Delana Howard Final Blog Post

As the fall 2023 school semester at MTSU draws to a close, so does our Philosophy of Happiness course. What a time it has been! Yet, as I sit here at my computer thinking of how far I have come and how much I have learned; I find myself struggling to come up with something worthy of being titled a “final blog post”. It just feels so sudden, so abrupt, so… final. This feeling, as cringy as it sounds, is similar to the feeling I get when I reach the last episode of a good series; that bittersweet feeling of being sad that it is over, but also happy that it happened. What is one to do with such a feeling? Despite whatever anyone else thinks is best, I am going to take a page out of my 95-year-old Grandmother’s book and reminisce about the good things I learned along the way.

If we are talking specifically about things I learned from the books we presented on for our final presentation, I will be keeping my thoughts centered on Against Happiness by Owen Flanagan and others. I thought there was a lot of good stuff in this book, especially because it gave a space for many different kinds of people to voice their opinions on specific aspects of happiness. But overall, this book taught me a lot about something I don’t think the authors were aiming to achieve but is still good nonetheless: the order of operations for happiness. 

Against Happiness, especially the chapters I was instructed to present on, painted a clear picture of what the authors were trying to say as a whole: happiness is not the end all be all. It is not the summum bonum, which goes against what many people say currently in modern day America. But what does this have to do with the logic of happiness? Let’s look at an example everybody can recognize: magical girls!

Magical girls in media all have common threads; youthful bubbly protagonists, the threat of an insurmountable evil, the overcoming of dire odds through self-sacrifice, the list goes on. With this, however, one cannot forget the darker aspect to a magical girl’s story. A lot of them never get their original happy ending, and even if they do, they have to give up so much of themselves for it that, in the end, they have to question if it was even worth it. But time after time, those girls, beaten and bruised say yes, yes it was worth it. And, if given the choice, they would do it all again. Why? It is because they, like the authors of Against Happiness, have come to the conclusion that their own personal happiness is not the the independent variable one should be striving to control in life, but it is instead the dependent variable, a part of life that relies on the strength of what really matters. The authors may say these things are, “justice, equality, (and) dignity,” whereas magical girls might say, “love, hope, and trust,” but either way, both parties know that there is no happiness without striving for the betterment of those around them. Only after that is happiness achieved.

This was an astounding revelation when I figured it out for myself. In an oversimplified way, it sort of changed the way I look at the world. Instead of looking for different ways to spark happiness in my day-to-day life for its own sake, I have started to look where I can help others. Instead of being on my phone to watch TikTok for that sweet, sweet dopamine boost, I have found myself wanting to help more around the house, with my friends, in my church, wherever I may be. Happiness is no longer the input to a good life; it is the output of a good life. 

But all this begs the question, does that mean I am doing good things for selfish reasons? Can you really say you are helping others, when in fact, you are doing it for your own happiness? And to that I say: WHO CARES? MrBeast, a very famous and influential YouTuber, has objectively done a lot of good for the world. He has planted thousands of trees, provided life changing eye surgery to those who couldn’t access it, and housed the homeless, all on video. Anybody who has seen the amounts of views this content has garnered him can quickly recognize just how much this man profits off of his charitable acts. Many critics are quick to point out how twisted that sounds, making money off of doing good for others just sounds so selfish! But again, I ask: WHO CARES? Trees are being planted, the blind can see, and people are housed because of his “selfishness.” He’s not doing anything illegal, he’s not hurting anyone in the process to gain his money and influence, so again: WHO CARES? Objective good is being done that might have gone undone if he had not stepped in.

While the above example is extreme, it can still be paired down to what I said before. So what if you do good to make your own life better and to bring yourself happiness? WHO CARES?! Good is still being done! Embrace it! Let yourself feel the happiness produced by inputting good into the world around you.

Well, that was quite the spiel, but I think there is some good stuff in there. I mean, how often do I get a chance to spin the copious amounts of anime material I have consumed into something sudo-academic? Not often, I will tell you that! But to conclude, I have had so much fun in this class, and I have learned more than I thought I would. I have learned about myself, I have learned about happiness, and I have learned how to better combine those two things to make something that betters not just me as an individual, but everyone around me as a whole. I have learned that happiness should not be the end goal because there are other end goals whose product will result in happiness when done correctly. In my humble opinion, this class has taught me that spreading goodness, in whatever way one can best, leads to happiness richer than that of the material or the short-term, and doing it for that reason is reason enough.