This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Mowel, your host and president of the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Do we have a duty to be happy? Does

the modern age require us to be happy? Does it, on the other hand, make it impossible to be happy? Does it on the other hand make it impossible to be

happy? Those are the questions addressed by Peter Stearns in his new book

Satisfaction not guaranteed dilemmas of progress in modern society.

Peter Stearns became provost and professor of history at George Mason University in the year 2000.

He was named University Professor in 2011.

Educated at Harvard University, he has previously taught at the University of Chicago,

Rutgers, Carnegie Mellon, and Harvard University. He's widely published in modern social

history, including the history of emotions and also in the larger field of world history.

Professor Stearns in your new book, Satisfaction Not Guaranteed, limits of progress in modern society,

you point to the very strange and perhaps even unexpected development that the modern age didn't

deliver on a mandate for happiness.

I think in many respects that's true.

We do know that modern societies tend to be at least somewhat more happy

than many societies that have not yet modernized but the gap isn't

as great as you'd imagine and there's certainly some areas where modern developments

have brought really unexpected setbacks.

Well, and you go into those in some detail, but I think the very question you're asking is one that many people really probably haven't thought to think.

In other words, to realize that perhaps our modern

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