You don’t need a pill: Neo

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness
True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future. — Keanu Reeves

Burkeman’s non-pursuit

"Sometimes it is the very pursuit of happiness that stops us from achieving it"

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/negative-thinking-oliver-burkeman/

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

—Viktor Frankl

2,500 years of happiness philosophy, distilled into 3 pillars | Jonny Th...

https://youtu.be/2WShJeNX7W8?si=XVj9sMUXQKmmIEhN

English heritage

That ubiquitous internet attribution to Ben Franklin of the line that beer is proof that God loves us is surely apocryphal.

"His (London) colleagues nicknamed him the Water-American because he refused to partake in the ubiquitous beer drinking: a pint before breakfast, with breakfast, after breakfast, with the midday meal, at six, and a last one before bed. (Franklin preferred Madeira.) Franklin also prided himself on healthy habits…"

— The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss

Ephemeral joy

"Man craves happiness here on earth, not fulfillment, not emancipation. Are they utterly deluded, then, in seeking happiness? No, happiness is desirable, but it is a by-product, the result of a way of life, not a goal which is forever beyond one's grasp. Happiness is achieved en route. And if it be ephemeral, as most men believe, it can also give way, not to anxiety or despair, but to a joyousness which is…

—Henry Miller

https://www.threads.net/@philosophybits/post/DDX14Liz4T2?xmt=AQGzmpwTN6S84f0xNNjbz03inLNd5JdR-NbuWHs3DJhqpw

What is happiness?

"And where can you find it, if you ever can? We all know that its pursuit is guaranteed, right there in the Declaration of Independence—sort of improbably; I don't think many political charters include such a lighthearted instruction, the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" suggesting picnics and fireworks and flirtation more than it suggests the stern work of revolution…"

— All That Happiness Is: Some Words on What Matters by Adam Gopnik
https://a.co/g3BdXcb

the ultimate thanks-giving

"I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."

When the poetic neurologist Oliver Sacks learned that he was dying, he wrote something almost unbearably beautiful about the measure of living — the ultimate thanks-giving:

https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/oliver-sacks-gratitude

"A lot of hooey"--?

Happy Thanksgiving. 

“The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when "Hawk" Dawson actually doffed his red "C" cap to me, and everyone cheered and practically convulsed into tears - you can't patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks" or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me.”― Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land

Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness

  

What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.

Problematic

Is becoming happier a selfish thing to do?

I sometimes hear from my students that they think pursuing happiness is a selfish act. The evidence actually suggests that people who self-report being happier are more prosocial and nicer to other people, not more selfish.

This is the feel-good do-good phenomenon: when people are in a good mood, they tend to help other people. You've probably seen this in your own life, where you've held the door open for someone because you were in a good mood...

Laurie Santos

https://www.threads.net/@lauriesantosofficial/post/DCrEaoksdCE?xmt=AQGztSZaqh_ip7FzpQgzaFgEfETsiMlOOWPwIwgwKZ6RwQ

Can Reading Make You Happier?

 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/can-reading-make-you-happier?utm_source=threads&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tny&utm_social-type=owned

Bhutan has made happiness a national priority. So why are so many citizens leaving the country? - CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bhutan-happiness-national-priority-60-minutes-transcript/

Yeah, sure

Matt Haig

 From Reasons To Stay Alive:

Epicurus on a thread

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus thinks happiness is available to all of us — we just have false beliefs about what will make us happy.

If we think wealth, fame, or power are the answer, for instance, we must recognize that, no matter how much we obtain of these things, it's always possible to get more.

Satisfying such desires is thus impossible, so we shouldn't waste our lives anxiously in thrall to them.

As Epicurus puts it in one of his Principal Doctrines... 🧵 1/4

https://www.threads.net/@philosophybreak/post/DBg8YIds8xS?xmt=AQGzTtQM1EcJnRC3JMtEXBn7yJeIrgIgZM8PwPJbJHouSw

Bolts of beauty on a ramble

"I took a stool at the bar of a tavern in John Reister's town and had ordered a beer and a plate of fish tacos when the skies outside opened up and the rain began to fall in torrents in the parking lot, forming instantaneous puddles, and as it did something strange swept over me. I hesitate to describe it, as if we should keep these things to ourselves.

