular and predictable way,without any great efforts or shocks;one was allowed to withdraw into one’s private niche.

 A second extremely important feature:there was the Other (the Party) to blame for everything that went wrong,so that one did not feel really responsible—if there was a temporary shortage of some goods,even if stormy weather caused great damage,it was “their”fault.(3) And,last but not least,there was an Other Place (the consumerist West) about which one was allowed to dream,and one could even visit it sometimes—this place was at just at the right distance:not too far away, not too close.This fragile balance was disturbed—by when.Desire manifested itself and was the force that compelled the people to move on—and end up in a system in which the great majority are defi-nitely less happy