Questions Sep 2

 Haybron ch3-4, Life Satisfaction & Measuring Happiness

1. Is satisfaction with your life the same as thinking it's going well?

2. Does rating your life satisfaction provide reliably objective insight into your degree of happiness?

3. In what sense do "most people actually have good lives"?

4. Can the science of happiness tell us which groups tend to be happier?

5. What (verbally-expressed, non-numerical) ratio of positive over negative emotional states does happiness probably require?

6. What percentage of American college students said they'd considered suicide?

Discussion Questions (please add yours):

• Are you having wonderful life, like Wittgenstein allegedly said he did? 34
• Today, right now, where would you rate your life on a 1-10 scale? What do you think that rating says about your satisfaction and your happiness? How much has it, or will it, fluctuate in the days, weeks, and years to come?
• Do you have a good life? What will they say about you at your funeral? Will you be gratified if your children have a life comparable to yours?
• Could you be happy in Maldonia? 42 In general, are you more or less happy than the people around you?
• Do you agree with Mill's statement?  46
• Which face on the chart is yours today? 47
• Is it "impossible that 94% of Americans are happy"? 50
• 
  

==
Old Podcast
==
"Brad's Status" on Fresh Air - a new film on status anxiety and the pursuit of elusive happiness.
==
How do you Measure Happiness? The Top Questionnaires


Measuring happiness is at least as difficult as catching rare and elusive butterflies. What kind of net should we use? At the Pursuit of Happiness project, we try to collect and analyze the most scientific studies on happiness and subjective well-being (SWB). The question is, how does one evaluate what the most “scientific” studies are? Naturally, randomized and controlled studies are more reliable. These kinds of studies often require an enormous amount of effort and funding, and many studies that claim to do this are flawed in various ways.


One more major challenge to reliability is how these studies measure the happiness or SWB of their subjects. The following is a list of the most widely used and respected questionnaires. As you can see, we can discover some major differences in how they approach the issue, which reflect different definitions and perceptions of happiness.

Chasing it may not work, but neither does sitting and waiting.

Oxford Happiness Inventory (Argyle and Hill)


Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky & Lepper)

Satisfaction with Life Scale (Deiner, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin)

Panas Scale (Watson, Clark, Tellegen)

And this is Todd Kashdan’s thoughtful critique of the above scales:

The assessment of subjective well-being (issues raised by the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire)

We should mention a recent measurement of Subjective Well Being created by the OECD, as part of their very sophisticated and broad ranging survey, theBetter Life Initiative. This initiative is fascinating and includes some eye-popping graphics. To see their detailed report on SWB and the questions they used to measure it, please refer to the end note.

The strong point of both the Panas Scale and the OECD Subjective Well Being scale is that they measure both positive and negative affect, which, as one might expect, have a clear inverse correlation.

http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/science-of-happiness/measuring-happiness/
==

And speaking of Buddhists, Robert Wright's audacioiusly-titled Why Buddhism is True tackles the western secular version as a philosophy of happiness.

Honors College workshops

From Judy Albakry:

We’d greatly appreciate your help in promoting our upcoming Honors College workshops.

These sessions are essential for honors students who wish to be approved for early registration this fall for Spring 2026 registration. If students are unable to attend the workshop, there is a video they can watch instead.

 

While we’ve been reaching out via email, a brief announcement in your class would go a long way in ensuring students don’t miss this opportunity.

 

Early Registration Workshops – No RSVP needed

• September 4, 2025, 2:30 in HONR 106
• September 5, 2025, 1:00 in HONR 106
• September 5, 2025, 2:00 in HONR 106

Remind students to:

Check their MTSU email for workshop details

Contact their honors advisor with any questions

 

The A.I. Cheating Crisis

Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis.

Since A.I. has made the mental effort of writing and problem solving optional, universities need new ways to require the work needed for learning.

I remember the moment I knew my approach to student use of artificial intelligence was not working.