At that moment, with the fish tacos in front of me and the rain pouring down outside, I felt a wave of joy pass through me as intense as any sudden grief. Pass through me in surges, so I had to bury my face in my hands. If the bartender had turned to look at me, he would've thought I was heaving with sorrow, that I had just received news of some terrible event, but it was precisely the opposite. Others were sitting nearby talking, drinking, dipping french fries into ketchup. And I was trembling with an inner laughter that resembled sobs.

We grope for words to describe emotions like this because they're so mysterious. It's like a tree suddenly swaying but with no wind to move it. We jump for joy or fly into a rage or burst into laughter for a reason, usually. There was no cause in this case: a full-body surge of joy at simply being there. The sight of the rain. The taste of the beer. The warmth of the tavern. The compactness of my belongings beside me in my pack. The simplicity of my life at that exact moment. Who knows why?

Thoreau touched on this in a letter to a friend: "We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it." The next afternoon—I jump ahead—a slanting snow blew in from the northwest as I walked along the edge of a field, a barn in the distance, cows in a pasture, and the same wave hit me. I doubled over along the roadside.

Again, a sudden surge of joy that came on like a sob for no reason, but with every reason. Something was moving inside. I must assume, and hope, that we all have these moments. That we are all similarly stricken when walking along a road or sitting at a bar. These moments are the reward for being, as though the earth were sending its voltage through us.

Marcel Proust famously had his moment with his spoonful of madeleine dunked into tea. "No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place," he wrote in the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. "An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin." It was "an all-powerful joy," an "unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence."

As Proust's fictionalized self digs, and probes, and sips more madeleine crumbs, memories flood back. Those crumbs have the power to reawaken past days and unearth the dead. The whole of his childhood village of Combray emerges in his cup of tea. My joy had nothing to do with memory or the past, though I could recount other such surges, and many since my diagnosis. Bolts of beauty, we might call them, sure to become more numerous as I went. I could still feel its glow when I finished that lunch and walked into the rain. *"

— American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal by Neil King
https://a.co/gIjQF5r

It didn't kill him...

He must have broken the monotony and conquered his fear. If he could do it, so can anyone. The boulders that don't kill you...

"The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days."— Camus, The Fall

Ordinary things

Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

https://www.threads.net/@thethinkersmindset/post/DBEBZrcyWQj?xmt=AQGzu6sE5ctyoNAA67dN_IEnIArTsPdsBYyppnmIsfNTOw

Smart (and happy) as a 4th grade Finn

In Finland, classes in recognizing fake news

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/in-finland-classes-in-recognizing-fake-news-disinformation/

Hurkle-durkle

Some do it daily.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C__jerDuxh4/?igsh=OHlkc25pemo3aHM5

part of the stream

"To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future."

— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

Anxiety: the bright side

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Phil Oliver (@osopher)

Nordic happiness: Fika, Lagom, Hygge…

The Scandinavian Guide to Happiness: The Nordic Art of Happy and Balanced Living with Fika, Lagom, Hygge, and More!

Make time for the things that really matter in life. Find balance and happiness in your daily life, the Scandinavian way, with The Scandinavian Guide to Happiness!

There's a reason Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden consistently rank as the top 5 happiest countries on earth! Find out the secrets to their happiness and fulfillment in The Scandinavian Guide to Happiness, which shares centuries of Nordic wisdom, including:

• Lykke: Happiness is all around you (Denmark)
• Lagom: Just the right amount not too much, not too little (Sweden)
• Fika: Taking daily coffee breaks and other comforting rituals (Sweden)
• Hygge: Coziness brings comfort, courage, and happiness (Denmark)
• Sisu: Everyday courage, grit, and determination & acting rationally in the face of adversity

These basic principles will help you see how to have a happy life without buying anything, changing yourself, or making any other crazy drastic changes! Topics include simplicity, happiness, health & wellness, relationships, nature-inspired living, and more. Full of inspiring, encouraging ideas and charming illustrations! this thoughtful Scandinavian guide is sure to put a happy glow in your life.

 https://a.co/d/50sUCst

Happy as a Finn

The Finnish Guide to Happiness
By Melanie Dower
Narrated by Saskia Maarleveld

Listen on Audible:
https://www.audible.com/pd/B0DB8TBDSD?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=player_overflow

Happy connections

Some people become so focused on their immediate income and reputation that they fail to cherish their connections with others. These individuals may be able to live in nicer homes and wear nicer clothes than others, but whether they can truly achieve happiness is a separate matter.

