Mortal happiness

(Posted from the dental chair, as numbness descends…)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CsqukGHsnpR/?igshid=NzJjY2FjNWJiZg==

What College Students Need

...Dr. Peña-Guzmán dismissed the idea that a course like his is only suitable for students who don’t have to worry about holding down jobs or paying off student debt. “I’m worried by this assumption that certain experiences that are important for the development of personality, for a certain kind of humanistic and spiritual growth, should be reserved for the elite — especially when we know those experiences are also sources of cultural capital,” he said. Courses like The Reading Experiment are practical too, he added: “I can’t imagine a field that wouldn’t require some version of the skill of focused attention.”

The point is not to reject new technology but to help students retain the upper hand in their relationship with it. Ms. Rodriguez, the economics major who took Living Deliberately and Existential Despair, said that before those classes she “didn’t distinguish technology from education; I didn’t think education ever went without technology. I think that’s really weird now. You don’t need to adapt every piece of technology to be able to learn better or more,” she said. “It can form this dependency.”

The point of college is to help students become independent humans who can choose the gods they serve and the rules they follow, rather than allowing someone else to choose for them. The first step is dethroning the small silicon idol in their pocket — and making space for the uncomfortable silence and questions that follow. The experience stuck with Ms. Ouyang, the nursing major: “I didn’t look forward to getting my phone back,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/opinion/college-students-monks-mental-health-smart-phones.html?smid=em-share

What Rainn Wilson Learned Searching for Joy Around the World

"…Now, in a new travel series, "Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss," Wilsonexplores some of the world's happiest and unhappiest places in an attempt to unlock the secrets of well-being. The show was inspired by Eric Weiner's best-selling memoir of the same name, and Wilson's destinations were chosen from the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network's World Happiness Report, which rates life satisfaction in different nations.

When I asked for advice based on his travels, Wilson noted that many aspects of happiness are outside a person's control such as economic status or where someone lives. But he shared three things he learned that might help us in our own lives…"

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/well/mind/rainn-wilson-happiness.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
What Rainn Wilson Learned Searching for Joy Around the World

HALT: fulfillment, not “happiness”

"…People who are fulfilled don't overreact to emotional highs or lows. They are able to appreciate that just as the seasons come and go, so do our emotions.

I recommend the HALT model to my patients as a way to avoid allowing their feelings to get the best of them…"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/05/19/fulfilled-life-happiness-strategies/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main&crl8_id=578b8841-7e01-400b-aa70-7b1c6817deb0

Rousseau's peripatetic reveries

 "...thus I learned, by my own experience that the source of true happiness is in ourselves, and that it is beyond the power of man to render those truly miserable, who determine to be otherwise..."

 

In the two years before his death in 1778, Jean-Jacques Rousseau composed the ten meditations of Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Combining philosophical argument with amusing anecdotes and lyrical desriptive passages, they record the great French writer's sense of isolation and alienation from a world which he felt had rejected his work. As he wanders around Paris, gazing at plants and day-dreaming, Rousseau looks back over his life in order to justify his actions and to elaborate on his ideal of a well-structured society fit for the noble and solitary natural man. g'r

Fifth Walk

OF all the places I have inhabited (and I have been in some that were delightful) none ever rendered me so truly happy, or left such pleasing impressions on my memory, as the Island of Saint Pierre, in the Lake of Bienne. This little island, which is called at Neufchâtel the Isle of La Motte, is little known, even in Switzerland, no traveller, that I recollect, having mentioned it; notwithstanding it is very agreeable, and peculiarly calculated for the happiness of a man who loves to circumscribe his steps: for though I am, perhaps, the only one in the world to whom Fate has given law in that particular, I cannot believe I am the only person who possesses so natural a taste, though, to the present moment, I have never happened to meet with anyone of that disposition... (continues)

Happiness: A Very Short Introduction

“Even when things don't go very well, even when life is hard, it still tends to be a pretty wonderful thing to be alive.” Right? So we begin:

Epicurus

 

• “Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.”
• “Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
• “He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.”
• “Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”
• “We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it.”
• “He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.”