Early in a meeting at N.Y.U.'s Abu Dhabi campus last fall, a philosophy professor, arms crossed over his chest, told me he'd tried one of the strategies my office had suggested — talking with his students about the ways A.I. could interfere with their learning — and it hadn't worked. His students had listened politely, then several of them had used A.I. to write their papers anyway. He particularly wanted me to know that "even the good students," the ones who showed up to class wanting to talk about the readings, were using A.I. to avoid work outside class.

This was a theme I'd hear over and over, listening to faculty members across disciplines at the end of the semester; even some of the students who obviously cared about the material and seemed to like the classes were no longer doing the hard work of figuring out what they wanted to say. Our A.I. strategy had assumed that encouraging engaged uses of A.I. — telling students they could use software like ChatGPT to generate practice tests to quiz themselves, explore new ideas or solicit feedback — would persuade students to forgo the lazy uses. It did not...

Clay Shirky

More on the peripatetic life

Gymnasiums of the Mind

"Followers of the Greek Aristotle were known as peripatetics because they passed their days strolling and mind-wrestling through the groves of the Academe. The Romans’ equally high opinion of walking was summed up pithily in the Latin proverb: [Solvitur ambulando] “It is solved by walking.” Nearly every philosopher-poet worth his salt has voiced similar sentiments. Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind.

In order that he might remain one of the fittest, Charles Darwin planted a 1.5 acre strip of land with hazel, birch, privet, and dogwood, and ordered a wide gravel path built around the edge. Called Sand-walk, this became Darwin’s ‘thinking path’ where he roamed every morning and afternoon with his white fox-terrier. Of Bertrand Russell, long-time friend Miles Malleson has written: “Every morning Bertie would go for an hour’s walk by himself, composing and thinking out his work for that day. He would then come back and write for the rest of the morning, smoothly, easily and without a single correction.”

None of these laggards, however, could touch Friedrich Nietzsche, who held that “all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” Rising at dawn, Nietzsche would stalk through the countryside till 11 a.m. Then, after a short break, he would set out on a two-hour hike through the forest to Lake Sils. After lunch he was off again, parasol in hand, returning home at four or five o’clock, to commence the day’s writing...

Walking, as both a mode of transportation and a recreational activity, began to fall off noticeably with the rise of the automobile, and took a major nosedive in the 1950s. Fifty plus years of automobile-centric design has reduced the number of sidewalks and pedestrian-friendly spaces to a bare minimum (particularly in the American west). All of the benefits of walking: contemplation, social intercourse, exercise, have been willingly exchanged for the dubious advantages of speed and convenience, although the automobile alone cannot be blamed for the maddening acceleration of everyday life. The modern condition is one of hurry, a perpetual rush hour that leaves little time for meditation. No wonder then that in her history of walking, Rebecca Solnit mused that “modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness,” which seems the antithesis of Wittgenstein’s observation that in the race of philosophy, the prize goes to the slowest.

If we were to compare the quantity and quality of thinkers of the early 20th century with those of today, one cannot help but notice the dearth of Einsteins, William Jameses, Eliots and Pounds, Freuds, Jungs, Keynes, Picassos, Stravinskys, Wittgensteins, Sartres, Deweys, Yeats and Joyces..."

Christopher Orlet, Philosophy Now 

Does Modern Life Sometimes Feel Hollow?

Our Good Life author has a Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertwaldinger/p/does-modern-life-sometimes-feel-hollow?r=35ogp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Learning to care

“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look - I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring - caring deeply and passionately, really caring - which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté - the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball - seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”

― Roger Angell, Game Time: A Baseball Companion

"Small stuff"

 

"An idea for a short story about, um, people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real, unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves cos it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about... the universe. Let's... Well, it has to be optimistic. Well, all right, why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile. Like what? OK... for me... Ooh, I would say Groucho Marx, to name one thing. And Willie Mays. And... the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony. And... Louis Armstrong's recording of Potato Head Blues. Swedish movies, naturally. Sentimental Education by Flaubert. Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Those incredible apples and pears by C?anne. The crabs at Sam Wo's. Tracy's face..."

