The meaning of happiness

Happiness and meaning belong together: we want our happiness to count for something, to have a point, to mean and (after we're gone) have meant that our lives are worth living. And we want the meanings of our lives to make us happy.

That's my hypothesis. It's why I'm partial to J.S. Mill's supplemental extension of Jeremy Bentham's greatest happiness principle: the point is not for the greatest number of us merely to wallow happily, contentedly, and filthily in our respective sties, ingloriously thoughtless and complacent in dull porcine mediocrity.The point is to be lifted in our happiness, to become better human beings for it. It's not to sink back in it, in our mudholes and on our couches and (ahem) our hammocks.

And it's why the next rendition of my Philosophy of Happiness course, HAP 101 as I call it (PHIL 3160 in the MTSU course catalogue), is devoted to the question of meaning. Should we settle for the lowest common denominator of our happiness, the path of least resistance, the quantifiably greatest hedonic calculation?

Anti-elitist democratism might argue that we should.  Pluralistic toleration and humane simplicity, not to mention simple opportunity, support Benthamism. Life is short, pleasure can be sporadic: get it while you can. "There is no why," Kurt Vonnegut once said, we're just all here "trapped in the amber of the moment." We should just do our best to enjoy our captivity, and (he often added, to his great credit) be kind.

Yes, but... Kurt also spent a lifetime trying to work out the personal trauma of the insanity of war, the firebombing of Dresden, the repeated failure of human beings to learn from their errors and treat one another kindly. He spent a lifetime searching for, and to a greater extent than he probably realized, creating meaning for his happy readers.

And Kurt also said, meaningfully, “being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.” No reason why decency can't be squared with happiness, is there?

Well, that's some of what our course will be about. I considered adopting Lisa Bortolotti's anthology Philosophy and Happiness (Palgrave '09) as one of our texts, since Part I is all about "Happiness and the Meaningful Life."

But they want $105 for it! One more sign, in the age of digital information, that expensive textbooks are doomed. Fortunately a proof version of Thaddeus Metz's opening essay is here. I don't like his conclusion that happiness and meaning "are distinct not only conceptually but also substantially," but at Internet prices I'll invite our class to discuss it. (Isn't it just like a  certain sort of philosopher, though, to devote great energies to defending a counter-intuitive conclusion whose truth would leave us more confused and less satisfied with our lives than we began?)

Anyway, the best words on this subject are free, in the public domain, and in public libraries. Words like J.S. Mill's...

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.

 Looking forward to considering all sides of this question in class, in (yikes) just a few weeks. "Endless summer," where art thou?

When the volcano blows

Enjoy ourselves while we can sounds so simple, and so it should. Over-thinking everything, happiness included, is the philosopher's biggest occupational hazard. Why not just let everyone discover what makes them smile, and get out of their way so they can do it? So long as we and they are doing no harm, what's the problem?

People find all kinds of ways to complicate the pursuit of happiness, of course. Philosophers tend to get hung up on questions of meaning. We want to be meaningfully happy. Or sad. Or indifferent. We want there to be a point, an enduring purpose and resonance to our acts and our days.

Call it the Alvy Singer problem. I've been calling it that for a long time, in fact. Last night I discovered that Samuel Scheffler has too. He's the latest Philosophy Bites interviewee, and it was surprising to hear him mention Alvy on the podcast right after I'd written of Woody's young alter ego yesterday morning. Scheffler asks: If all sentient life were to end a few minutes after my death, how would that affect the meaning of what I'm doing now?

Young Alvy's problem was less hypothetically urgent. Having become aware of our universe's finitude, he now saw no point in doing anything. Especially homework. It didn't matter to him that billions of years would elapse before the End. The sudden winding down of our ticking clock does seem to alter the scenario in important ways.

But either way, the solution proposed by Dr. Flicker, is to put annihilation and oblivion out of mind and get on with today. That was Bertrand Russell's solution too.

Nobody really worries much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things. 

 They're right, right? Get on with living and doing and making and being. Stop fretting and worrying and philosophizing. Try and  enjoy your life. Sound and satisfactory advice, for most of us most of the time.

But Scheffler makes a point about the long historical context of attending to the day at hand that's not easily shrugged away. We can enjoy ourselves today because today is presumably not doomsday, nor will the final curtain fall tomorrow, or tomorrow. That day will eventually, inevitably come for us all, one by one and, in the long run, collectively.

But meantime, we can try to build happy lives whose meaning may endure and resonate. Or not. But the bare possibility of meaningful happiness counts for a lot. The withdrawal of that possibility would be devastating, for all except those who really do live entirely in the moment. The thought that our personal expiration date will coincide with the extinction of all life on Earth seems to suck the meaning right out of the marrow of existence.

Happy days set against a backdrop of an enduring species and planet make reassuring sense. This is the meaningful happiness of John Dewey's "continuous human community."

Dancing on the rim of the volcano just before it blows, or even millions or billions of years before, seems (to continue speaking Dewey's language) too precarious and unstable. "Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!" How'd that work out for you, Nietzsche? Or you, "Carlos Danger"?

On the other hand... remember how Arthur and Ford prepared for Earth's immanent demise? They headed for the pub, for a couple of last-minute rounds of "muscle relaxant." Made the barkeep happy with a fat tip, too. Sounds like a plan.

Walking home

Buddhists are typically great walkers and walking meditators, walking both to get somewhere, pilgrim-style, and for the sheer sake of journeying along a worthy path. Their big prize, of course, their "goal," is Enlightenment and its sub-genres compassion, empathy, kindness, and shared happiness through mutual relief from suffering. One could do worse than follow or practice Buddhism.

That scroll message from the Dalai Lama, about life's meaning emerging from our contributions to other people's happiness, is not so different from other admirable statements of what meaning means. William James's concise summary is still my favorite:

The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing,— the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man’s or woman ‘s pains.—And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place. “What Makes a Life Significant”

But, back to Buddhist walkers...

In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit quotes a French scholar saying that Buddhist practitioners are walkers insofar as they do not think of themselves as residing permanently in any one locale but are transients of the spirit, unmoored, unsituated, and thus abiding in "emptiness."

Well, I get that. But I'd put it more positively. In my own experience, anywhere I can walk is home. And since I can walk anywhere, home is everywhere. I'm not homeless, my abode is not empty, it's full and getting fuller with every new lap, hike, and orbit.

Walkers are cosmopolitans, as Carl Sagan liked to say, citizens of the cosmos. We're right at home here. We belong.

And did you hear? Next month we're getting our pale portrait updated!