Ashley, Jennifer, and Shira, here's my suggestion.
If you're all reading Russell's Conquest of Happiness, plan on posting your thoughts on that (and on one another's posts) over the next two or three weeks; then select one last text to read and discuss.
For your final project, I suggest the three of you create a conversational dialogue on our blogsite by first posing two or three discussion questions pertaining to each of the texts (Haybron, Russell, ____) and then responding to them (and again, to each other) in an extended comments' thread. Do that over the course of a few days, beginning the last week in April and concluding no later than May 5.
What do you think? Do you have ideas for a third text?*
Overall all I've found the study of Haybron's book on happiness very interesting during this season in my life. I personally started to struggle with anxiety a few years ago and the last couple of years of balancing marriage, starting a business, maintaining my 9-5 and grad school have been interesting to say the least. While I definitely have many happy moments this season of my life has been filled with many ups and downs so studying the concept of what is happiness really appealed to me.
While I personally don't believe that life is just about being happy. I believe our lives are all constantly in a state of fluctuations when it comes to our level of happiness. The primary thing I've tried to keep in my life has been peace. Now more than ever I've found it's been important to remove things and people out of my life that disturb my peace and that is honestly is more important to me than my state of happiness. So although being happy feels great, learning to have peace in my life regardless of my circumstances is ultimately what I strive for daily.
With that said, some of the remaining chapters from Haybron's happiness that I really enjoyed were the sources of happiness in chapter 5, meaning: connecting with what matters in chapter 7. In chapter 5 Haybron stated that the sources of happiness are SOARS- security, outlook, autonomy, relationships and skilled meaningful activity. Haybron stated that the idea of security is pretty the plainest necessity of overall happiness but can be a bit more complicated than face value.
I very much agree with this. While I do believe security is essential to daily life and happiness, I also think that some of the material security, as well as modern luxuries we all strive for may be taking away from our happiness. We live in a society of more, more, more, like more money and things are going to make us happy. But sometimes I think the striving to do and accomplish more sometimes is taking away from the happiness we're actually seeking.
In chapter 7 I found the section on meaning and connecting with what matters particularly interesting because of Haybron's discussion on not just being good but connecting with worthwhile people and pursuits. He mentioned that in recent years studies have shown that people with kids are not necessarily happier. That having children may actually take away from happiness and that people with children were very upset with these studies. While he did say many researchers said that these studies were wrong I found this very interesting as a married women with no children who has no plans to have children. Too often I've been made to feel bad about my decision by friends or family and I often question why because I am happy with my decision. So like Haybron, I do believe there may be a bit of truth to these studies.
Finland once again ranked the happiest according to people's self-reported assessment of their lives on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being the worst possible life they could have expected to have, and 10 being the best.
Finland's neighbors, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway, all ranked in the top 10.
The United States saw its ranking edge up slightly from last year, from 19th to 16th...
"Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations," wrote Jukka Savolainen. "People are socialized to believe that what they have is as good as it gets — or close enough."
https://t.co/Lm1diJZNVF
(https://twitter.com/Davoh/status/1505201059156869124?s=02)
While going through a season of what many may consider extremely unhappy events, “unfortunate” as I recently heard it described; reading about happiness in a philosophical sense has been both amusing and eye opening.
In the last several weeks, my family has dealt with illness that's maneuvered its way through each of us, a car accident, and the recent information that we are having to find a different location to live. As a mom of 2, balancing work, pursuing my Masters, and all the things we know life brings, saying these situations are “unhappy” incidents would be putting it lightly.
I think when we consider the question, ‘what is happiness?’, we also need to consider ‘how do we deal with/manage/handle unhappiness’. I am an introvert at heart. Typically when life presents itself with an overwhelming amount of difficult circumstances that are out of my control, in true introverted fashion, I pull inward. This was not always the case, however, over the years what I have found for myself, to remain in a state of positivity, perhaps not happy in the moment, but positivity, I must draw inward to protect my mind, peace, and family. What this does is allow me to not overextend myself when I am already being extended, and gives me the opportunity of control. I am unable to show up in a meaningful way if I have absolutely nothing to extend out to others. So it is important to my sense of happiness, when challenges such as this season I am in arise, that I remain true to myself rather than strive to appear happy for the sake of societal norms.
