Happiness

“Although a rational pursuit of personal happiness, if it were common, would suffice to regenerate the world, it is not probable that so reasonable a motive will alone prove sufficiently powerful.” [Bertrand Russell]

Yes, I finally picked up a copy of Mark Kingwell’s somewhat meandering bestseller the other day. No, I won’t attempt to relate it back to business or marketing or the predominant subject matter of what this blog’s been so far about. Quite simply, some of the questions he asks struck a philosophical cord in me. Hence, I post them here to share:

What is happiness? Kingwell offers a lot of philosophers' answers to this question. So I ask myself is happiness for a lot of people achieved thru the negation of suffering? How many of us are in denial about what truly makes us happy?

"Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, the very purpose of our life is happiness, the very motion of our life is towards happiness." [H.H. the Dalai Lama, from the Art of Happiness, recommended reading with insights straight from a wise one who practices what he preaches on the subject.]

Does happiness drive our behavior? If we're happy, or think we are, does that make us complacent, as in passive? How unhappy do we really need to be before we get out from behind our Macs and PCs and do something about it? Does some pain barrier need to be reached before we act in pursuit of our happiness?

Does more information actually inhibit our ability and willingness to act? Hmmm… if the answer here is yes, then there’s your case for apathy.

Which is the easiest route to happiness: lowering your expectations, putting your dissatisfaction in rational perspective, or focusing on the positive? Kingwell is not so sure we can talk our way logically out of unhappiness. Bertrand Russell believes since it is pointless to dwell on bad feelings and if you cannot do much to change the situation, you may as well tell yourself to stop feeling unhappy. So I ask, to achieve happiness at work, are people no better off if they rationalized their dissatisfaction than if they focused on the positive? How long does the state of happiness last by simply focusing on the positive and not addressing the gap in one’s expectations that represent needs that are possibly not being fulfilled?

Would you trade permanent happiness for your ability to think? Kingwell says he wouldn't and writes that he's in the majority. I muse that it’s exactly my ability to think that promotes perceptions of unhappiness. It is a question of belief and human nature.

Are children, as a whole, happier than adults in the same culture and economic situation? If this is true, then what’s up with us adults? Is it that we’re simply not privy to the joy of innocence anymore? Have we inadvertently managed to reach some threshold as a race where the pursuit of knowledge made us decrepit in so many other ways we’ve lost sight of?

Is the role of modern Western man to write and direct his own story? Joseph Campbell asserts that whilst most stories have perhaps already been told, the retelling of each is a necessary constant and part of our human nature. Kingwell suggests happiness is nothing more than writing and starring in your own, satisfying story. This could explain why most people are conservative in terms of making sudden changes in their lives. Because, apart from the natural order of open systems to dissipate entropy to its surrounding environment, perhaps people just naturally abhor discontinuity in narratives. All the confusion and all the unhappiness may simply be the product of inexperienced script writers!