Can we achieve happiness?

Unfortunately in our world today, there are so many new, better, and constantly improved materials being shown to us that we are never fully satisfied with the versions we own. With government, media, peers and all different kinds of authority figures telling us many different things about how we should live, what we need, and what we should strive for in order to be successful and happy, it is incredibly hard to think about how happiness could ever be a reachable goal. Frued suggests that "our civilization is largely responsible for our misery, and...we [would] be much happier if we gave it up" (Frued: Civilization and it's Discontents, 33), meaning abandoning our part in society and returning to the root of our non materialistic/influenced existence would be a much greater benefit to our being.
Personally, as one who does not fully pay attention to the media, though I get rough accounts and explanations from those around me, I do see that much of what we would consider good, and what would give us "happiness", is full freedom and will. Money plays a huge part as well, as to express our "wants" over our "needs" is to have an excess of wealth, which we may do with as we please. Freud also states, in the documentary video watched in class, "The Century of the Self", that "[humans] must always be controlled, thus discontent". Since we have this predetermined system holding us back from our greatest desires, how is it that we could ever be content with the lives we lead? Freud is right, I believe, in saying that we could indeed be happy, only if we were to disregard the higher power.
The belief that we are set under a state of rule to keep ourselves in order, and also discontent, for the fear of civilization becoming uncivilized and therefore projectively dangerous to ourselves and others around us, is to keep our egos in check. On the other hand, what may be dangerous is, in fact, what we need in order to be happy. Freud goes as far to say, "what is bad is often not at all what is...dangerous to the ego, on the contrary, it may be something which is desirable and enjoyable to the ego". This case is seen in many instances, where what we want is often what we are told we cannot have, for example, a young child is told they are not able to have a cookie, now all they can think of is the want of that cookie, and how they are unable to have it because the higher power says so. Further, if we were given the chance to explore these wants he believe would make us happier, we may even decide that what we thought we wanted is not, in fact, what we really want, only the constant discontent we have with our current situations make us believe that what we do not have will make us happier.
In conclusion, without being given the chance to explore what we believe is best for ourselves, we create a part within ourselves that we deem dissatisfied and unhappy. Because of the higher power, or government, we stand under and regard as our leadership, we dare not disrupt it's precious ruling system for our own fear or chaos, but in doing so, we are never able to step out of line in order to put our egos before anything else. The standards in which our history has set for the current generations does not allow us to grasp full happiness, there is too much we are told we cannot have, and we know that we will never attain, and this will therefore make us ever discontent and unhappy.