Read Online Do You Think You're Clever? by John Farndon - Free Book Online
Authors: John Farndon
Tags: Humour
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we do not think about it when we are. In some ways, when we are happy, we no longer need to strive for it and so cease to be aware of it. The great Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, ‘Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so’.
In an article in the
New Internationalist
in 2006, clinical psychologist John F. Schumaker argued that in this consumer age, we have become obsessed with the search for happiness, citing the avalanche of self-help books, articles, TV programmes, websites, courses and so on that guide us towards the nirvana of personal bliss. We’re all after those feel-good moments, those blissed-out moments of joy because ‘we’re worth it’. And yet somehow, the harder we search, the harder we find it to achieve. As Søren Kierkegaard wrote, ‘Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it’.
When it comes to personal satisfaction, most people say they are ‘happy’ in answer to surveys – and yet seem to acknowledge that there’s something missing. Apparently, we only laugh a third as often as we did 50 years ago, and we make love more infrequently and enjoy it less, despite the sexual revolution which has removed the sense of guilt and unleashed a flood of sexual imagery in the media. And in Western society, where material pleasures, from good food to comfortable homes and exciting foreign travel, are more freely available than ever before, most people seemto be less happy than ever before. There is a depression epidemic and in the Western world a huge proportion of people believe they are psychologically ill-adjusted.
There is a nagging sense that the old saw ‘they were poor but they were happy’ has some truth in it. At the back of our minds is the feeling that happiness is not really about all the material pleasures the consumer society can bring, despite all the effort we put into achieving them. Some feel that we have been led astray by this search for happiness. ‘America’, the author John Updike wrote balefully, ‘is a vast conspiracy to make you happy’, while J.D. Salinger admitted: ‘I’m a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people are plotting to make one happy.’
It might be true indeed that happiness won’t come to those who look for it. Schumaker describes how a few decades ago, the small Himalayan nation of Ladakh was one of the most joyous nations on earth. ‘Their culture generated mutual respect, community-mindedness, an eagerness to share, reverence for nature, thankfulness and love of life. Their value system bred tenderness, empathy, politeness, spiritual awareness and environmental conservation.’ And then in 1980 it all changed as the country was hit by consumer capitalism. Ladakh’s new Development Commissioner announced: ‘If Ladakh is ever going to be developed, we have to figure out how to make these people more greedy.’ They succeeded and the people of Ladakh now experience widespread crime, family breakdown, depression, pollution and deprivation.
Of course, none of this should be a surprise. Over 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosophers debated what it means to be happy and very few came down on the side of hedonism and simple material pleasures. Democritus argued that the supreme goal in life was being cheerful, but a life of pleasure got few other supporters. Epicurus is often misunderstood as the ultimate hedonist – his live-for-pleasure theories badly characterised in the phrase ‘Eat! Drink! For tomorrow we die!’ But what Epicurus argued was not for chasing after each and every immediate thrill, but rationally ordering your life to achieve the maximum pleasure in the long term. A life lived like that, he argued, would be a happy, virtuous life.
Most of the Greek thinkers, however, were what were called Eudaimons. Eudaimon is a word that cannot easily be translated but it means something like ‘well-spirited’. It’s about a sense of well-being, of a life of excellence, of being
In an article in the
New Internationalist
in 2006, clinical psychologist John F. Schumaker argued that in this consumer age, we have become obsessed with the search for happiness, citing the avalanche of self-help books, articles, TV programmes, websites, courses and so on that guide us towards the nirvana of personal bliss. We’re all after those feel-good moments, those blissed-out moments of joy because ‘we’re worth it’. And yet somehow, the harder we search, the harder we find it to achieve. As Søren Kierkegaard wrote, ‘Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it’.
When it comes to personal satisfaction, most people say they are ‘happy’ in answer to surveys – and yet seem to acknowledge that there’s something missing. Apparently, we only laugh a third as often as we did 50 years ago, and we make love more infrequently and enjoy it less, despite the sexual revolution which has removed the sense of guilt and unleashed a flood of sexual imagery in the media. And in Western society, where material pleasures, from good food to comfortable homes and exciting foreign travel, are more freely available than ever before, most people seemto be less happy than ever before. There is a depression epidemic and in the Western world a huge proportion of people believe they are psychologically ill-adjusted.
There is a nagging sense that the old saw ‘they were poor but they were happy’ has some truth in it. At the back of our minds is the feeling that happiness is not really about all the material pleasures the consumer society can bring, despite all the effort we put into achieving them. Some feel that we have been led astray by this search for happiness. ‘America’, the author John Updike wrote balefully, ‘is a vast conspiracy to make you happy’, while J.D. Salinger admitted: ‘I’m a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people are plotting to make one happy.’
It might be true indeed that happiness won’t come to those who look for it. Schumaker describes how a few decades ago, the small Himalayan nation of Ladakh was one of the most joyous nations on earth. ‘Their culture generated mutual respect, community-mindedness, an eagerness to share, reverence for nature, thankfulness and love of life. Their value system bred tenderness, empathy, politeness, spiritual awareness and environmental conservation.’ And then in 1980 it all changed as the country was hit by consumer capitalism. Ladakh’s new Development Commissioner announced: ‘If Ladakh is ever going to be developed, we have to figure out how to make these people more greedy.’ They succeeded and the people of Ladakh now experience widespread crime, family breakdown, depression, pollution and deprivation.
Of course, none of this should be a surprise. Over 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosophers debated what it means to be happy and very few came down on the side of hedonism and simple material pleasures. Democritus argued that the supreme goal in life was being cheerful, but a life of pleasure got few other supporters. Epicurus is often misunderstood as the ultimate hedonist – his live-for-pleasure theories badly characterised in the phrase ‘Eat! Drink! For tomorrow we die!’ But what Epicurus argued was not for chasing after each and every immediate thrill, but rationally ordering your life to achieve the maximum pleasure in the long term. A life lived like that, he argued, would be a happy, virtuous life.
Most of the Greek thinkers, however, were what were called Eudaimons. Eudaimon is a word that cannot easily be translated but it means something like ‘well-spirited’. It’s about a sense of well-being, of a life of excellence, of being
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