Our daily interactions with others have a far greater impact on our happiness and well-being than the clothes we wear or the homes we live in.

happiness

https://www.threads.net/@buddhismstheoryofhappiness/post/DAAKjE1TDpq/?xmt=AQGzGtzRF7dWlG3lEQREtm4-6ZMvZAfp76txxVV3wLDiRw

“happiness is the longing for repetition.”

But that's why we CAN be happy, I say.

"And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition."
​― Milan Kundera/𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑛𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐵𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔

Get up and move

The Brahma Muhurta, "creator's time"-

https://www.threads.net/@arthurcbrooks/post/C_lA1mSh166/?xmt=AQGzBrjFTm0gO1PI4UQCCxp9eAdnCwVWMRA56a_sieKdPQ

Cheers

Some people believe alcohol can make them happier, help them relax, or improve their social experiences. But if they step back, they might realize that drinking gives them a temporary euphoria at best, not the long-lasting happiness they deeply long for.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sober-curiosity/202408/does-alcohol-really-make-us-happier

the banality of pessimism

Enchantment and the courage of joy – René Magritte on the antidote to the banality of pessimism.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/31/rene-magritte-enchantment/

Happy lessons

This is Robert Waldinger.

The man behind the world's longest-running study on happiness:

This was the famous Harvard's 84-year-old Study of Adult Development.

Here are 7 surprising (life-changing) lessons from the study to help you live a happier life:
(A Thread)🧵

https://www.threads.net/@thecafescrawls/post/C_JBdTRShPk/?xmt=AQGzY_mbO11i_7OgAxyfaBPP_WjOPhZJwoGXsNPutV--uw

How to Be Truly Free: Lessons From a Philosopher President

Pepe Mujica, Uruguay's spartan former president and plain-spoken philosopher, offers wisdom from a rich life as he battles cancer.

... 

(Unprompted.)
I think that humanity, as it's going, is doomed.
Why do you say that?
We waste a lot of time uselessly. We can live more peacefully. Take Uruguay. Uruguay has 3.5 million people. It imports 27 million pairs of shoes. We make garbage and work in pain. For what?
You're free when you escape the law of necessity — when you spend the time of your life on what you desire. If your needs multiply, you spend your life covering those needs.
Humans can create infinite needs. The market dominates us, and it robs us of our lives.
Humanity needs to work less, have more free time and be more grounded. Why so much garbage? Why do you have to change your car? Change the refrigerator?
There is only one life and it ends. You have to give meaning to it. Fight for happiness, not just for wealth.
Do you believe that humanity can change?
It could change. But the market is very strong. It has generated a subliminal culture that dominates our instinct. It's subjective. It's unconscious. It has made us voracious buyers. We live to buy. We work to buy. And we live to pay. Credit is a religion. So we're kind of screwed up...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/world/americas/pepe-mujica-uruguay-president.html?smid=em-share

How to Strengthen Your Happiness Muscle

Psychologists call it reward sensitivity. And simple steps can help you boost your drive to seek out positive emotions and enjoy life.

"...sometimes we need to behave like happy people if we actually want to be happy."

nyt

on the side

"Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it."

— Simone de Beauvoir

https://www.threads.net/@philosophors/post/C-ijek6izak/?xmt=AQGz__74BODiHPrKHSGC5-Bnr3hyD_KgCyqchMdSpPumZQ

happiness isn’t the end-all goal

… The youngest adults, who have been marinating in a positive psychology culture since they left the womb, may be the most deeply affected by the inward shift of the search for happiness. A recent survey from Harvard's Graduate School of Education makes the case that we are, as a culture, overfocusing on the "psychological talk and a self-help culture" that has "caused many people to look inward to find meaning and vitality. Yet the self by itself is a poor source for meaning."

Mr. Sandler told me people ask him all the time whether they should track their emotions and whether it will make them happier. He said he tells them to focus instead on contentment, "the feeling of being satisfied with your life overall."

The frenzied, overstuffed marketplace of happiness optimization will never be able to fix the fundamentals of the human condition or bring a lasting kind of purpose to a new generation. There will never be easy or straightforward answers to our most profound questions of existence, and ranking emotions feels like a diminution of their awesome power. I do not want to spend those daily walks home with my daughter wondering how they stack up against a morning run or dinner with a friend or any other moment in my day that might make me feel something. The user experience of being alive cannot be graphed.

