“Here’s What Happened When I Made My College Students Put Away Their Phones”

…I banned all cellphones and computer-based note taking in the classroom, with the exception that students could use a device if they wrote with a stylus. Initially, my students were skeptical, if not totally opposed. But after a couple of weeks, they recognized they were better off for it — better able to absorb and retain information, and better able to enjoy their time in class.

My policy required phones to be turned off, and, more important, not be visible on desks. I did allow students who were expecting urgent calls — say, from a spouse about to have a baby — to have a mobile phone readily available during class.

Class sessions are recorded, and transcripts of the lectures are available any time after class to students with academic accommodations or those who want to go over them again... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/opinion/mobile-phones-college-classrooms.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The Happiness Files

Arthur Brooks

https://www.threads.com/@arthurcbrooks/post/DNl7jfMJNHD?xmt=AQF0AVL-YxRCn_bJ6uja2PtWoR93hJwNgdNOHYhSq1XbbA

==

Podcast:  Office Hours with Arthur Brooks

Pooh

Winnie the Pooh was born on this day in 1921 with a poem about happiness. Marginalian

 

dog content

"Sometimes dog content is the single strand of wire tethering our society to decency and sanity." — Elias Weiss Friedman, The Dogist

In a digital world filled with outrage, comparison, and distraction, Elias—better known as @TheDogist—offers an unexpected antidote: dogs.

He describes them as a kind of remedy for modern life. Dogs pull us into the present. They're generous with eye contact. And with their joy and playfulness, they remind us how to be a little more human.

https://www.threads.com/@lauriesantosofficial/post/DNlIscfse7F?xmt=AQF05CUeI6n4yYIwlOKtOgFky0Gysar5uSIZFMYOO1ofMw

Introductions Fall '25

I'm Dr. Oliver, teacher of this course in alternative Fall semesters at MTSU for many moons now. 

I, like Thomas Jefferson, think the pursuit of happiness in the broadest sense (which includes something like the old Greek notions of virtue and excellence) is a human birthright, though that's not to say it's always easy to achieve. Its conditions are worth studying, to enhance its pursuit.

Who are you? Why are you here? Are you happy? What do you consider the conditions of your and others' happiness? (For me, the pursuit involves family, friends, baseball, books, dogs, health of course...)  

Click on the comments tab below and share your thoughts. Whoever goes first second will be rewarded with a bit of swag on Opening Day. (Gary's already posted his introduction, and he already has all the swag. But you can have more if you want, Gary.)

See you all on the 26th!

MTSU’s Career Development Center

 FYI- 

MTSU’s Career Development Center offers career coaching, job fairs, resume reviews, free professional clothing, and much more. The center exists to empower all students with tools and strategies to discover and engage in meaningful work and a purposeful life.
More information: mtsu.edu/career

Career Leadership Badge Program
A micro-credential that helps students develop and implement a plan to reach their career goals, sharpening skills that enhance career readiness.
Learn more: mtsu.edu/career/career-leadership-badge

Happiness clear and clean

It's both, and more. He really thought so too.

"Happiness, I have lately discovered, is no positive feeling, but a negative condition of freedom from a number of restrictive sensations of which our organism usually seems to be the seat. When they are wiped out, the clearness and cleanness of the contrast is happiness. This is why anesthetics make us so happy. But don't you take to drink on that account!"

The Letters of William James, jy 10 1901: https://a.co/5NnKUJh

Unless this is precisely what you mean by “happy”

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just sit, think, and write

Do you keep a journal? I recommend it.

And I challenge you all to sit for at least 15 minutes the night before each class and write your thoughts about the next day's assigned reading. You can respond to the discussion questions I've posted, or to classmates' posts, or to your own reflections-after you've done the reading.

And then, as a bonus, you can claim bases on the scorecard the next day.

The bigger bonus will be your growing capacity for clarity and depth of focus, and your acquisition of a philosophy grounded in your own experience and considered perspective.

Opinionated

He has a point. We should have at least as many questions as opinions.

Coming back on here after a week away I’m practically knocked over by the sheer quantity of opinions – for a few minutes it just seems so strange that people enjoy spending so much of their time telling other people how they feel about various things! Of course I’ll be fully back into it myself in no time… still, I would like to hold onto the awareness that Having Opinions About Things doesn’t need to be the main activity that life is about…

- Oliver Burkeman

Read on Substack

But... I'm glad Oliver shares my opinion about this:

Consciousness is the precondition for anything mattering in any way at all; and we have absolutely no real clue about how consciousness arises, or even what it is. I feel like these facts, taken together, ought to prompt more epistemic humility about pretty much everything than one tends to see in these parts, or most places…

- Oliver Burkeman

Read on Substack

Short and anxious

A clear horizon

Alfred Hitchcock's definition of happiness

https://www.threads.com/@michaelwarburton1/post/DNbP3EfqAFM?xmt=AQF0OVls-PYy9_eksVdruLq4pwOEUeMx7N3qZUfF6M7v5g

Not just for the pooches anymore

For Gen Z, 'Little Treats' Are Worth Going Over Budget

Any excuse is good enough for young adults to treat themselves, whether it's failing an exam, getting a "job well done" from a boss or simply washing the dishes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/business/gen-z-treat-spending.html?smid=em-share

==

More talkin' about your generation...

