According to the World Health Organisation, some 121 million people are suffering from depression and the ailment is among the leading causes of disability worldwide. The WHO advocates education about depression and various other ways of increasing awareness and diminishing stigma. Here in Australia we have the admirable Beyond Blue initiative.

I think that we see in the vast proliferation of unhappiness on this planet something akin to a warning. This is a warning in the way that the dead bird in the gas mine warned the miners of a gas leak or the ways in which the extinction of frog species are indicative of serious ecological issues. This enormous tsunami of unhappiness is not merely a result of over-diagnosis and over-prescription in all those countries whose medical systems are dominated by the pharmaceutical-industry leviathans.

We are all connected. There is so much pain and suffering in this world that no matter how much we pretend to be separate, isolated and purely material entities it is inevitable that so many of us should absorb this general ennui and become permeated with a sense of futility and despair.

Happiness doesn’t come from egoistic and materialistic means. Happiness comes from interconnectedness, sharing and creative participation in a living community.