MINIMALISM: Official Netflix Documentary (Entire Film)

https://youtu.be/J8DGjUv-Vjc

The Minimalists

https://www.theminimalists.com/

Dostoevsky on troubles vs. happiness

https://www.instagram.com/p/CteMpG8ttw2/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Lonely America + AI = ?

Probably not happiness.

"…What Jonze understood in building his film 'Her' around the anomic Twombley is that this technology will come in a particular context: America is lonely. Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, recently released an 82-page report called "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." From 1990 to 2021, the number of Americans who said they have five or more close friends fellby 25 percentage points. Young adults report being even lonelier than the elderly. America is, by any historical standard, unimaginably rich and powerful, and yet we've lost what matters most: community and connection.

That's the America these A.I. companions will enter into. That's the America they will upend. We worry about 12-year-olds today because they don't see enough of their friends in person. We will worry about them tomorrow because not enough of their friends will be people..." Ezra Klein 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/20/opinion/nyt-columnists-culture.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The Culture That Explains America

Dr. Seuss and the U-curve

From Arthur Brooks's "Managing Happiness" MOOC:

"Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

...You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights! You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed! You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t. Because, sometimes, you won't.

I’m sorry to say but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch. You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done."

—Oh, The Places You'll Go

It turns out that Dr. Seuss was basically right for most of us. While not sudden or dramatic, there is a happiness decline that most people see in mid-life. How we prepare for and manage that period has a significant impact on our happiness. And the good news is, there’s a lot we can do to make that period better and significantly improve our lives...

Simple living

"Deep education, the lessons that actually stick, should prepare one for meaningful work, and lessons and labor should in turn be practical, hands-on, and best learned in the world beyond the classroom walls. It should already be clear that Thoreau harbored a not-so-private suspicion, deeply cynical, of the modern labor force. When Thoreau escaped in 1845 to Walden Pond, two miles from his native Concord, Massachusetts, it was, at least in part, in search of that sort of education, far from the world of commerce, farming, and modern economy. 

Thoreau's resignation into the woods was a quest to embody that most Emersonian of ideals: self-reliance. Emerson, Thoreau's mentor and fourteen years his senior, had also taken issue with the high intellectual culture of Harvard and Cambridge, as well as the pull of powerful economic forces, and he argued that there was often a high price of admission to modern institutions and organizations: the freedom to exercise one's autonomy. Thoreau's apparent separation from society was an attempt to "live deliberately, to front the essential facts of life," to see if he "could not learn what it had to teach." 16 The point of his two-year experiment with simple living was to see what life could be like without the corrupting forces of social conventions and traditional politics. 

All of this is consonant with cynicism's long history. But as one looks more closely at that history, and at Thoreau, it becomes clear that modern cynics truncate, or pointedly misunderstand, the full scope of cynicism as a school of thought and Thoreau's rendition of it. Just as a spoiler: there is no harm in resigning—quite the opposite, in fact. The first Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope, epitomized the ideal of simplicity that Thoreau sought to revive in the nineteenth century. At Walden, Thoreau lived in a ten-by-fifteen-foot boarded cabin; Diogenes had done him one better, living in an overturned barrel, clothed only in rags. He stood against another school of philosophy, Epicureanism, which, in its distorted modern form but not in its ancient original one, espouses that the meaning of life could be grasped in the opulence of civilization. The Cynics, and Thoreau, too, wanted to know what life would be like without societal constraints, but also, and more important, without the trappings of material wealth. 

Today, many so-called cynics are also self-reliant capitalists. Their suspicion of big government and institutional control is rooted in the sense that those agents cheat people out of the riches to which they are entitled. Of course, this idea would have been anathema to Diogenes and Thoreau, who would have believed that our age has erred grievously in confusing material wealth with human prosperity writ large. 