"The biggest thing that I learned throughout all of my happiness range tracking," Mr. Sandler said, "is that happiness isn't the end-all goal that I was looking for."

NYTimes: Are We Happy Yet?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/opinion/happiness-tracking-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

What the Olympics Can Teach Us About Excellence

"…Excellence is not perfection or winning at all costs. It is a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best performer — and person — you can be. You pursue goals that challenge you, put forth an honest effort, endure highs, lows and everything in between, and gain respect for yourself and others. This sort of excellence isn't just for world-class athletes; it is for all of us. We can certainly find it in sports, but also in the creative arts, medicine, teaching, coaching, science and more.

Understanding that excellence lies in the pursuit of a lofty goal as much as in the achievement of that goal allows us to expand our definition of success. Excellence is a process. That process can, and must, be renewed every day. The real reward for excellence is not the medal or the promotion, but the person you become and the relationships you forge along the way. In 2007, the psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar coined the term "arrival fallacy" to describe the trap of thinking that reaching a goal will bring lasting contentment or fulfillment. Anyone who has ever thought, "If I achieve such-and-such goal, then I'll be happy," understands this..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/opinion/paris-olympics-gold-excellence.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Off track

"There is a great deal of disagreement on how even to measure happiness and fairly weak evidence that doing so makes us significantly happier," Jessica Grose writes. "Less considered is the question: Could tracking happiness make us feel worse?"

https://www.threads.net/@nytopinion/post/C-a53vrPOmU/?xmt=AQGzoZTkP07442FxL43rUq52DPJjANEzvmXsbgAX0Uc5Fw

Tim Walz, "more than happy"

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we're working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.” HCR 

Too soon to tell?

It used to be that there was a clear enough pattern of happiness, dependent on the stage of life and the responsibilities, expectations and understanding one had at each point. It certainly made a lot of sense:

 


The news today, however, is that the youth – those under 30 – are extremely unhappy. But how should we measure happiness? How can we encourage it? And is it possible to truly know if we are happy... while we are still alive?
...

...Is it true that a fulfilled life can only be measured once everything is said and done? Many of the classical thinkers certainly thought so. Solon was not arguing that men like Tellus and Biton were happier in death than in life. He was not referring to the great hereafter.

Solon was arguing that a full accounting of happiness can only be known once the life of a citizen is laid out start to finish. Only then can we see if somebody has achieved virtue, self-sufficiency, and all other good things that the ancients believed to be paramount to a “good life”...

https://substack.com/home/post/p-146883124

"Happiest Place on Earth"

When Disneyland opened its gates to the public for the first time on this day in 1955, visitors had been waiting in line since 2 a.m. to get inside the "Happiest Place on Earth".

In the first ten weeks, the park hosted more than one million guests, and soon became a favorite spot of visiting foreign dignitaries, from Indian Prime Minister Nehru to the King of Nepal.

https://www.threads.net/@americanexperiencepbs/post/C9ikuLKPrG0/?xmt=AQGzyFgnTbQfUahVRj4_xJzMXUviIgMeSSl6iNsejxl-_A

Have a nice life

"Our research suggests it's really not acceptable that some people are able to have a pleasant or satisfying time being alive."

https://www.theonion.com/report-it-not-fair-other-people-get-to-enjoy-their-liv-1851573097

All That Happiness Is

All That Happiness Is
By Adam Gopnik
Narrated by Adam Gopnik

Accomplishment is happier than achievement, making the pursuit of happiness intrinsically rewarding.

Listen on Audible:
https://www.audible.com/pd/B0D6NMQ9CF?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp

How to Avoid Work: A 1949 Guide to Doing What You Love – The Marginalian

"…Actually, there is only one way in this world to achieve true happiness, and that is to express yourself with all your skill and enthusiasm in a career that appeals to you more than any other. In such a career, you feel a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement. You feel you are making a contribution. It is not work..."
https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/12/14/how-to-avoid-work/

Joy in the flowers

“Happy are those who sing with all their heart, from the bottoms of their hearts. To find joy in the sky, the trees, the flowers. There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” —Henri Matisse

 

What Does Freud Still Have to Teach Us?

Come for the Oedipus complex. Stay for the later troubled musings on the fate of humanity.