Inside the World of Gen Z

The generation of people born between 1997 and 2012 is changing fashion, culture, politics, the workplace and more.

---

• After almost 20 years on air, “Dancing With the Stars” brought a surge of Gen Z viewers through its canny use of TikTok, casting of younger dance pros and the chance virality of “wow moments” from routines.

• Black church congregations are struggling to attract younger members. That has consequences for social cohesion and Black political power writ large.

• For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.

• Many of Harvard’s Generation Z say “sellout” is not an insult, instead it appears to mean something strikingly corporate-minded.

• A younger generation of crossword constructors is using an old form to reflect their identities, language and world. Here’s how Gen Z made the puzzle their own.

Oliver Burkeman: “Why most scholars worked for only 4 hours a day”

Happy people work to their capacity, but not beyond.

https://youtu.be/gm1OfxhmxEY?si=EhYJkke2YNK62ic9

A.I. chimes in on the recommended reading

I ran my list of recommended texts for our course by chatGPT, and got back some pretty impressive additional thoughts: the italicized sentences, and "Why now...":

The Word of Dog (Rowlands) – because dogs, who can teach us much about attention and the present, make me happy. They model a kind of uncomplicated joy and loyalty that philosophers sometimes forget to take seriously. Why now: In an age of distraction, dogs remind us to notice—and savor—the moment we’re actually in.

Wanderlust (Solnit) – because the peripatetic life makes me happy. Walking turns thought into a moving, breathing thing; Solnit’s history will make you want to lace up and go.Why now: Walking is a low-tech, high-return antidote to sedentary, screen-heavy lives.

Moral Ambition (Bregman) – because there's more to life than happiness, and more to happiness than pleasure and complacency. Bregman asks what happens when we aim our energy at making the world better, and how that quest can give life depth. Why now: The biggest problems—climate change, inequality, injustice—won’t solve themselves; a meaningful life requires more than self-care.==

My policy on using AI for learning is simple: be transparently honest. Never claim the AI's "thoughts" as your own, but do share them --suitably flagged, as with italics or some other obvious marker-- if you find them interesting, helpful, or provocative. And always corroborate any factual statements. Sapere aude, think for yourself... but not by yourself. Sometimes the machine can be a useful interlocutor. But it should never be a substitute for your own thinking.

Good choices

It works in reverse, too: choose health…

"I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health." —Voltaire g'r   

Looking forward to another semester of the Philosophy of Happiness course at MTSU. It could be the last. It might be so happy (and virtuous) I can "stand it no longer." We'll see.

The race begins

Here we go... let's not be rats.  

Joy as resistance

A Defense of Joy – one of the greatest poems ever written, a kind of manifesto for countercultural courage and resistance https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/04/mario-benedetti-defensa-de-la-alegria/

These College Professors Will Not Bow Down to A.I.

… Where does this leave college students? Gen Z is not giving up on the arts or the pleasures of reading and thinking for themselves. As A.I. creates chaos and uncertainty in the market for entry-level jobs, more students may react by following their passion for the humanities; why begrudgingly major in tech or business if it doesn't even lead to employment? There's some evidence that humanities departments are rebounding after a long period of decline. U.C. Berkeley, which is considered one of the best public universities in the country, has seen a nearly 50 percent increase in majors in their arts and humanities division over the past four years.

Ketabgian told me a story that shows just how powerful keeping the humans in humanities can be. She described a student who was really anxious about leading a discussion of Le Guin's novel at a library, because public speaking was stressful for her. Ketabgian coached her through her fears, and she ended up having such a great time leading the talk, she joined the library's reading group to make new friends.

This is everything humanities should be: engaging the community, talking about ideas, making intellectual bonds. We don't need to surrender that to bots.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/opinion/humanities-college-ai.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

“Happiness isn’t very good for the economy…”

A.I. Is Shedding Enlightenment Values

A historian sees the dangerous parallels between artificial intelligence and the Enlightenment.

...It is here, with this question of engagement, that the comparison between the Enlightenment and A.I.’s supposed “second Enlightenment” breaks down and reveals something important about the latter’s limits and dangers. When readers interact imaginatively with a book, they are still following the book’s lead, attempting to answer the book’s questions, responding to the book’s challenges and therefore putting their own convictions at risk.