Questions Aug 28

Some of these questions will likely turn up (in one form or another) on our first exam. Reply to any of the discussion questions you like, in the comments space. OR, come up with your own comments and/or questions. Try to post at least three separate comments/questions/links prior to each class, in the comments space below.

ch1
1. Who has frequently been held up by philosophers as a paradigm of happiness?

2. What nation did Gallup find to be happiest in terms of daily experience?

3. What does Haybron say will most likely NOT be on your deathbed list of things you'd like to experience again before you go?

4. What was Aristotle's word for happiness, and what did he particularly not mean by it?

5. Which of Haybron's three happiness theories is not mainly concerned with feelings?

6. Why does Haybron consider "subjective well-being" unhelpful?


ch2
7. How does the author's Dad describe existence "on the Pond"?

8. What does Big Joe the commercial fisherman feel at the end of his working day, and how does he feel generally?

9. Your posture or stride reveals something deeper than what?

10. The author says moments like the one depicted in the photo on p.18 involve no what?

11. Who developed the notion of flow?

12. Tranquility, confidence, and expansiveness are aspects of what state of mind/body?

13. Though your temperament may be more or less fixed, your ___ may be more or less prone to change with circumstances.

14. What famous western Buddhist says happiness is an optimal state of being, much more than a feeling?

Discussion Questions (please add your own)

• Do you often, or ever, experience a state of mindless meditation? Are you happy in those moments? Or must such moments recur regularly over the course of a lifetime before such a judgment would be appropriate?
• How often do you find yourself fully engaged and absorbed in what you're doing? Do you think you could learn to experience such a state of being more frequently and reliably?
• How much attention do you pay to your posture and bodily presentation? When striding confidently do you feel more confident, when sitting erect do you feel more competent? Can acting happy make you happy?
• This isn't how most philosophers would define "rationality," but what do you think of it as a description of happiness? "When enjoying plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which we might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say anything about ourselves at such times, " I am sufficient as I am." This feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment, of its absoluteness, — this absence of all need to explain it, account for it, or justify it, — is what I call the Sentiment of Rationality. As soon, in short, as we are enabled from any cause whatever to think with perfect fluency, the thing we think of seems to us pro tanto rational." William James
• Do you ever experience "flow," when your absorption in a task makes the experience of the passage of time drop away? Did you experience that more when younger? (Could that be what the poet Wordsworth was talking about when he referred to intimations of immortality in childhood?)
• How do you manage your bad moods? Does it work for you to try and ignore them, and just get on with your day? Or have you learned the Stoic/Vulcan art of distancing yourself from all moods? Is it possible to achieve selective distancing, drawing closer to happy moods and away from bad ones?
• Who's the happiest person you know? What have you learned from observing them?
• Do you agree that there's never been a better time to be alive? 1 (Steven Pinker in Better Angels of Our Nature, for one, says life's never been better.)
• "Life is good" - agree? What hypothetical circumstances in your life do you imagine might reverse your opinion?
• Do you think many poor communities are happier than the average college student? 3
• How important is health, and healthcare, in your conception of happiness? 7
• Do we need a theory or definition of happiness? 10
• What do you think of Aristotle's approach? 11
• Do you have views about eastern (eg, Buddhist) approaches to happiness?
• Can you be a genuinely happy individual in an unhappy society? 13

New life

"Men talk much of a new birth. The fact is fundamental. But the mistake is in treating it as an incident which can only happen to a man once in a lifetime; whereas the whole journey of life is a succession of them. A new life springs up in the soul with the discovery of every new agency by which the soul is raised to a higher level of wisdom, goodness and joy."

— Frederick Douglass, "Lecture on Pictures (1861)"

Kurt’s rule

Every day, we face the choice to react with cruelty or kindness. Here's what happens to our mood and well-being when we decide to be good to others.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meditation-for-modern-life/202508/want-to-be-happy-start-by-being-kind

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!