According to legend, Diogenes would sit in his barrel and bark at wealthy pedestrians (" cynic" comes from the Greek word kynikos, meaning "doglike"). Thoreau took a slightly more subtle approach to criticizing modern capitalism, but only slightly. "Economy," remember, is Thoreau's spirited critique of modern materialism. The term "economy," Thoreau reminds his readers, was not originally about what one possessed as surplus, but rather where, or, more specifically how, one lived. It is about a house, a dwelling: that is all. 

At Walden, by divesting himself of life's excesses, Thoreau attempts to relearn what goes into making a place for oneself and appreciating the priceless things—virtue, beauty, peace—that money can't buy. "Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life," he attests, "are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." 17 Today, "making a living" often has nothing to do with life itself, but rather, and disturbingly, with its deferral, a sacrificing of the present moment for the sake of future wealth. Thoreau knows that oikos has another meaning beyond dwelling or home; it can, and often does, refer to a cage. 

Thoreau's apparent escape to the outskirts of civilization might look as if it anticipates the separatist mindset of many modern cynics, but it doesn't. As Robert Richardson noted some thirty years ago in his biography of Thoreau, his "venture was in no sense a retreat or withdrawal. He himself thought of it as a step forward, a liberation, a new beginning." 18 Cynicism maintains its distance from society in order to gain a critical vantage point on social ills, but also, and just as important, to reevaluate what is, at once, most personally significant and universally true about life. This is what resigning from work can and should mean, not just in some cases, but in all."

— Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living by John Kaag, Jonathan van Belle

"Ikigai"

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Working at home

"'Walden is a book about a house, a simple one on a pond, but also a not-so-simple one, a disordered one, orbiting the Sun.'

Instead of bank accounts and stock portfolios, the economy was meant to support the cultivation and maintenance of a home, in its most intimate and edifying sense: the ability to dwell in the world as a flourishing human being. Now, at this point, we can imagine the objections: “My bank account does support my home and my ability to flourish.”

But the objection misses Thoreau’s point: a job might fill your bank account and allow you to pay your mortgage and to go on three-day vacations every three months, but it might also squander the majority of your life, even deform your life, a life that seems better spent in the deliberate fashioning of a good home. Take this as literally or as figuratively, as broadly or as narrowly, as you like. It is true in any case. Thoreau believed that a certain type of work allows us to inhabit the world in a way that makes us feel, makes us actually, “at home.” That is the goal of Thoreau’s economy."

"Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living": https://a.co/9w03NHI

The Art of Being a Flâneur: finding joy in the moment

Sometimes the best way to explore a city on foot is to simply wander, with no goal in mind other than to follow the sound of church bells, or drift across a leafy square.

...This sort of aimless strolling is conducive to savoring, to finding joy in the moment, a practice that some social scientists have found can be cultivated and may help lead to a more fulfilling life. In “Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience,” the scholars Fred B. Bryant and Joseph Veroff describe savoring not as mere pleasure, but as an active process that requires presence and mindfulness. It’s “a search for the delectable, delicious, almost gustatory delights of the moment,” as they put it...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/travel/walking-travel-cities.html?smid=em-share

“Very happy”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cto3MAzPbc7/?igshid=NzJjY2FjNWJiZg==

Can you choose to act as if you have free will…

if you don't have free will? I choose to think so. Or I would. I think.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtlqzP5MxEA/?igshid=NzJjY2FjNWJiZg==

Alive in the present

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtjjTJPO-BL/?igshid=NzJjY2FjNWJiZg==

Put relationships first (per Tolstoy)

Arthur Brooks https://www.instagram.com/p/CthgQnCLHdk/?igshid=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Epicurus’ Philosophy: The Pursuit of Pleasure as a Moral Imperative

https://www.thecollector.com/epicurus-philosopher-pleasure-moral-imperative/

Henry at Work

A happy hopeful epigraph for John Kaag's new Thoreau book. (What a treat, waking to new work in my kindle library from two of my favorite authors. Which first, Frank or Henry?)

