This content was created by Jared Goetz. This content was uploaded by Jared Goetz. This is a YouTube video titled "Americans Don't Know How To Celebrate Joy" (created April 30, 2025; last edited May 16, 2026). The excerpt is a short dialog between two speakers (labeled SPEAKER A and SPEAKER B) in which they reflect on American culture's difficulty celebrating joy, a contemporary focus on critiques of colonialism and racism (mentions of Jefferson and the Global South), and a reference to Alexis de Tocqueville about how democratic life and busyness reduce time for politics and spirituality. The tone is reflective and critical.
Chapters
I think one of the things that the success in America is one of the richest lands on earth in the recorded history. There are at least two things that I want to mention here. One thing is that Americans, particularly in the academy, they don't know how to celebrate joy. They don't know how to be happy. Yeah. The most interesting thing are evil. It's only talk about colonialism, talk about how the white man did this, this. They destroyed the world. They are destroying the Global South. It's about Jefferson. He fathered a child with a slave. It's about racism.
Yeah, why is that?
I'm not saying that they don't exist. People have just forgotten how to have joy, how to be happy.
It's like they're looking for some kind of thing to not be happy.
You don't do that anymore.
Yeah.
And I mean, I assume there was a time that was very exciting here. I mean, this is just my observation. When you get up in the morning, how life is so busy. Guy Tocqueville, who came from France to study prison and end up writing, working on writing some of the wonderful, most wonderful couples in philosophy and political science. One of the things he observed is that in democratic time, life is so busy. People are planning vacations, you're worrying about your debt, yeah, worrying about this, worrying about that, so that there's less time even left for politics, much less spirituality.
