Sunday, September 3, 2023
Saturday, September 2, 2023
Joy
Maybe we should assemble our own class list of joy? Anybody want to start us up, in the comments section below?
Readers Share What Has Brought Them Joy in 2023
You've danced in the rain, dived off a cliff, planted a native garden and savored other delightful moments.
As I wrote the last time I published a batch of these notes, I've been trying to cultivate more delight in my life as an antidote to what often feels like a torrent of bad news. One way to do that is simply to acknowledge the small joys in our lives, like a glowing full moon, a particularly ripe peach or the perfect, hard-to-capture photo of your pet... nyt
Changes in attitude
James William Buffett is gone at 76. At 66 I "don't do the things I used to do" either, and I too "still have a very happy life"...
He made so many people happy. We won't hear as much about the ones made miserable by an addictive, dissolute lifestyle romanticized by a talented son of a son of the beach.
But I still acknowledge and affirm the "moral holiday"* dimension of his life and work, as I did in Open Court's volume exploring the Parrotthead "lifestyle" and mindset. We do "have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way" (Pragmatism), I'd just like to achieve it non-self-destructively. I'd like to exceed 76 and enjoy good health, clarity, energy, happiness, and freedom doing it.
*
But I still acknowledge and affirm the "moral holiday"* dimension of his life and work, as I did in Open Court's volume exploring the Parrotthead "lifestyle" and mindset. We do "have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way" (Pragmatism), I'd just like to achieve it non-self-destructively. I'd like to exceed 76 and enjoy good health, clarity, energy, happiness, and freedom doing it.
"…By the time he wrote "Tales from Margaritaville" (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he had previously embraced.So like him, I don't do the things I used to do either. Not piracy, drug-running, and Margaritas (much), in my case, but bourbon and beer. They held their charms. The possibility of a longer future, preferably longer than just another decade, now holds more.
'I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy," he told The Washington Post in 1989. "I'm not old, but I'm getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun — all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.'
'I still have a very happy life,' he went on. 'I just don't do the things I used to do.'" nyt
Smooth sailing, JWB. Our Margaritaville flag out by the pool will fly at half-staff for you. You're really "licensed to chill" now.
*
Friday, September 1, 2023
Closing the gap
Questions SEP 5
Posting early this week so you can take Labor Day (Monday) off...
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):
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Old Podcast
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"Brad's Status" on Fresh Air - a new film on status anxiety and the pursuit of elusive happiness.
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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.
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/
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And speaking of Buddhists, Robert Wright's audacioiusly-titled Why Buddhism is True tackles the western secular version as a philosophy of happiness.
From Garrison Keillor 9 1 2023
I walk 12 blocks home in New York and I have never condemned anyone to eternal damnation. Never. I watch very carefully for e-bikes in the bike lanes, riders who may not stop at red lights but I do not ask that eternal torment be thrust upon them. If one of them ran me down and I had to spend weeks or months of my limited lifespan recovering from injury, I might consider asking for some form of torment such as 15 to 30 days in the slammer but nothing of an eternal brimstone nature. I walk home in a spirit of love. This is the politics of happiness.
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