I feel the way in which we have conditioned what happiness is, limits us from truly experiencing it. I know that once these circumstances come to pass, I will be happy with myself for sitting in the discomfort and pushing through, rather than ignoring the discomfort. ‘Happiness isn't the absence of problems. It's the ability to deal with them. Feeling sad after hardships or a challenging decision doesn't mean it was the wrong decision or that circumstance was in itself wrong.’
Chapter 7 and chapter 8 of Haybron’s book may be my favorite. Chapter 7, Getting outside of oneself: virtue and meaning, talks about virtuous characteristics and prioritizing virtue. I don’t feel we do this enough. Rather, we don’t consciously teach this and act on that teaching. There is ‘acting bad’, as the chapter puts it, for the sake of acting bad; then, there is dispensing negativity and hate for the sake of creating misery in others, due to one’s own misery. I think this happens far too often. We strive for the pursuit of happiness, on the conditions of someone else's happiness, while distributing increments of misery and unhappiness until those conditions are met. It would have been easier, perhaps, for me to release the unsettling feelings of discomfort and frustration I have been feeling onto those around me simply to minimize whatever sense of happiness they may have been feeling because my current circumstances do not line up with this idea of happiness that I’ve been instructed to pursue. I disagree. Rather, I refuse. I have found over the years, the happiness in my life is to live in a virtuous manner. To extend kindness and compassion even if I may not be receiving it. I do believe that everyone has ‘a right to be happy’, (happy) which is debatably subjective. Therefore, my happiness or unhappiness does not dictate how I conduct myself to others.
I believe that happiness is deeper than what we acquire or have. It is something that we carry already within ourselves. Children are born having no sense of the world around them. Already carrying a whole host of emotions within them. Joy and happiness being of them. They have yet to be instructed and conformed to the ideas of what happiness is or what you need to gain in order to achieve it. It’s simply….there. Freely to give away. I think that remains in us as we age. We simply harbor it rather than freely express it and give to others. I read a quote that said, “we are often unhappy and stressed not because we are doing too much or have too much, but because we are not practicing what innate brings us joy and fulfillment on a deeper level.” I think that joy and fulfillment begins with a connection with others. Having the ability to genuinely connect with others, not the ability to practice using others and objects for our own sake. Early in the book Haybron emphasizes,“happiness is not simply pursued at the individual level. How happy we are depends very strongly on the people around us and the kind of society we inhabit” (p. 13). I don’t believe he is talking about the use of people around us, which I feel we do now. I believe he is considering people and society in terms of community, conversation, village, and support that creates the happiness he is suggesting.
Lastly, Haybron touches on the emotional state theory of well being. This theory is broader than simply feeling happiness. Attunement is a mental state characterized by the kind of emotional evaluation of one’s life of being at peace with one’s self. Coming full circle here, these past few months, I had to become at peace with myself, where I am at, and what is happening around me, so that I could collect my thoughts and emotions and realize that despite all that is happening, I am (surprisingly) happy. I believe happiness is a state of mind rather than a state of having. A state of self reflection. A state of understanding. A state of altruism.
You can watch my happiness course @BishopBarron’s @WordOnFire Institute here! https://t.co/NryQqc9uZA
— Arthur Brooks (@arthurbrooks) March 9, 2022
Ashley, Jennifer, and Shira, please go ahead and post any final thoughts you may have about Haybron. Then indicate whether you'd like to all read Bertrand Russell next... or something else.
Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
____, "In Prasie of Idleness"
FYI, last semester the Happiness class read these texts which you may want to consider:
In one of the accounting positions that I held we were given a book; it was a philosophy book- it had to do with one's career and the category of the type of person that they are in nature. It listed lots of different descriptions of one's behaviors that were categorized, and you were supposed to narrow them down to five main things that resemble you closest, and then from there narrow it down to the two that resemble you best. My top two categories were developer and achiever.