...he had written the most influential biography of us—of man, a creature of pleasure who had been civilized into unhappiness, and of mankind, its members instinctively bound by Eros and aggression...

Merve Emre, NYer 

--

On Getting the Life You Want

by Adam Phillips

Both Freud’s psychoanalysis and Rorty’s pragmatism tell us, in their different ways, why wanting matters, and also that wanting has become the thing we most want to know about, as though now we are simply our wants.
…
In an implicit critique of, among other things, American pragmatism, Charles Taylor, in The Ethics of Authenticity, defines his notion of a moral ideal: ‘I mean a picture of what a better or higher mode of life would be where “better” and “higher” are defined not in terms of what we happen to desire or need, but offer a standard of what we ought to desire.’ Rorty’s work always runs the risk of seeming to promote a kind of capricious, impulsive egotism.

...it tends to idealise both autonomy and the self; to privilege our capacity for making choices over whatever it is about ourselves that we are unaware of. It privileges experiments in living over the need for safety. Psychoanalysis with pragmatism, and pragmatism with psychoanalysis, however, seem unusually promising for helping you get the life you want. Unless, of course, there is something you want more than the life you want. LRB

Happiest cities

"After looking at all their data, it named the tiny town of Aarhus, Denmark, as the happiest in the world. But just a few spots down, it added Minneapolis, to its "Gold" ranked list, making it the No. 1 in the U.S."

https://www.travelandleisure.com/minneapolis-named-the-happiest-city-in-united-states-8659687

Aristotle & the Stoics

While Aristotle thinks it's just obvious that the good life depends in part on 'externals' like health and access to resources, the Stoics think the value of someone's life — and the limits of their happiness — should not be judged or imposed according to circumstances outside their control.

Who do you side with?
https://philosophybreak.com/articles/aristotle-vs-the-stoics-what-does-happiness-require/?utm_source=threads&utm_medium=social&utm_content=existentialism

"These Books Might Make You Happier"

"With the pandemic receding and a fraught election season looming, Americans seem more concerned than ever about mental health — yours, mine and that of the next leader of the free world. According to the C.D.C., a whopping 57.2 million Americans a year make visits to the physician where the primary diagnosis turns out to be a mental disorder. That's a whole lot of anxiety and depression.

Not surprisingly, there's a small library of titles that touch on these subjects in different ways. Most are pretty bad; I don't need to spend $30 for someone to tell me that the secret to stress reduction is a combination of affirmations, nature walks and journaling. But a few new books offer fresh approaches to seeking contentment and peace..."

nyt

Reasons to Have Hope

"More than three-quarters of Americans saythe United States is headed in the wrong direction. This year, for the first time, America dropped out of the top 20 happiest countries in the World Happiness Report. Some couples are choosing not to have children because of climate threats. And this despair permeates not just the United States, but much of the world.

This moment is particularly dispiriting because of the toxic mood. Debates about the horrifying toll of the war in Gaza have made the atmosphere even more poisonous, as the turmoil on college campuses underscores. We are a bitterly divided nation, quick to point fingers and denounce one another, and the recriminations feed the gloom. Instead of a City on a Hill, we feel like a nation in despair — maybe even a planet in despair.

Yet that's not how I feel at all.

What I've learned from four decades of covering misery is hope — both the reasons for hope and the need for hope. I emerge from years on the front lines awed by material and moral progress, for we have the good fortune to be part of what is probably the greatest improvement in life expectancy, nutrition and health that has ever unfolded in one lifetime..."

Nick Kristof

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/opinion/journalism-reporting-progress.html

Steve Gleason’s good life

What's the last great book you read?

When I was diagnosed [with ALS], one of the first questions I asked in a journal entry was, "Can I discover peace of mind, even if this disease destroys my body?" That inquiry has been a guiding light for me the past 13 years. "The Good Life: Lessons From the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness," by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, has real-life stories I could relate to, providing insights which have helped illuminate the path for me to live longer, and be grateful and content."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/books/review/steve-gleason-a-life-impossible-als.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Mary Oliver’s owlish happiness

Of Owls and Roses: Mary Oliver on Happiness, Terror, and the Sublime Interconnectedness of Life themarginalian.org

Healthy minds, flourishing lives

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by MTSU Honors College (@mtsuhonors)

  

 

