The brain regarding itself is an uncanny experience, isn't it? Persons aren't just brains, of course, but the seat of conscious thought seems like a good place to search for leverage when addressing the happiness of a whole person. That's a bootstrap operation if ever there was one. Pull yourself up by your neurotransmitters, one might implore. But we mustn't forget, "neurotransmitters are hampered by an unbalanced diet, emotional upset and a lack of sleep." Brains don't exist in a vacuum.
Dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin have much to do with happiness, as indicated by brain imaging research. They impact our appetite for life, motivation, decision-making, intro/extroversion, impulsiveness, violence, trust, empathy, generosity, creativity, intuition, sociability, adventurousness, memory, capacity for enjoyment, optimism, contentment, serenity, sleep... Is there anything they don't have to do with? Do they explain too much, leaving too little to what we like to think of as our spontaneous characters and personalities? Do those explain anything at all, after all? Should we feel threatened by all this talk of chemically-induced happiness or misery? Should we feel diminished, or empowered?
"Our happiness is nourished by the quality of attention we bring to bear on what we are doing," said the old Stoics and Epicureans.
"Our happiness is nourished by the quality of attention we bring to bear on what we are doing," said the old Stoics and Epicureans.
When we do attend to our experience with selective intelligence, we open ourselves to the delighted "dilution" of awareness known as reverie. That's why Montaigne rode his horse, and got back in the saddle after a near-fatal dismount. It's why I walk the dogs, or why the dogs and I walk each other: I defy anyone to interpret my dachsund/beagle's evidently-delighted expression, when in full exuberant stride, as anything short of reverie. I try to learn from him, daily, how to live in the present.
We've noted, recall, that there's a problem about that, and an Aristotelian solution.
These days, many of us would rather not be living in the present, a time of persistent crisis, political uncertainty and fear. Not that the future looks better, shadowed by technological advances that threaten widespread unemployment and by the perils of catastrophic climate change. No wonder some are tempted by the comforts of a nostalgically imagined past.The present moment, specious though it is, lends itself to attention and reverie for those who learn to notice and form appropriately attentive habits. See Duhigg, The Power of Habit (“This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be”) and Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life (“Einstein didn't invent the theory of relativity while he was multitasking at the Swiss patent office.")
Inspiring as it seems on first inspection, the self-help slogan “live in the present” slips rapidly out of focus. What would living in the present mean? To live each day as if it were your last, without a thought for the future, is simply bad advice, a recipe for recklessness. The idea that one can make oneself invulnerable to what happens by detaching from everything but the present is an irresponsible delusion.
Despite this, there is an interpretation of living in the present, inspired by Aristotle, that can help us to confront the present crisis and the perpetual crises of struggle and failure in life. There is an insight in the self-help slogan that philosophy can redeem... (continues)
But presence passes, and so our happiness also depends crucially on memory and the ability to "dig up happy times." That's what the author of À la recherche du temps perdu was about, with his cookies etc. (And there's my entry in the "All England Summarize Proust" competition.)
Lenoir recuses Schopenhauer from membership in the Woody Allen school of pessimism ("life is 'a grim, painful, nightmarish experience ... the only way that you an be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself") and actually implies that he might better belong with Martin Seligman and the Positive Psychologists who "insist on the need to develop our positive thoughts while eliminating our old negative beliefs," if we want authentic happiness... but also say we should "avoid having too many hopes and fears." Sounds a lot like Stoicism.
Lenoir doesn't quote Woody's paradoxical caveat: life is painful, nightmarish, etc. etc., and "it's all over much too soon." Go figure.
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Confucius wrote: “There are three things which the wise man holds in reverence: the Will of Heaven, those in authority, and the words of the sages. The fool knows not the Will of Heaven and holds it not in reverence: he is disrespectful to those in authority; he ridicules the words of the sages.”
And: “He who does not understand the Will of God can never be a man of the higher type. He who does not understand the inner law of self-control can never stand firm. He who does not understand the force of words can never know his fellow-men.” WA
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The Playboy Philosopher has died.
...In “The Playboy Philosophy,” a mix of libertarian and libertine arguments that Mr. Hefner wrote in 25 installments starting in 1962, his message was simple: Society was to blame. His causes — abortion rights, decriminalization of marijuana and, most important, the repeal of 19th-century sex laws — were daring at the time. Ten years later, they would be unexceptional... “Hefner won,” Todd Gitlin said in a 2015 interview. “The prevailing values in the country now, for all the conservative backlash, are essentially libertarian, and that basically was what the Playboy Philosophy was. It’s laissez-faire. It’s anti-censorship. It’s consumerist: Let the buyer rule. It’s hedonistic. In the longer run, Hugh Hefner’s significance is as a salesman of the libertarian ideal.”
The Playboy Philosophy advocated freedom of speech in all its aspects, for which Mr. Hefner won civil liberties awards. He supported progressive social causes and lost some sponsors by inviting black guests to his televised parties at a time when much of the nation still had Jim Crow laws... Mr. Hefner said later that he was perplexed by feminists’ apparent rejection of the message he had set forth in the Playboy Philosophy. “We are in the process of acquiring a new moral maturity and honesty,” he wrote in one installment, “in which man’s body, mind and soul are in harmony rather than in conflict.” Of Americans’ fright of anything “unsuitable for children,” he said, “Instead of raising children in an adult world, with adult tastes, interests and opinions prevailing, we prefer to live much of our lives in a make-believe children’s world...” nyt
...Women in the magazine were intended more as the girl next door than as sex objects. Still, the fact that they were often topless (full nudity didn’t appear until 1972) brought criticism that Mr. Hefner objectified women and promoted an unrealistic standard of female beauty, that women should be subservient playmates for the modern man. To Mr. Hefner, women were simply a part of the interests of most heterosexual men. The magazine featured discussions of equal rights, contraception and reproductive choice for women. Mr. Hefner never saw that as a contradiction... ("How Hefner Invented the Modern Man")
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Today we celebrate the birthday of the teacher, philosopher, and political theorist popularly known as Confucius, born near what is now Qufu, in Shandong Province, China, in 551 BCE... His birthday is an official holiday in Taiwan, where it is celebrated as Teachers’ Day. His writings were first translated into English by James Legge in 1867, and a more readable translation was published by Oxford University in 1907.Confucius wrote: “There are three things which the wise man holds in reverence: the Will of Heaven, those in authority, and the words of the sages. The fool knows not the Will of Heaven and holds it not in reverence: he is disrespectful to those in authority; he ridicules the words of the sages.”
And: “He who does not understand the Will of God can never be a man of the higher type. He who does not understand the inner law of self-control can never stand firm. He who does not understand the force of words can never know his fellow-men.” WA
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