Before analyzing Sollors’ own words, I read the quotation he included by Alexis de Tocqueville—one that seemed to establish a correlation between happiness and a lack of history, heritage, and national character. This reminded me of a text I read last semester, which argued in favor of moving beyond ethnicity and/or race and instead focusing on other concepts that could bring us together as a people. At first, this seemed absurd on a practical level. How could we all abandon the things that shaped us as we grew up? How could we forget the past that brought humanity to where it is today? In addition to absurd, the very idea of moving beyond race or ethnicity seemed somewhat insulting. To move beyond our roots seemed to imply an erasure of that past which, not only molded us, but also established the hierarchies that were currently in place and accounted for most, if not all, the systems of oppression that worked against people characterized as “The Other” by some dominant group. It would effectively erase the history of inequality faced by millions and silently deny and invalidate the feelings left over from their struggles because they would “no longer be an issue.” To begin completely anew while people still had their past in their minds would be impossible. It would be too silencing, too alienating, and too complicated.

Finally, on a very personal level, I just couldn’t imagine the world without ethnicity, race, or such categories for identification and differentiation. It seems too homogeneous, too boring, too…robotic. But what if it WERE somehow possible to achieve a complete and successful erasure of our routines, prejudices, memories, etc.? Would I be willing to give up these “luxuries” in exchange for happiness? After all, isn’t that what most people say they strive to have in their lives, at least to some degree? The situation is somewhat parallel to the picture presented by the saying “ignorance is bliss.” If we were ignorant of our differences, or if they were completely nonexistent to begin with, we would be blissful and happy. However, would this last? Wouldn’t we just find new ways to build coalitions, and in so doing, separate ourselves from others? Imagining that this state of blissful ignorance could be forever maintained, how would society progress? If revolution is a means to achieve progress, if difference and dissent and argumentation are the biggest ways in which we expand our minds and our points of view, how could we keep achieving these things in a society full of happy lemmings? Isn’t a balance required? Is it possible to have a lot of ying and no yang and STILL move forward?

My mind tells me that we need contrasts—that we need the sour to balance the sweet, the sad to balance the happy—but I wonder how much of this way of thinking is informed by the way I’ve been taught to analyze such things in the first place and how I could think about them differently if I had another way to frame them. Regardless of this last train of thought, would we even NEED progress to be happy? How much would progress, scientific discovery, and all these other things matter if we were blissful? Just like a fish living in an aquarium, one that can’t dream of the sea because it doesn’t know it exists, we would be content with our lives because we wouldn’t be dreaming of the possibilities; we wouldn’t know of their existence and thus couldn’t be unhappy about our inability to reach them. I guess what this all boils down to, in simplistic terms, is a choice between happiness and uniqueness…bliss and diversity, and all the things that go along with those two concepts.