POSTSCRIPT. It was pleasing to receive a group email from Dr. Evins of the Honors College, at semester's end, thanking all the faculty participants for their contributions to the Mental Health semester series. These remarks in particular gratified: 

"...It was a really really really good series, thanks to all the wonderful presenters. Truly excellent... Phil touched on so much. He brought the classics and the wisdom of the ages directly to the students in one meta Philosophy lecture. It was powerful. The students will have much to say about the many points he touched on in his lecture. And also about going outside to walk the dog :) ...Also, Tom stood up for cat culture as personal therapy, balancing out Phil very nicely. (My husband is an Epictetus guy. I myself brought Epictetus home from both Phil and Tom.)"

Cat culture? Well, whatever works. 

 

MTSU Honors Lecture Series Spring 2024, here are the links to videos from each lecture; some videos are better than others depending on who was there to be the videographer!, but much was, happily, captured:

1/22 M. Evins, Honors Intro

1/29 Michelle Stevens, MTSU Center for Fairness, Justice, and Equity

2/5 Mary Kaye Anderson, MTSU Counseling Services

2/12 Rudy Dunlap, MTSU Health and Human Performance

2/26 Seth Marshall, MTSU Psychology

3/4 Spring Break – No Classes

3/11 Sarah Harris, MTSU Nutrition and Food Science

3/18 Kent Syler, MTSU Political Science

3/25 Rev. Susan Pendleton Jones, Belmont University

4/1 Bill Dobbins, NAMI-TN

4/8 Phil Oliver, MTSU Philosophy

4/15 Honors Student Presentations: Emilie Conners, Eli Ward, Madalyn Dye

4/22 Tom Brinthaupt, MTSU Psychology

Errand of happiness

"True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out — you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand."

— Henry James

Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

Remembering speaking with Dennet in Chicago at the APA February 2020, Told him I appreciated his email correspondence back in the 90s (and then later when I asked if he could arrange a meeting with Dawkins). Sat across the aisle from him listening to Philip Kitcher and Martha Nussbaum at that meeting. 

"...I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence  is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now…" https://www.edge.org/conversation/daniel_c_dennett-thank-goodness

4 foundational harms of the phone-based childhood

"These are profound changes to childhood caused by the rapid technological shift of the early 2010s. Each one is foundational because it affects the development of multiple social, emotional, and cognitive abilities. The sheer amount of time that adolescents spend with their phones is staggering, even compared with the high levels of screen time they had before the invention of the iPhone. Studies of time use routinely find that the average teen reports spending more than seven hours a day on screen-based leisure activities (not including school and homework). The opportunity cost of a phone-based childhood refers to everything that children do less of once they get unlimited round-the-clock access to the internet. The first foundational harm is social deprivation. When American adolescents moved onto smartphones, time with friends in face-to-face settings plummeted immediately, from 122 minutes per day in 2012 down to 67 minutes per day in 2019. Time with friends dropped further because of COVID restrictions, but Gen Z was already socially distanced before COVID restrictions were put in place. The second fundamental harm is sleep deprivation. As soon as adolescents moved from basic phones to smartphones, their sleep declined in both quantity and quality, around the developed world. Longitudinal studies show that smartphone use came first and was followed by sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is extremely well studied, and its effects are far reaching. They include depression, anxiety, irritability, cognitive deficits, poor learning, lower grades, more accidents, and more deaths from accidents. The third fundamental harm is attention fragmentation. Attention is the ability to stay on one mental road while many off-ramps beckon. Staying on a road, staying on a task, is a feature of maturity and a sign of good executive function. But smartphones are kryptonite for attention. Many adolescents get hundreds of notifications per day, meaning that they rarely have five or 10 minutes to think without an interruption. There is evidence that the fragmentation of attention in early adolescence caused by problematic use of social media and video games may interfere with the development of executive function. The fourth fundamental harm is addiction. The behaviorists discovered that learning, for animals, is “the wearing smooth of a path in the brain.” The developers of the most successful social media apps used advanced behaviorist techniques to “hook” children into becoming heavy users of their products. Dopamine release is pleasurable, but it does not trigger a feeling of satisfaction. Rather, it makes you want more of whatever you did to trigger the release. The addiction researcher Anna Lembke says that the universal symptoms of withdrawal are “anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and dysphoria.” She and other researchers find that many adolescents have developed behavioral addictions that are very much like the way that people develop addictions to slot machine gambling, with profound consequences for their well-being, their social development, and their families. When we put these four foundational harms together, they explain why mental health got so much worse so suddenly as soon as childhood became phone-based."