Against Happiness

 This anthology isn't really againt happiness, just a limited-agenda "parochial, Western-centric" conception of it that short-changes other goods like justice and sustainability.

The "happiness agenda" is a worldwide movement that claims that happiness is the highest good, happiness can be measured, and public policy should promote happiness. Against Happiness is a thorough and powerful critique of this program, revealing the flaws of its concept of happiness and advocating a renewed focus on equality and justice.

Written by an interdisciplinary team of authors, this book provides both theoretical and empirical analysis of the limitations of the happiness agenda. The authors emphasize that this movement draws on a parochial, Western-centric philosophical basis and demographic sample. They show that happiness defined as subjective satisfaction or a surplus of positive emotions bears little resemblance to the richer and more nuanced concepts of the good life found in many world traditions. Cross-cultural philosophy, comparative theology, and social and cultural psychology all teach that cultures and subcultures vary in how much value they place on life satisfaction or feeling happy. Furthermore, the ideas promoted by the happiness agenda can compete with rights, justice, sustainability, and equality--and even conceal racial and gender injustice.

Against Happiness argues that a better way forward requires integration of cross-cultural philosophical, ethical, and political thought with critical social science. Ultimately, the authors contend, happiness should be a secondary goal--worth pursuing only if it is contingent on the demands of justice. g'r

The Good Life

 We're focusing this Fall '23 semester on the vital contribution social relationships make to our happiness and to "the good life."

 

What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and overall healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life.

The invaluable insights in this book emerge from the revealing personal stories of hundreds of participants in the Harvard Study as they were followed year after year for their entire adult lives, and this wisdom is bolstered by research findings from this and many other studies. Relationships in all their forms—friendships, romantic partnerships, families, coworkers, tennis partners, book club members, Bible study groups—all contribute to a happier, healthier life. And as The Good Life shows us, it’s never too late to strengthen the relationships you have, and never too late to build new ones.

Dr. Waldinger’s TED Talk about the Harvard Study, “What Makes a Good Life,” has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the ten most-watched TED talks ever. The Good Life has been praised by bestselling authors Jay Shetty (“Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz lead us on an empowering quest towards our greatest need: meaningful human connection”), Angela Duckworth (“In a crowded field of life advice and even life advice based on scientific research, Schulz and Waldinger stand apart”), and happiness expert Laurie Santos (“Waldinger and Schulz are world experts on the counterintuitive things that make life meaningful”).

With warmth, wisdom, and compelling life stories, The Good Life shows us how we can make our lives happier and more meaningful through our connections to others. g'r

“The good life is not always just out of reach after all. It is not waiting in the distant future after a dreamy career success. It’s not set to kick in after you acquire some massive amount of money. The good life is right in front of you, sometimes only an arm’s length away. And it starts now.”

“There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”

― Mark Twain

4,000 Weeks

 The Epicureans valued nothing so much as their time, and were intent on making the most of it. The happiest people are those who've figured out how to do that. Hence our attention to Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.

 

“It’s alarming to face the prospect that you might never truly feel as though you know what you’re doing, in work, marriage, parenting, or anything else. But it’s liberating, too, because it removes a central reason for feeling self-conscious or inhibited about your performance in those domains in the present moment: if the feeling of total authority is never going to arrive, you might as well not wait any longer to give such activities your all—to put bold plans into practice, to stop erring on the side of caution. It is even more liberating to reflect that everyone else is in the same boat, whether they’re aware of it or not.”

What If Instead of Trying to Manage Your Time, You Set It Free?

The cultural critic Jenny Odell sees a way out of our obsession with personal efficiency.

[Meaning of life?]

The closest thing that I have to an answer is that I want to be in contact with things, people, contexts that make me feel alive. I have a specific definition of alive, which is I want to feel like I am being changed. Someone who's completely habitual, is set in their ways of thinking and doing, that type of person is liable to see days in a calendar as being pieces of material that you use to achieve your goals. There's all kinds of degrees between that and someone who's so completely open to every moment that they're dysfunctional or something, but I want to live closer to that second pole. I think about things that are enlivening to me, and they tend to be encounters, conversations — that "My Dinner With Andre" [The director Louis Malle's 1981 cult classic film, which consists almost entirely of a conversation between the theater director Andre Gregory and the actor-playwright Wallace Shawn. "Our minds are just focused on these goals and plans," Gregory says at one point. "Which in themselves are not reality."] type of conversation where you and your conversation partner are changed by the end, you've covered new ground, you are both now somewhere else. But it's also encounters with nonhuman life that is growing and changing, and realizing that I am also changing and evolving. To me those are the reminders that, yeah, I'm alive, today is not the same as yesterday, I will be different in the future, therefore I have a reason to live, which is to find out what that change is going to be.