That being said, I can relate to Aristotle's view that he mentions in chapter 5, that the most pleasant life is a life of virtuous or excellent activity. I am somebody who tries to get as much meaningful things done during a day as possible. The more meaningful things that I can achieve in a day, the better I feel about my day. And I guess it's good that I don't really watch TV, seeing as though there wasn't very much fulfillment, as he described, found from doing so. Lol.
I also relate very much to his discussion on autonomy- a sense of control over ones life he says "is an important source of happiness." I would have to agree with that full-heartedly! It's very important to me, that whatever decisions I make with my life, are mine alone to make. That who I choose to have in it, is my decision to make as well.
Which brings me to another one of his points- that relationships are very beneficial to one's happiness- a significant other, children, friends, family, neighbors, the community- are all vital to one's happiness. I do believe this to be true, but also as I said above, that autonomy in choosing who you want to be in your life (as well as how you spend your life,) I believe is equally as important.
He says that there are "four kinds of outlooks that seem to be especially productive of happiness": positivity, acceptance, caring for others, and intrinsic motivation.
By intrinsic motivation he is not referring to money, but to the things that drive us to work harder/ do well (for example, for me, my son has always been my intrinsic motivation.) The first two years I was enrolled at MTSU, I barely got anywhere towards completing my degree. When my son was born, I gained the motivation and inspiration, that I had previously been lacking. I decided that I needed to finish my bachelor's degree in accounting, so that one day I could be able to tell him that he could achieve the same. I ended up fitting 4 years of college into 2 years, and making almost all A's and B's, while also taking care of him. I discovered a willpower that I never knew I had. Since we are avid superhero fans, in our home, we would refer to this as "the superpower I never knew I had!" Lol!
And of course it's undeniable that caring for others creates happiness. That has been researched for some time (not just in philosophy.) It feels good to do things for other people. Giving to others is a virtuous act. And even caring for others, I believe, such as in taking care of our children, etc. also serves as fuel to our happiness.
Haybron says that the sources of happiness are security, outlook, autonomy, relationships, and skilled and meaningful activity. I feel like on the discussion of Outlook though he kind of contradicts himself- on one hand he says that assuming that someone "can perfectly well be happy if only he's so chooses is foolish and cruel;" however, goes on to say that Outlook does play a large role in determining how happy we are. I feel like he is saying that happiness is a choice we make by our outlook, but on the other hand he is saying that it's cruel to just presume that a person could be happy should they choose to be.
However I very much like how in his discussion of relationships he tells the story of his father who is raised by his grandmother. And that his main recollection of her parenting style was that she simply paid attention to him. That whenever he has something to say to her she would drop what she was doing; or lower her glass, and give to him her full attention which made him feel a sense of self-worth. This made me personally feel very good to read as I have always done the same with my son; I have always even from a young age, tried to make him feel that his thoughts were important.
"Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever."
https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/#:~:text=Above%20all%2C%20there,foolish%20for%C2%A0ever.
The Atlantic's In Pursuit of Happiness event kicks off this spring to help people build more intentional and happy lives. Drawing on our celebrated coverage of the practices and principles of happiness from the renowned social scientist Arthur C. Brooks, we'll convene experts from a range of disciplines—neuroscientists and philosophers, artists and business leaders—to explore methods of and approaches to building a more meaningful life. Along the way, you'll participate in self-reflection and connect with others looking to enrich their own life and the lives of those around them...
I found chapter four to be interesting because I also think the idea of measuring happiness is questionable. During chapter four Haybron discussed the problems with measuring happiness and examples of how it's been measured as well as the aspects that were measured.
One thing that really stood out to me in this chapter was how Haybron said that most of these measures leave a lot to be desired, since most people have different thought processes on what it means to be happy. He also believed that most people may be exaggerating their level of happiness. Which I definitely think is a possible factor, considering today that one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. is suicide. Often it's been found that most suicide victims appear to be happy, so personally I do believe that the results of these studies are most likely skewed.
Overall, I feel like something like happiness is very difficult to measure because all of our brains are wired differently. With fluctuating hormones or possible mental disturbances I feel like it's impossible for a study to measure the happiness level of the general population. Let alone make a blanket statement that 94% or more Americans claim to be happy like the 1995 study did. I also question the demographic of Americans that this survey was conducted on.