"The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness" by Jonathan Haidt: https://a.co/eDXALS9

The key factor is commitment

"The key factor is the commitment required to make relationships work. When people are raised in a community that they cannot easily escape, they do what our ancestors have done for millions of years: They learn how to manage relationships, and how to manage themselves and their emotions in order to keep those precious relationships going. There are certainly many online communities that have found ways to create strong interpersonal commitments and a feeling of belonging, but in general, when children are raised in multiple mutating networks where they don’t need to use their real names and they can quit with the click of a button, they are less likely to learn such skills."

"The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness" by Jonathan Haidt: https://a.co/1HWOxQn

The Happiness Curve

The Happiness Curve
By Jonathan Rauch
Narrated by Robert Fass

Listen on Audible:
https://www.audible.com/pd/B077BJ992W?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp

Keep your health

https://www.threads.net/@_stoicteacher/post/C5er_xorptn/?xmt=AQGzjCrNjlYq7WlLHO06gD7-8q3Xauo3l97QmcHxz5elew

"Niksen"

bbcnews

Niksen is a Dutch wellness trend that quite literally means "doing nothing".

It first caught the attention of the world in 2019 as a way to manage stress or recover from burnout.

At the time, many people were complaining about exhaustion and depression caused by overwork and were looking for solutions.

Whereas mindfulness is about being present in the moment, niksen is more about carving out time to just be, letting your mind wander wherever it wants to go.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C5JaNKvMUYZ/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=M2M0Y2JmOTAyOA==

Companions in Misery

 Stay tuned: this philosopher may be coming to deliver an MTSU Lyceum lecture in the near future...

BY MARIANA ALESSANDRI

I had just arrived home from my summer vacation — a week in a Minnesota cabin whose brochure warned “no crabbiness allowed” — when I came upon a study that declared New York the “unhappiest city in America.” I doubt many people were surprised by the results — New Yorkers, both in lore and reality, can be hard to please, and famously outspoken about their grievances — but as a born-and-raised New Yorker, and as a philosopher, I was suspicious of how the study defined happiness.

The survey in question, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asked how “satisfied” Americans were with their lives — very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. But the National Bureau of Economic Research used the data to conclude things about their “happiness.” Some might not have minded that the terms satisfaction and happiness were used interchangeably, but I did. The study was titled “Unhappy Cities,” and the headlines that followed it came out swinging against New Yorkers.

I was certain that a person (even a New Yorker) could be both dissatisfied and happy at once, and that the act of complaining was not in fact evidence of unhappiness, but something that could in its own way lead to greater happiness.

At times like this I appreciate philosophers’ respect for words, and a number of them have argued to keep happiness separate from satisfaction. In his 1861 essay “Utilitarianism,” John Stuart Mill carefully distinguished between the two, saying that a person can be satisfied by giving the body what it craves, but that human happiness also involves motivating the intellect. This means that happiness and satisfaction will sometimes conflict, and that those of us who seek happiness, and even attain it, may still be dissatisfied. Mill considered this a good thing: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, one of history’s best-known pessimists, also believed there was more to life than satisfaction. Better to honestly describe a negative world, he believed, than to conceal it with beautiful lies. That sounds very New York.

There’s plenty to complain about when living in a big city: overcrowding, potholes, high prices, train delays, cyclists, bees. When I was growing up in Rockaway and schlepping to school in Brooklyn, it was perfectly normal to complain, and almost everyone I knew did. Our complaining was not an indicator of our level of happiness. In my experience outside the city, however, people routinely misinterpret my casual expressions of dissatisfaction as unhappiness. They consider complaining to be a sign of negativity, which they think should be replaced with positivity in order to be happy. “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all” is an example of this ubiquitous, if banal, attitude.

When I relocated to Texas, I quickly learned that kvetching about rain was no longer socially acceptable. “We need it!” became my new small-talk response to rain to avoid being dubbed a Debbie Downer. In a world where cheerfulness is applauded and grumpiness frowned upon, those who express dissatisfaction are often politely bullied to “look on the bright side” of rotten things.