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

A fine line and a mystery

A promising beginning for Richard Ford's new Frank Bascombe novel:

"Lately, I've begun to think more than I used to about happiness. This is not an idle consideration at any time in life; but it is a high-dollar bonus topic for me—b. 1945—approaching my stipulated biblical allotment.

Being an historical Presbyterian (not-attending, not-believing, like most Presbyterians), I've passed easily through life observing a version of happiness old Knox himself might've approved—walking the fine line between the twinned injunctions that say: "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "happiness is whatever is not bludgeoning unhappiness." The second being more Augustinian—though all these complex systems get you to the same mystery: "Do what, now?""

— Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford
https://a.co/6G6HYxH

The Beauty of a ‘Walk and Talk’

Taking a stroll with someone is a wonderful way to strengthen your social connections.

...Some of my most rewarding conversations have happened while on foot. The exchanges seemed to flow more easily, as if our steps were setting the tempo for our speech. But there may be a simpler reason that walks draw people out: Research shows that it can be less stressful to talk to someone when you’re walking side by side, with minimal eye contact, than conversing face to face...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/well/move/walk-talk-social-connections-conversation.html?smid=em-share

Be yourself? Pearls Before Swine

Stephan Pastis on GoComics.com | June 11, 2023

https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2023/06/11

The Harvard longevity study

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Tolstoy's happiness

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"Managing Happiness"

LISTEN. I've gone back to school this summer. 

I don't mean teaching (though I do have one independent study student, living abroad); I mean actually studying and learning, reading and watching and getting points and positive reinforcement for correct answers. It's my first-ever online MOOC course, Harvard's "Managing Happiness," which I stumbled serendipitously upon while scrolling, on the very first day of class. No commute required. 

I've shared this with the students who've enrolled in the latest upcoming rendition of my MTSU Philosophy of Happiness course, in case any of them are interested in over-achieving and beginning early to polish the apple. It really would be a good prequel/preparation for what we'll do in the Fall. 

The theme of our course this time is the crucial role of relationships (friendly, intimate, and otherwise) in our happiness or its absence. We'll be reading and discussing Happiness: A Very Short Introduction (Haybron), The Good Life (Waldinger), Against Happiness (Flanagan et al), Four Thousand Weeks (Burkeman), and The Philosophy of Epicurus.

I completed Module 1 yesterday -- At the end of this module, you will recognize that happiness is a major area of study in neuroscience and social science: it is observable, measurable, and manipulable. You can learn to understand your own happiness and get better at happiness! -- and enjoyed doing it. Here's some of what I posted in the discussion boards, in response to various questions you can probably infer:

I stumbled across this course the day it was scheduled to begin, and registered for it because I teach a Happiness course (from a philosophical perspective, with attention to the thought of Aristotle, Epicurus, Montaigne, J.S. Mill, William James*,...) and am always interested to see how others come at the subject. Then I was pleased to learn that Arthur Brooks, whose podcast and Atlantic Monthly work I've admired, is the teacher. I'm really looking forward to digging in. 

*WJ said: If we were to ask the question: “What is human life's chief concern?” one of the answers we should receive would be: “It is happiness.” How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

…

Growing up in the American midwest (Missouri), and living most of my adult life in the south (Tennessee), I've always been surrounded by people who insist on Jefferson's "pursuit of happiness" as our shared birthright. But they also are strongly motivated by what William James (in a 1906 letter to H.G. Wells) called "our national disease":

"the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That—with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success—is our national disease." September 11, 1906

In over a century since, I don't think our disease has yet found a cure. Best not to catch it in the first place. Maybe a course like this can help inoculate the patient/student. I think discovering James's philosophy of happiness, and philosophy in general, has helped inoculate me.

...

I think the implicit message of my upbringing was that it's more important to be good and do the right thing than to be happy. This is generally the view I would later identify with Immanuel Kant, who thought it's more important to be worthy of happiness (because you've behaved rationally and dutifully) than actually to achieve it. My father was temperamentally disposed to happiness, but my mother suffered from manic depression which, from a child's perspective, made happiness seem fragile and randomly distributed. I think I decided at a relatively early age that I would have to take responsibility for my own happiness, that I couldn't count on it being delivered automatically in our household. Perhaps this was my good fortune, to learn this lesson while still so young.