E-texts free via library

Suzanne Mangrum of the Walker Library reports that at least one of our texts is available for free (via the library) in e-text formats:

Against happiness

https://ezproxy.mtsu.edu/login?url=https://www.degruyterbrill.com/isbn/9780231557962


She also says: "To see more about the library’s effort to support students and faculty in offering affordable course materials, please check out our web page and new affordable course materials search."

Note also that most of our texts are available in Kindle ebook and audible audio formats, and can often be accessed for free via the public library (in Nashville, use the Libby app in connection with your public library card).

Haybron's Very Short Intro to Happiness--excerpt

 

 Some old posts about Haybron's Happiness...

“Life is good”

So said the Amazonian Piraha people, according to Daniel Everett, before it became a popular marketing slogan.

Happiness (the class) begins for real today with Daniel Haybron’s Very Short Introduction, which includes that epigramatic reference to the Pirahas and then tells us that Socrates – so often exalted as a paradigmatically happy man, right up until the hemlock kicked in, in his 70th year – “didn’t miss out on a thing.” Well, he missed out on his 71st. Life might have been better, certainly longer.

Was Socrates happier than the average college student? “You might think the typical college student lives in a state of bliss,” with minimal obligations and maximal opportunities to ruminate, socialize, and party, but apparently that would be wrong. How many of them are living the examined life? Ignorance is perhaps not bliss, after all? But what about enlightened Socratic ignorance? Either way, American students are apparently less happy than we thought.

Panama is most blissful, evidently. Or was. More recent results point elsewhere. Denmark? Iceland? (I think I recall Eric Weiner’s Geography of Bliss giving them high marks.)

One way to chart our happiness index is to ask what’s on your bucket list. Another: what’s not on your deathbed list of things you just have to do one more time. Maybe not “another peck at the mobile phone, or one more trip to the mall.” Maybe you won’t wish you’d bought more crap.

“What sort of life ultimately benefits a person,” wondered Aristotle. What, not shopping or iPhoning? How many of us can even imagine how bizarre those activities would seem to an old Greek philosopher?

A young Intro student yesterday told me it was his impression that philosophy was mostly about pondering and pontificating on our feelings. But Haybron quickly withdraws feeling theories from the field, in favor of “life satisfaction.” But don’t confuse that with “subjective well-being,” a catch-all of psychologism he says we mustn't confuse with our real quarry.

Has there really never been a better time to be alive? I wouldn’t have said the first decade of this millennium was the best ever, but it depends on the yardstick. Steven Pinker’s Better Angels makes the case for our good luck.

Many indigenous peoples say the only thing they envy about the western industrial lifestyle is healthcare (and we know how fraught that is). William James told his friend Schiller to “keep your health, your splendid health – it’s worth all the truths in the firmament.” Hard not to agree, especially after a bout with serious illness. If you’ve not experienced that, by the time you reach “a certain age,” you’re even luckier than most.

Haybron says “we need a theory – a definition – of happiness.” Do we? What do you mean, we? We philosophers? We authors? We moderns? We shoppers and social media fanatics? Why can’t we be happily undefined and atheoretical? Presumably because the absence of a good theoretical framework leaves us in the wrong “state of mind.”

Happiness is a state of mind, for sure, but it’s even more a state of experience and expectation. No?

8.31.17

A happy atheist

"I want to show people, look, the magic of life as evolved, that's thrilling!" says philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. "You don't need miracles."

"...In his new memoir, I've Been Thinking, Dennett, a professor emeritus at Tufts University and author of multiple books for popular audiences, traces the development of his worldview, which he is keen to point out is no less full of awe or gratitude than that of those more inclined to the supernatural. 'I want people to see what a meaningful, happy life I've had with these beliefs," says Dennett, who is 81. "I don't need mystery...'" nyt

---

UPDATE. Dennett died in April 2024. His memoir is terrific.

Philosophy students flourish

Turns out studying philosophy is actually valuable. Philosophy majors don't just argue well, they actually become better thinkers and do better on tests.

Data from 600k students shows they outscore every other major on reasoning, curiosity and open-mindedness.

https://buff.ly/tDBEvuF

“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

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