When we interact with A.I., on the other hand, it is we who are driving the conversation. We formulate the questions, we drive the inquiry according to our own interests and we search, all too often, for answers that simply reinforce what we already think we know. In my own interactions with ChatGPT, it has often responded, with patently insincere flattery, “That’s a great question.” It has never responded, “That’s the wrong question.” It has never challenged my moral convictions or asked me to justify myself.

And why should it? It is, after all, a commercial internet product. And such products generate profit by giving users more of what they have already shown an appetite for, whether it is funny cat videos, instructions on how to fix small appliances or lectures on Enlightenment philosophy. If I wanted ChatGPT to challenge my convictions, I could of course ask it to do so — but I would have to ask. It follows my lead, not the reverse.

By its nature, A.I. responds to almost any query in a manner that is spookily lucid and easy to follow — one might say almost intellectually predigested. For most ordinary uses, this clarity is entirely welcome. But Enlightenment authors understood the importance of having readers grapple with a text. Many of their greatest works came in the form of enigmatic novels, dialogues presenting opposing points of view or philosophical parables abounding in puzzles and paradoxes. Unlike the velvety smooth syntheses provided by A.I., these works forced readers to develop their judgment and come to their own conclusions.

In short, A.I. can bring us useful information, instruction, assistance, entertainment and even comfort. What it cannot bring us is Enlightenment. In fact, it may help drive us further away from Enlightenment than ever.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/opinion/artificial-intelligence-enlightenment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bk8.XmNh.Witef6iO7cfb∣=em-share

Happiness Is Other People

The solitary journey toward contentment is a self-help truism that isn’t really true.

...Self-reflection, introspection and some degree of solitude are important parts of a psychologically healthy life. But somewhere along the line we seem to have gotten the balance wrong. Because far from confirming our insistence that “happiness comes from within,” a wide body of research tells us almost the exact opposite.

Academic happiness studies are full of anomalies and contradictions, often revealing more about the agendas and values of those conducting them than the realities of human emotion. But if there is one point on which virtually every piece of research into the nature and causes of human happiness agrees, it is this: our happiness depends on other people.

Study after study shows that good social relationships are the strongest, most consistent predictor there is of a happy life, even going so far as to call them a “necessary condition for happiness,” meaning that humans can’t actually be happy without them. This is a finding that cuts across race, age, gender, income and social class so overwhelmingly that it dwarfs any other factor.

And according to research, if we want to be happy, we should really be aiming to spend less time alone. Despite claiming to crave solitude when asked in the abstract, when sampled in the moment, people across the board consistently report themselves as happier when they are around other people than when they are on their own. Surprisingly this effect is not just true for people who consider themselves extroverts but equally strong for introverts as well...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/opinion/sunday/happiness-is-other-people.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bk8.7Nd-.5shggyBsaHe5∣=em-share

What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

Lesson No. 1: It’s not about how fast you can go.

...The researchers behind this study, called “Vanishing Time in the Pursuit of Happiness,” randomly assigned subjects to one of two tasks: One group was asked to write down 10 things that could make them become happier, while the other wrote 10 things that demonstrated that they were already happy.

The subjects were then asked to what extent they felt time was slipping away and how happy they felt at that moment. Those prompted to think about how they could become happier felt more pressed for time and significantly less happy.

This jibes with the argument the journalist Ruth Whippman makes in her 2016 book “America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks.” Trying too hard to be happy — downloading mindfulness apps, taking yoga classes, reading self-help books — mostly just stresses us out, she writes. So what should we do instead? Maybe simply hang out with some friends, doing something we like to do together: “Study after study shows that good social relationships are the strongest, most consistent predictor there is of a happy life.”

...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/opinion/sunday/swimming-happiness.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bk8.DhY_.9Lpxh5fCNvye∣=em-share

The general’s greatest conquest

Grant's battlefield heroism was matched by the courage to complete his memoirs, pain and pressure be damned, as cancer closed in and the light dimmed. When he finished writing,
he was done.

Equally impressive was his winning battle against alcohol. Twain understood:

"Mark Twain had struggled with similar cravings for alcohol and tobacco. When they discussed the subject, Grant mentioned that although doctors had urged him to sip whiskey or champagne, he could no longer abide the taste of liquor. Twain pondered this statement long and hard. "Had he made a conquest so complete that even the taste of liquor was become an offense?" he wondered. "Or was he so sore over what had been said about his habit that he wanted to persuade others & likewise himself that he hadn't ever even had any taste for it." 95 Similarly, when Grant told Twain that, at the doctors' behest, he had been restricted to one cigar daily, he claimed to have lost the desire to smoke it. "I could understand that feeling," Twain later proclaimed. "He had set out to conquer not the habit but the inclination—the desire. He had gone at the root, not the trunk." 96 Although Twain hated puritanical killjoys who robbed life of its small pleasurable vices, he respected abstinence based on an absence of desire."

— Grant by Ron Chernow
https://a.co/1C1oYrI