Most of us would probably say our lives were going badly if we found ourselves in Moreese "Pop" Bickham's situation (as recounted on Story Corps) - thirty-seven years (fourteen on death row) in Louisiana's Angola Prison, for returning fire against the Klan Cops who tried to kill him. He said, on release, "I don't have one minute's regret. It was a glorious experience." He was "glad and happy and praising the Lord." I'm pretty sure I'd have responded differently. Good for him?
Wonder how he'd rate his life on a scale of 1 to 10, and whether it matters or is simply arbitrary. If you think you're a 10, shouldn't you be happier (more content, more satisfied, more something) in some subjective sense than if you think you're a 4? Surely.
The numbers may not add up, certainly may not nail happiness down with anything like the precision they imply, but the Eulogy Standard seems helpful here. What will they say aboutyour life, at your funeral? Wouldn't you like to be there to find out? By this standard it seems plausible to think "most people actually have good lives" whether they know it or not.
So one of the takeaways today seems to be that very rough and approximate ballpark estimations of happiness are good enough, in terms of their practical utility. People understate their happiness on rainy days (except for the perverse people who say they always prefer inclement weather because it makes the indoors that much more appealing). Unemployed people tend to be less happy. Etc. These generally reliable generalizations remind us not to waste the good days, and not to be unemployed. Valuable reminders, those.
If you have a slight preponderance of positive over negative emotional states, are you (slightly) happy? Haybron doesn't think so. Your happiness should not be a close call, he suggests. But I don't know, maybe we ought to just take what we can get and be grateful for it. Wasn't that Pop Bickham's message? Start slight if you must, and work from there, if the glass is only 5/8 full.
By the way, which face on the scale (p.47) is yours today?
Can you believe this guy's parting words were that he'd had a wonderful life? He did have, but rarely let his face know it. Or his sister's house.
I disagree with Camus's emphasis, I'd say the more pressing question for most of us is whether we're having wonderful lives, not whether we're thinking about ending them. But of course, George Bailey faced both.
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On this day in 1927, a 21-year-old inventor named Philo T. Farnsworth achieved the first fully electronic television system. He successfully transmitted an image through the purely electronic means of a device he called an “image dissector” (the first television camera tube). He’d been dreaming of this day since he was a 13-year-old farm boy, when he became inspired by the series of lines emanating from the back-and-forth motion used to plow a field. Farnsworth was a diligent young inventor: he converted his family’s home appliances to electric power and won a national contest with his invention of a tamper-proof lock...
Today is the birthday of American jazz musician Sonny Rollins in New York City (1930). Rollins plays the tenor saxophone and is considered one of the finest jazz musicians in history. He favors long, experimental improvisation when he plays, especially during live concerts. He once said: “I’m not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I’m just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that’s when it’s really happening.”
...Rollins credits his study of Kabbalah, Buddhism, Indian philosophy, and yoga for his music... I’ve got a gift, a musical gift, fine. But I want to be a human being, a good human being. I need to always express that to young students. Everybody can have a gift. That’s a gift. But then we have to be good human beings. So that’s what it’s all about.”
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