That's a pretty good on-the-spot answer for "tell me the meaning of life." [Laughs.] Well, it's what's working for now.

nyt

Kids Who Get Smartphones Earlier Become Adults With Worse Mental Health

"...they find a consistent pattern: the younger the age of getting the first smartphone, the worse the mental health that the young adult reports today. This is true in all the regions studied (the survey is offered in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili), and the relationships are consistently stronger for women..." Jon Haidt

And, they don't pay attention when the bus driver blacks out...

GK advises a chronic worrier

 Garrison,

I’m writing for words of wisdom or advice. Or just an assurance that everything will work out. And if you can’t provide any of that, then perhaps just a great recipe for Tuna Hot Dish will suffice.

I am about 15 years behind you on the road of life and I get so distraught at times. Despite having a wonderful family, good health, I still manufacture things to worry and fret about every day. 

My daughter is doing great and recently married. But I worry about my 32-year-old son who is desperately searching for an elementary music teaching position. He is so great with kids and truly enjoys planting seeds of the love of music in children. I fret about getting older and how I will die and when. I fear losing things — life, security, my lovely wife (i.e., what will I do if she is called home before me?). I wonder why I have never suffered or experienced significant loss, like so many of my friends have? And I’m tired of these senseless and unproductive bouts of worry that I find myself in. Why am I wasting this time in the dark corners of my mind in senseless worry? I am so very blessed. I know this, but every day is still a struggle. 

Do you ever find yourself stuck in worry mode? I want to enjoy my life, and yet, like so many these days (I think), I’d rather just hide in my room and stay in bed. Yeah, so what can I do?

Best to you always,
Russell

This sounds like real trouble and luckily for you anxiety is something professionals know a few things about dealing with. I would find a good psychiatrist, a doctor, one who will listen to you say just what you’re telling me, and one who is open to pharmacology. I know people who suffered from bothersome anxiety and who got good relief from medications. I’ve never been troubled by this and any advice I offered would be too glib. There are many roads available but I’d begin with this one: the simple treatment of anxiety by chemical means. GK

What We Lose When We Push Our Kids to ‘Achieve’

The sense of happiness that comes from absorption in a thing we are truly drawn to

...surely many of the things that our kids are asked to achieve can lead to self-discovery; taught well, they may learn to love new and unexpected things for their own sake. The trick may lie in the teaching. My sister Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist and author, puts this well: If we taught our kids softball the way we teach them science, they would hate softball as much as they hate science; but if we taught them science as we teach them softball, by practice and absorption, they might love both...

Adam Gopnik 

Against Despair: An Open Letter to Graduates

My generation has wrecked so much that is precious. How could I dare to offer you advice?

...You are children of the 21st century, and yours is the first generation to recognize the inescapable urgency of climate change, the first not to deny the undeniable loss of biodiversity. You have grown up in an age permeated by the noise of a 24-hour news cycle, by needless political polarization, by devastating gun violence, by the isolating effects of “social” media. You have seen hard-won civil rights rolled back. You have come of age at a time of existential threat — to the planet, to democracy, to the arc of the moral universe itself — and none of it is your fault.

I wouldn’t blame you if you’re wondering how somebody of my generation, which wrecked so much that is precious, could dare to offer you advice. My only response is that age has exactly one advantage over the energy and brilliance of youth: Age teaches a person how to survive despair...

Margaret Renkl 

Cheerfulness

Garrison Keillor has a lot to say about cheerfulness in his new book, titled (yes) Cheerfulness...

Cheerfulness is a great American virtue, the essence of who we are when we’re cooking with gas: rise and shine, qwitcher bellyaching, step up to the plate and swing for the fences, do your best and forget the rest, da doo ron ron ron da doo ron ron.

