Happiness Is…?
According to “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” the musical based on the cartoon strip “Peanuts,” the answer to that question is: “Two kinds of ice cream, finding your skate key, telling the time.”
According to Phoebe Kate, it’s having your own personal robot.
“Good Morning, America” today had back-to-back features that seem ironically juxtaposed.
The first concerned a study by the Wharton School of the U of PA that found that women were not as happy as men. The survey cited the obvious causes: too many choices and too many responsibilities. More interesting was why men are happier — because they cut back on activities they find “unpleasant.”
The second segment discussed the amazingly adaptative robots they’re building at MIT. Currently making test-runs in homes in the Boston area, these remarkable machines can help you keep on your weight loss and exercise plan, perform household chores and other tasks after being given simple directions (the same kind you give your spouse/significant other and your kids, only the humans tend to be rather less reliable and agreeable.)
The truly astonishing thing, however, about our robotic assistants is that they have been programmed to make eye-contact with humans and change expressions. They have beautiful, huge, expressive Bambi eyes. They have nice, soft voices and very civilized manners. They look concerned, sympathetic and — well – interested in what you’re saying to them.
I think the women of America need these robots more than they need Botox, a day at the spa, a Girls’ Night Out, a shopping spree at the mall and six years of analysis to figure out why they’re so unhappy living in the best country in the world. These kind-eyed, ever-faithful, friendly mechanized friends will do all those unpleasant tasks we can’t seem to shed as easily as our male counterparts.
They’ll not only do the laundry but put it away, clean in all those hard-to-reach places around the house, scoop the kitty litter box, unload the dishwasher, answer the phone and politely tell our mother-in-law that we can’t chat right now, balance our checkbooks and remember to pay our bills on time, defrag our computers and de-worm our pets and touch up our roots once a month — and make sure a cold, shaken-not-stirred martini is awaiting us when we walk in every evening, as well as a home-cooked, nutritionally balanced meal. And when it asks us if we’ve had a good day and we say no, it will look at us with its large, benign, non-judgmental, non-stressed eyes and inquire, “Do you need a hug?”
–phoebe kate