More on Happiness

[pegkerr]

I have been mulling over this essay, which is interesting, particularly in light of my recent entry on happiness. Some meaty ideas to chew over here. Is happiness dependent upon virtue? (So why am I feeling happier now, if I'm not really back to work on the book yet?) Am finding the author's contrast of the Greco-Roman conception of happiness (springing from Aristotle) with the Christian perception quite intriguing.

And why has Boethius been cropping up in practically everything I've been reading lately? I probably need to get around to reading De Consolatione Philosophiae. Sometime. Maybe if I need a little light reading after finishing The Simarillion again.

(Yeah, I'm kidding, sorta.)

Comments

[aome.livejournal.com]

OT: Did the package ever arrive, or do I have to start shooting daggers at the Post Office?

I don't know if happiness is dependent on virtue. I think we certainly *can* be happy by getting things accomplished, but I also think you recognise that there's more to life than that, namely, your family. And things seem to be going well there - your recent posts have been about your wonderful husband and daughters you're so proud of, and I think just where you are in life, being content with what you have, is a big happiness factor.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I'm so sorry! Yes, the package did indeed arrive, and I should have thanked you promptly and properly, but I got caught up with some unexpected stuff that night and although I mean to e-mail you, it simply slipped my mind. (I'm really sorry, Deb. My mother raised me better than this.)

Yes, I loved the toad beanie baby you sent me. What a delightful joke! I laughed long and hard when I opened the package, and it's sitting on the shelf now above my desk at home. I have the recipe for the caramel brownies in my recipe box and hope to try them soon.

Thanks again.

(Yet another factor in my happiness is having great friends. Even when I do fluff-brained stuff like this and clearly don't deserve them!)

Cheers,
Peg

[pameladean]

I don't think happines is earnable, or at least, I don't think you can go do a bunch of virtuous stuff and automatically become happy as a result. I think it's a gift. As with a lot of other things, you can make sure there's somewhere to put it when it shows up, and you can make sure you recognize it when it shows up instead of having a rigid notion of what it must consist of. But I think it's orthogonal to virtue, especially conscious sweated-over virtue.

Probably, like almost everything else, this varies from person to person. So it would be more accurate for me to say that, for me, happiness is not earnable, it is a gift, and what I can do is to make sure that I recognize it when it wanders by.

Pamela

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That it varies from person to person, yes, I think that must be so. (Of course, I think that about pretty much everything.)

Laying aside the unanswerable question of whether what I feel when I say I'm happy bears any resemblance to what you feel when you say you're happy, we still are left a reasonable presumption that whether or not we are happy must be affected by our preferences and values, and those differ radically from person to person. Simply believing that happiness is a gift or that happiness is earned probably affects one's experience of it, I think. If I believe that happiness is earned, am I likely to experience a feeling as "happiness" when I've been a bad girl?

Happiness/Depression

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I'm still working my way through the essay, so thoughts on that later. Having returned to my 12 step group after 5 - 8 year absence, I'm getting reaquainted with happiness - the real kind, not the kind you get when "drunk".

If I remember correctly, in the previous post on happiness you mentioned having dealt with depression. I don't know if you know, but I've been hospitalized twice for depression, and have had it rise up and strike me in the eyes a number of times since.

My personal kind of craziness is that the reptile part of my brain equates my being depressed as shameful, which only makes it worse. The last time I had a bad run the thing I learned was that I have an "emotional allergy", and if I'm depressed I'm having a reaction to something. It's helped quite a bit.

The other wisdom I got from my dark trips through depression was that I was much more fragile than I ever thought, and much stronger than I ever believed, and that it's very good to have friends.

So, for what it's worth, that's my two cents...

[samhudson.livejournal.com]

Happiness is virtue sounds to me like a Nazi slogan, or perhaps as a Commandment (which is disturbing in itself). It rather depends on what you see as virtuous, but I have known virtuous people who are otherwise miserable, and happy people who 'live in sin'.

I tend to think that happiness is not a natural state of the human mind, anyway, given that there always seems to be something niggling away at our conscience. I find it's much easier to be happy if you don't worry about it. Maybe I'm just lucky, because I know there are people who have to work at being happy.