***

The uncertainty of tomorrow makes today rather cheerful. Beautiful, in fact. This is our
time. We’re lucky to have been born when we were, any later and we wouldn’t know how lucky we are, any earlier and we’d be deceased.
***

Cheer up. Put your bare feet on the floor in the morning and meet the world’s
indifference with a light heart. Pull on your pants, buckle your belt, get your head on
straight and go to the work you were put here to do. The world will be improved by your enthusiasm.
***

The secret of cheerfulness is to Delete. Cut out watching golf or basketball on TV, loud
restaurants, science fiction, most of Florida, the Book of Revelation, broadcast
journalism, and irony, and you’ll be much happier.
***

Gloom is just like carbuncles:
Yours is the same as your uncle’s Whereas the hilarious
Is wildly various
Like the wildlife found in the jungles.
***

Work is crucial. Usefulness can lead to genius. Edison invented the talking machine to
help execs dictate letters and Caruso sang into it and Jimmie Rodgers and King Oliver
and the seeds of jazz and blues blew around the world.
***

Happiness is circumstantial, bliss is brief, joy is for angels and small children,
contentment is fragile and easily interrupted, gaiety doesn’t happen until eighty, and for jubilation you need to find a good roller coaster and someone to ride it with you and
scream, but cheerfulness is a choice, like choosing chocolate rather than a spoonful of
mud. Take the chocolate.
***

Cheerfulness is a choice. Every morning you’re offered Anxiety, Bitterness,
Cheerfulness, Dread, Ennui, and Forgetfulness. It’s a new day, there is work to be done, you are loved, the coffee is on, so choose C. C is always the correct.

Q & A

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."
— Richard P. Feynman

"Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life" by Emily Austin

If we all want happiness and pleasure so much, then why are we so bad at getting it? Pleasure feels amazing! Anxiety, however, does not. The Ancient Greek Philosopher Epicurus rolled these two strikingly intuitive claims into a simple formula for happiness and well-being--pursue pleasure without causing yourself anxiety. But wait, is that even possible? Can humans achieve lasting pleasure without suffering anxiety about failure and loss? Epicurus thinks we can, at least once we learn to pursue pleasure thoughtfully.

In Living for Pleasure, philosopher Emily Austin offers a lively, jargon-free tour of Epicurean strategies for diminishing anxiety, achieving satisfaction, and relishing joys. Epicurean science was famously far ahead of its time, and Austin shows that so was its ethics and psychology. Epicureanism can help us make and keep good friends, prepare for suffering, combat imposter syndrome, build trust, recognize personal limitations, value truth, cultivate healthy attitudes towards money and success, manage political anxiety, develop gratitude, savor food, and face death.

Readers will walk away knowing more about an important school of philosophy, but moreover understanding how to get what they want in life--happiness--without the anxiety of striving for it. amazon

Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It’s Time to Fix That.

A patient of mine once shared with me a most unusual story. He had worked for years in the food industry with a modest salary and humble lifestyle. Then he won the lottery. Overnight, his life changed. He quit his job and moved into a large house in a gated community.

Yet as he sat across from me, he sadly declared, "Winning the lottery was one of the worst things that ever happened to me." Wealthy but alone, this once vivacious, social man no longer knew his neighbors and had lost touch with his former co-workers. He soon developed high blood pressure and diabetes.

I thought about his story in 2017 when I found myself struggling with loneliness. My first stint as surgeon general had just ended. I was suddenly disconnected from the colleagues with whom I had spent most of my waking hours. It might not have been so bad had I not made a critical mistake: I had largely neglected my friendships during my tenure, convincing myself that I had to focus on work and I couldn't do both. 

Even when I was physically with the people I loved, I wasn't present — I was often checking the news and responding to messages in my inbox. After my job ended, I felt ashamed to reach out to friends I had ignored. I found myself increasingly lonely and isolated, and it felt as if I was the only one who felt that way. Loneliness — like depression, with which it can be associated — can chip away at your self-esteem and erode your sense of who you are. That's what happened to me…

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It's Time to Fix That.