…

I'm glad Arthur qualified "faith" as including one's life philosophy. The meaning of life, on my view, is not singular, and it is not dependent upon some form of supernatural or externally-sourced redemption or salvation. There are countless meanings, values, and purposes that life may subtend. I call myself a humanist, and agree with Kurt Vonnegut that doing the right thing without expectation of extrinsic reward or punishment is one of the central meanings of a good, fulfilled, happy life. I'm also sympathetic with John Dewey's notion of "the continuous human community" (from the first proto-humans of pre-history to who knows what in the remote future) as a deep source of meaning. And I think evolution and the prospect that it may allow the expansion of meaning and our "heritage of values" (Dewey again) is profoundly meaningful. And, like William James I call myself a meliorist: I think the largest meaning of our lives is bound up with the never-ending project of making life better.

…

Wife, grown daughters, sister, brother-in-law... at age 66, immediate family are all younger. Sadly, one of our daughters has chosen to move far away and maintains minimal contact. But I find it gratifying to stay in touch by sending her weekly postcards. When I do, I feel the connection between us. When she sent me a photo of a display she's made in her home, of those postcards, I was very deeply gratified.

…

My teaching colleagues and students are one community, my neighbors another, like-minded people (humanists, meliorists, Jamesians, baseball fans, dog fanciers) near or far, met or not, another. And I have a small friend group of half-a-dozen fellow former grad students, now all approaching (or having surpassed) retirement age, with whom I make a point of meeting up once a year in August before we resume our respective teaching responsibilities. 

…

Teaching feels meaningful, especially so when I can tell that I've made an impression on a student. Learning things that will inform my teaching feels meaningful. Parenting, when our girls were young, felt like meaningful work AND play (I was for a time an at-home dad). Writing something I think is true and important always feels meaningful.

And that, by the way, is why I post to this and other little-noticed blogsites. It motivates me (in a way that standard academic work frankly does not) to try and write true and important things. And it helps me prepare to teach.

This MOOC is going to help me teach Happiness in the Fall, I can tell already. And it's going to be fun right now. Seems like a good way to spend a portion of summer.

"Never let the future disturb you..."

Marcus Aurelius, via @dailystoic: https://www.instagram.com/p/CtJsr4vOmJH/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==

The Art of Human Connection: WJ on the varieties of happiness – The Marginalian

… Observing "the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons' conditions or ideals," observing "how soaked and shot-through life is with values and meanings which we fail to realize because of our external and insensible point of view," observing how often and how readily we judge the outward choices of others while losing sight of the "inward significance" of those choices, James writes:

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours. No one has insight into all the ideals. No one should presume to judge them off-hand. The pretension to dogmatize about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties, and the trait in human character most likely to make the angels weep.

Complement with Joan Didion on learning not to mistake self-righteousness for morality, then revisit William James on the psychology of attention, how our bodies affect our feelings, and the four features of transcendence.

Maria Popova https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/06/02/william-james-talks-to-teachers/

Free Harvard Course | Managing Happiness | edX

Starts today-
https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:HarvardX+happy+1T2023/home

What You'll Learn

What is happiness? What makes you happy?’ Can you get happier through study and effort?

Maybe you have pondered these questions over the course of your life, but haven’t been able to come up with any definitive answers. Still, you’d like to think that happiness is something you can understand and manage, right?

This is a class that answers these questions and shows you how you can use the answers to build a happier life. It introduces you to the modern science of human well-being and shows you how to practice it. Unlike other happiness courses, Managing Happiness goes a step further and demonstrates how you can share the ideas with others, thus bringing more happiness and love to the world and supercharging your own well-being efforts.