In a less insufferable way, the ancient Stoics also proposed that we stop complaining, that we minimize negative emotions like sadness and anger in order to maximize joy, tranquillity and peace of mind. The former set will lead to a miserable life while the latter will lead to a good life “in accordance with nature.” They believed that misery is rooted in trying to control things that are out of our hands (wealth, honors and reputation) instead of working on those things that we do have control over (desires, aversions and opinions).

In his “Enchiridion,” Epictetus, the Greek Stoic and former slave, presents complaining, too, as pointless because it’s based on a mistaken belief that we can control the uncontrollable. Many people today agree that complaining is useless and “won’t get you anywhere.” This predominant attitude assumes that something is only useful if it can change the hard facts. My husband, for instance, recently told my toddler that crying in the car was useless because it wouldn’t get us home any faster. And people similarly tell me that it’s pointless to worry and complain about things that are out of my hands. They must think, like the Stoics, that when I finally understand and accept this, I will agree that worrying and complaining are useless.

But what if my worrying and complaining aren’t an attempt to change the laws of nature? Can it be that my negativity is still useful, that it can get me somewhere?

The 20th-century Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno didn’t recommend banishing the negative emotions or “keeping on the sunny side of life.” In “The Tragic Sense of Life” he described his anxiety over the prospect that there might be no afterlife, adding that he failed to understand people who had not once been similarly tormented by this or by the certainty of their own death.

Unamuno believed that a life worth living consists in communing with others, and that this happens most genuinely through negativity. In “My Religion,” Unamuno wrote: “Whenever I have felt a pain I have shouted and I have done it publicly” in order to “start the grieving chords of others’ hearts playing.” For Unamuno, authentic love is found in suffering with others, and negativity is necessary for compassion and understanding. If we try to deny, hide or eradicate the negative from our lives, we will be ill-equipped to deal with people who are suffering.

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COMPLAINING is useful, but we must first shatter and rebuild what “useful” means. My son is not crying in the car to get home faster; he is crying because he is trapped. When I get trapped in crummy situations I too cry, whine, complain. I get it out. I vent. I do these things because they are useful, but not the kind of useful that people usually have in mind. Usefulness doesn’t exclusively mean undoing what we don’t like about our situation; it can also mean dealing with our situation creatively. I use negativity both to change myself — to release disappointment, anger and frustration — and more important, to connect with others.

Complaining is part of our daily expression, one way that New Yorkers bond with one another. In addition to, and perhaps even more often than exchanging pleasantries, we also exchange dissatisfactions. In all of these spontaneous interactions, we acknowledge one another’s existence. Two strangers complaining on a subway platform can end up cracking a smile or laughing, and though it would hardly be considered the beginning of a lifelong friendship, it is still neighborly. Just because the topic of conversation is negative rather than positive doesn’t mean we are unhappy, and oftentimes the opposite is the case. A funny complaint from the person next to me can quickly lighten my mood, and hers. But the possibility of someone’s being a happy complainer gets lost when we equate dissatisfaction with unhappiness.

From the outside, the image of dissatisfied and complaining New Yorkers might seem to exemplify Schopenhauer’s portrait of humans as prisoners “paying the penalty of existence.” Penal imagery is neither rare nor new in philosophy. Plato called us prisoners to our bodies. The Stoics and Camus condemned us to our fate; Sartre to our freedom. But Schopenhauer’s portrait of us as broken beings sentenced to life together leads him to ethics instead of individualism. Instead of twisting free from our fellow inmates, Schopenhauer suggests that we stay put and serve our sentence collectively.

His account of others as “fellow-sufferers” in “On the Sufferings of the World” encourages us to nurture a soft spot for even the most flawed individuals. That we are all condemned to the same Sisyphean fate ought to make us compassionate instead of competitive, work together instead of in isolation, and rely on one another instead of just ourselves. While Camus, in his well-known essay on the myth, has Sisyphus suffer his punishment alone, Schopenhauer’s account of redemption through shared misery might give Sisyphus, and us, neighbors to love. Still, Camus concludes, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” And if Camus can imagine happiness for a man sentenced to an eternity of meaningless toil, perhaps we can do the same for dissatisfied New Yorkers. Whether we are grieving the death of a friend or complaining about alternate-side-of-the-street parking, I think Schopenhauer was right to call us “companions in misery,” with the emphasis on companions.

Mariana Alessandri is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Texas-Pan American.