When I first moved to the USA back in 1991 I was struck by how desperately people were pursuing things that would make them even less happy than they were previously, so that the more they pushed themselves the further behind they got. This likely has something to do with the unfortunate strain of Puritanism that polluted the USA from the arrival of the Pilgrims onward, and was then consolidated during the (miserable) Victorian period. Too bad it's still such a prevalent feature of US culture today.