Povert

Ok, I got some responses to Notes on Happiness. I should clarify.

Erin made the Pollyanna comment. I don’t think that’s accurate, though it’s probably a fair reaction to what I wrote.

I didn’t mean to imply that some level of ridiculous optimism was good. I do think, though, that pessimism is not in line with reality. Neither is excessive optimism. I just think that general optimism is more productive. I’m being utilitarian here, people. I think a healthy perspective on reality is basically optimistic.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rolled my eyes when someone has claimed to be pessimistic because it means they won’t get let down. The problem is, even when you’re not let down, positive outcomes are still viewed in a pessimistic and probably coincidental light. My less polite response is that people who are pessimistic for these reasons need to grow a pair. How much sense does it make to begin a chess game with the expectation to lose? If nothing else, you should suspend judgement and assume you have a chance. Assuming you have a chance is optimistic.

Bertrand Russell did a break-down of the kinds of unhappiness that afflict people. Here they are, in a nutshell:

• Byronic Unhappiness: “It is common in our day … to suppose that those among us who are wise have seen through all the enthusiasms of earlier times and have become aware that there is nothing left to live for. The men who hold this view are genuinely unhappy, but they are proud of their unhappiness, which they attribute to the nature of the universe and consider to be the only rational attitude for an enlightened man.”
• Competition: “What people fear when they engage in the struggle is not that they will fail to get their breakfast next morning, but that they will fail to outshine their neighbors.”
• Boredom and Excitement: “Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a word, is not pleasure, but excitement. *** We have come to … believe … that boredom can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement.”
• Fatigue: “… when sound success comes, a man is already a nervous wreck, so accustomed to anxiety that he cannot shake off the habit of it when the need for it is past.”
• Envy: “Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy. Envy is, I should say, one of the most universal and deep-seated of human passions.”
• The Sense of Sin: “The word ‘conscience’ covers as a matter of fact several different feelings; the simplest of these is the fear of being found out.”
• Persecution Mania: “We are all familiar with the type of person … who, according to his own account, is perpetually the victim of ingratitude, unkindness, and treachery…. What in the end rouses the hearer’s suspicions is the multiplicity of villains whom it has been the sufferer’s ill fortune to meet with.”
• Fear of Public Opinion: “Fear of public opinion, like every other form of fear, is oppressive and stunts growth….. it is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbours, or even our relations.”

Please excuse the possibly sexist (sheesh, people) language here — he wrote it in 1958. Russell was, by most accounts, an ardent feminist.

Russell goes on to attack the foundation of these sources of unhappiness. My summary would be that we’re narcissistic and need to relax. If you want a more concise explanation, pick up “The Conquest of Happiness” by Bertrand Russell. I promise that it’s a philosophical work written for us regular folk, and not some new-age self-help BS.

I should also say that a large part of my point of view (and this should further clear up the “Pollyanna” claim) is shaped by existentialism. I don’t mean the kind of existentialism that seems to exist in the popular imagination. That conception is that life is dreary and that we’re all worthless, pointless and doomed. That’s not the point at all. It’s actually quite optimistic in that it places the onus of achieving happiness on the individual. It posits that we all determine our own experience, that we don’t need to depend on others to make us truly happy. Being able to count on people is fine, of course, but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.