You are my sunshine: why living with others makes us happy and living in others doesn't

Richard Rorty's philosophy and current advertising philosophy, illustrate the ramifications of a reevaluation of community on two distinct levels. Rorty shows us how deep the reverberations of a true reevaluation of humans in relation to other humans can go, down to our very metaphysics and orientation towards reality itself. New advertising philosophy shows us a practical correction that is happening right now in the very realm we identified as infringing. The point of introducing these two has already been stated but should be reiterated: progress will come from forward thinking and new ideas, not nostalgia for past social structures or a rejection of the present. The most useful solutions and ideas will come from accepting and interacting in the present. To use the words of Richard Rorty, our progress will be marked by the human possibility to "do more interesting things and be more interesting people." The why to this is answered in MacLeod's cartoon, because society, material goods, and the media (the public sphere) are all only interesting as far as people are interesting (the private sphere). So too, along Aristotelian lines, a society is happy only so far as its people are happy and this happiness, as shown by Putnam, resides in community. Under this new understanding, instead of changing our voting patterns in relation to consumer choices we should simply engage in a meaningful (or even unmeaningful!) conversation with friends, family, or community about the candidates. These conversations can kill two proverbial birds with one stone, not only will voting patterns not be determined by lifestyle consumer stereotypes, but people will be happier and more involved with each other rather than material goods. Life in others is reconciled not by its elimination but by putting it in its proper place on the hierarchy of individual concerns, namely below one's interactions with other people.