Led by Harvard professor, author, social scientist, and former classical musician Arthur Brooks, this course will introduce cutting-edge survey tools, the best research, and trends in social science, positive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy to help learners unlock the strategies to create a more purposeful life, full of long-lasting enjoyment and satisfaction. Managing Happiness uses philosophical and technical insights to challenge your assumptions about happiness — helping you break bad habits that hold you back and build good ones you can use for the rest of your life.

Happiness is a core competency for those that want to be in charge of their lives — both personally and professionally. The concepts learned in this course will lead to enduring improvements and lifelong learning. At the end of the course, you will take away key concepts and actionable insights to apply to your daily routines. People around you will notice the difference.

The course will be delivered via edX and connect learners around the world. By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Explore diverse definitions of happiness and understand its function in everyday life
• Learn how genetic, social, and economic influences impact your happiness
• Apply the science of the mind, body, and community to manage emotions and behaviors for greater happiness
• Develop a happiness portfolio focused on your deepest goals and desires
• Recognize how success and achievement impact short versus long-term happiness
• Write your ending — build happiness strategies for your work and life at any age or stage

Harvard Online

No Small Endeavor podcast

What does it mean to live a good life? What is true happiness? What are the habits, practices, and dispositions that facilitate human flourishing?

On No Small Endeavor, you'll hear from best-selling authors, scientists, artists, psychologists and theologians —courageous, impassioned people taking seriously the question of how to live a good life.

Striving for a good life is No Small Endeavor, and we’re here with you on the road.

LISTEN NOW

Awe-walking

This Kind of Walk Is Much More Than a Workout.

Incorporating awe into your daily stroll can bring mental and physical benefits. Here's how to get started.

"...I'm an early riser, so I've started taking awe walks at dawn. I watch the sky change from violet to orange to fuchsia, and have seen a small colony of bees wake up and start to work. I even discovered a nest of baby robins, lodged snugly in a juniper bush two blocks from my house. Now I walk there every morning and listen to their faint, reedy chirping..." nyt

"A great stoic," a good and flourishing life

A centenarian+ whose simple credo was "do the right thing"...

See this Instagram video by @cbssundaymorning: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtEmgzQg3mL/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==

==

One of our nation’s most prominent writers finds the truth about how to live a long and happy life in the centenarian next door.

When a veteran Washington journalist moved to Kansas, he met a new neighbor who was more than a century old. Little did he know that he was beginning a long friendship—and a profound lesson in the meaning of life. Charlie White was no ordinary neighbor. Born before radio, Charlie lived long enough to use a smartphone. When a shocking tragedy interrupted his idyllic boyhood, Charlie mastered survival strategies that reflect thousands of years of human wisdom. Thus armored, Charlie’s sense of adventure carried him on an epic journey across the continent, and later found him swinging across bandstands of the Jazz Age, racing aboard ambulances through Depression-era gangster wars, improvising techniques for early open-heart surgery, and cruising the Amazon as a guest of Peru’s president.

David Von Drehle came to understand that Charlie’s resilience and willingness to grow made this remarkable neighbor a master in the art of thriving through times of dramatic change. As a gift to his children, he set out to tell Charlie’s secrets. The Book of Charlie is a gospel of grit—the inspiring story of one man’s journey through a century of upheaval. The history that unfolds through Charlie’s story reminds you that the United States has always been a divided nation, a questing nation, an inventive nation—a nation of Charlies in the rollercoaster pursuit of a good and meaningful life. amazon

"a spiritual joy in living"

The humanistic philosophy of life, which flowered in Greece and which has blossomed again, is not the crude materialistic desire to eat, drink, and be merry. It is a spiritual joy in living and a confidence in the future, which makes this life a thing worthwhile. The otherworldliness of the Middle Ages does not satisfy the spiritual demands of modern times. –Winterton C. Curtis (1875-1965; Mizzou zoologist, my first landlord, Scopes witness in Dayton TN 1925), Science and Human Affairs from the viewpoint of biology (1922)