"Are you happy?" is too unequivocal, too binary a question for Frederic Lenoir. Our happiness is a sliding continuum, "and our impression of happiness fluctuates with time." A lot of us slide back, in the wake of an atrocity like Las Vegas. Most of us will slide forward again, eventually (and the meliorists among us, like Nick Kristof, will immediately look beyond the prayers and the mourning and the attributions of "pure evil" to what we can do (like stand up to the NRA, Rosanne?)... and of course, the BSers will exploit the situation with their insidious fakery.
Tom Petty has died. In 2006 he told Terry Gross about the elation he felt after losing his home and everything in it (except his family) to an arsonist and would-be murderer. He learned the lesson we all have to keep learning again and again: just being alive can be enough.. until it isn't. He wrote "I Won't Back Down" as a celebratory anthem of resolute happiness and endurance, inspired a lot of people to buck up and carry on, suffered a serious depression years later. And again, he got better. Not backing down, for most of us, is more about getting back up. Resilience.
Insights like J.S. Mill's, on the durable sources of joy amidst life's travails, grease the skids that get us back on our happy tracks. He was raised by his overbearing Pop to think, but (with an assist from the poet Wordsworth) taught himself to find joy in feeling.
Tom Petty has died. In 2006 he told Terry Gross about the elation he felt after losing his home and everything in it (except his family) to an arsonist and would-be murderer. He learned the lesson we all have to keep learning again and again: just being alive can be enough.. until it isn't. He wrote "I Won't Back Down" as a celebratory anthem of resolute happiness and endurance, inspired a lot of people to buck up and carry on, suffered a serious depression years later. And again, he got better. Not backing down, for most of us, is more about getting back up. Resilience.
Insights like J.S. Mill's, on the durable sources of joy amidst life's travails, grease the skids that get us back on our happy tracks. He was raised by his overbearing Pop to think, but (with an assist from the poet Wordsworth) taught himself to find joy in feeling.
What made Wordsworth’s poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed… I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this…
Adam Etinson concludes, in The Stone, that "we all have the ability to find some durable joy in quietude, normalcy and contemplation... [to] escape Schopenhauer’s pendulum: to simply enjoy where we are, at times; to find some peace in the cessation of motion."
It's become a commonplace to say that most people revert, after confronting serious illness, career disappointment, traumatic violence, or (alternately) a positive event, to their happiness "fixed point." We may not want to hear that, but in times like these it's probably good news. Lenoir says he's found it possible to "break through to new levels," and the bare possibility may be enough to keep most of us in active pursuit. Even if we generally revert to form, it's nice to ponder the perpetual possibility of a breakthrough.
The "age effect" will dispirit most students, if they think they have to wait for their sixth decade to begin experiencing a "notable rise"... followed by a new phase of decline after seventy. Guess I should be having the time of my life right now, in the "mellowness of maturity." I'd like to counter that you're only as old as you feel, but from an aches-and-pains perspective that's not always so reassuring. I prefer to collect inspiring examples of octogenerians, nonagenerians, and centenarians who've flourished in the autumn and early winter of life, people like Stewart Udall, Will Durant, Jimmy Carter... but not Hef.
Friendship (philia), Aristotle was surely right to say, is for most a crucial condition of happiness. "Visceral egoists" are not great friends, if you need a reason to reject that attitude. Altruists, on the other hand, are terrific. Not sure I agree with Lenoir and Ricard that "human nature is fundamentally good," but I've known many natures who were. Unfortunately, the human nature scale is also a continuum that runs the gamut and includes the likes of the Las Vegas shooter.
"Every happy friend increases our probability of being happy by 9 percent" but misery also loves company. I still wonder about the impact of happy pessimists, if we've agreed that there are such critters.
The "shared rapture" of rooting for a winning team can indeed be upliftng, but unlike the biblical rapture it doesn't last. Wait 'til next year. Next week. Tomorrow.
Are we really "almost all 'more or less happy'" most of the time? We're up and down the scale, for sure, and that would seem to mitigate the suggestion that we might realistically aim to be"happy every moment" - unless we've followed Aristotle's program and decoupled eudaimonia from every moment. The visceral egoists deserve to fail every program, if life were fair.
Finally: if shaudenfreude can be explained in evolutionary terms, cooperation and mutual support can too. We can learn to take pleasure in others' happiness. Nurture, as we were saying yesterday, can improve our nature.
And as William James said, even after a desolating event "the music can commence again and again..." That's your cue, Kyle. I hope your happiness soundtrack will cheer us all up. Does it include any Tom Petty (R.I.P.)? Traveling Wilburys, maybe? Don't back down, be happy.
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Today is the birthday of Harvey Kurtzman (1924) (books by this author), cartoonist and creator of MAD Magazine... Critics see the magazine as a forerunner for much of American satire that came after it, including The Simpsons, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. Art Spiegelman, the writer of the graphic novel Maus, said, “The message MAD had in general is, ‘The media is lying to you, and we are part of the media.’ It was basically … ‘Think for yourselves, kids.’” WA
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