Dan Minette wrote:
>>A great many of the people I know are not happy.
>
>Well, I think that the bar for happiness has been raised from what it was 50
>years ago or 100 years ago. Back 100 years ago, people worried about where
>they would live, having enough food, whether this cough or cut would turn
>into death for a loved one. I don't think they worried about whether they
>were happy; they took what life gave them and moved on.
Eh. Heh. You don't read much Victorian literature, do you?
I admit that, from studying the literature of this and numerous other
periods, Americans have a truly massive and fairly unnatural obsession
with "happiness." The Victorians, for example, were much more obsessed
with duty and spiritual enlightenment; the folk of the Renaissance with
beauty. The Restoration, on the other hand, was back to happiness and sex
again, although not to our degree in happiness. (But worse in sex. Do not
study the Restoration if you have a problem with graphical descriptions
of sex. In particular premature ejaculation poetry- but I degress, rather
seriously.)
But people have *always* worried about being happy. People have written,
and done, and said, and thought about countless things involving "true"
happiness, momentary happiness, marital happiness, pleasure vs.
happiness, and on and on and on until you just want to crawl under the
desk with your hands over your ears. We think about it too much- but so
has everyone else, throughout history. We're just taking it <sigh>
further yet.
>Well, you certainly paint a much darker picture than I experience. Let me
>suggest a couple of reasons for this:
>
>1) You may be matching reality against the ideal. We all fall short of
>that.
>
>2) Happiness is not constant pleasure. Life is full of frustrations, one
>needs to find the joy of life in the midst of these frustrations.
>
>3) You may be hearing the complaints of people without fathoming the source
>of their joy. Kvetching seems to be a national pastime, but it doesn't
>necessarily mean that there is no joy in people's lives.
>
>4) Your sample set is different from mine. I come from a family of deep
>faith and have married into one. The faith that we share is a foundation
>that we can stand on in good times and in bad.
All of these things are undoubtably part of the problem to varying
degrees. Let me try to explain what I mean by happiness.
I'm often unhappy. I'm also often happy, though. These things don't have
a damn thing to do with the overall state of my life and generally more
reflect something that's just happened, the weather, the time of month,
whether I've had a decent feed recently, et cetera. Generally I ignore
mood swings.
"Happy" as I apply it in general to my life means:
I have a definate end in mind;
It's an end I can, with a certain amount of work, achieve;
I'm working toward that end, and
I'm pretty much enjoying what I do while I'm getting there.
At the moment, for example, I'm only sort of happy, because although I'm
ok on the first three I'm pretty sick of college and drawing a bit of a
blank on number four. The people I've identified as "unhappy" aren't
necessarily complaining a lot. It's more that they don't seem to have
some- in a lot of cases *any*- of the things above going for them. They
have a goal in mind but they don't think they can get there; their goal
is unachievable or unrealistic; they're not actually working towards that
goal but towards some goal set by their families or their society;
they're unhappy with what they're doing at the moment but don't dare stop
because of the disapproval of others. This last bit is healthy enough if
something like, say, college is involved- less healthy if it's your
*job*, your life, and something you'll be doing forever.
A lot of people I know are in this situation, and not just people my age.
A good judge of this isn't to ask "are you happy?" because the answer
tends to rely on the aforesaid mood swings. Ask instead "So, what are you
doing? What are your plans?" The degree of vagueness and the tone in
which this question is answered is usually a pretty safe judge.
>>(How many kids my age have honestly told
>> me they didn't believe their parents had had sex since they were
>> concieved? Sex isn't a measure of happiness, but still, there's something
>> wrong there.)
>
>ROTFL. I think this is funny, not because a lack of a sex life is not a
>sign of problems in a relationship (physical difficulties excluded of
>course), but at the idea that kids really know what their parent's sex life
>is like. I would suggest that kids have about as much trouble accepting the
>sexuality of their parents as parents have accepting the sexuality of their
>kids. We are fairly open about things in our family, and our kids yell
>"shut up shut up, I don't want to hear this" if we broach the subject in the
>most appropriate and delicate matter possible.
Eh heh, you're talking to someone who, with her brother, once laid down
the law "No French kissing in the kitchen." Ew. And my boyfriend once
staggered in in a state of shock because he'd walked in and caught my dad
pinching my mom's butt. These things didn't happen in his house,
apparently.
More seriously (can we be *serious* about this subject? Is it even
*possible*?) I've had people tell me their parents slept in seperate
beds, had told them they never had sex, et cetera. I think this is sort
of weird, and it gives kids a really funny idea of what "respectable"
means, but okay, however you want to run your lives....
>>They have the house, they have the car, they have the lifestyle, but still
>>something's wrong.
>
>That alone isn't enough. I certainly agree with that. People I hang around
>with have a great deal more. They spend a lot of time working with the
>youth in the community, working with people stricken with AIDS, working with
>the poor in Houston, across the border and in Africa. While we do fall far
>short of true discipleship, we do find many sources of joy.
>
>Indeed, its not just the doing that matters. Its the ability to find the
>grace in the moment. Even with depression, abuse, job loss, anxiety, there
>is still grace and wonder in the moment. Being able to be in touch with
>this is, IMHO, the source of true joy.
I agree completely. I'm saying that there's few people I've met who seem
to have got this idea. (With the exception, apparently, of drunks...
excuse me while I go explain to some people that, while they may be
taking great joy in the moment, they're bloody well off key.... right.)
>>People of my generation aren't happy.
>
>But, I know a number of people about your age that seem reasonably happy to
>me.
Overgeneralization. Sorry.
>
>
>>They feel like their entire life has been planned out for them and
>> they've only got one direction to go.
>
>Well, my daughter decided on the ministry after we were sure she was going
>into law. Why can't they change?
Well, because they... can't. Believe me, this annoys the hell out of me.
My life has always been completely flexible, particularly where my
parents were concerned, debates about whether they'd rather I turn into a
lesbian or become a lawyer notwithstanding. (And, yes, the lesbian won
hands-down, although Mom said she had to be able to cook and Dad said he
got to hit on her anyway. I have a really weird family.) However, my
ex-boyfriend's mother told him, in my presence, "If you don't finish
college, I'm going to disown you." I have other friends who've told me
"I'm going to be a doctor/lawyer/chemist/ect.; I don't really want to,
but if I don't get a decent job my parents will never speak to me again."
Some of this is, of course, laziness. Some is fear.
There's also this strange idea people have that a job doesn't have to be
*fun*. Screw *that*, says I, I'll work for food if I have to but anything
beyond subsistience and "fun" is not an optional, it's a bloody
necessity. But the majority of the people I know regard "fun job" as some
sort of oxymoron, which is annoying. The result is they feel trapped into
spending most of their time doing something they don't want to for the
rest of their lives... pretty depressing idea, no matter how you look at
it.
>>Worrying about the government is pointless: there's nothing they can do to
>>change it.
>
>That may be a popular sentiment, but its wrong. There is nothing easy that
>can be done, that's true.
>
>>Worrying about the environment is pointless: it's all going to shit
>>anyway, no way to stop it.
>
>Things are much better than when I was your age. I'm not saying we should
>sit on our laurels, but gloom and doom doesn't help.
Er, you seem to have made a slight error in the above two statements.
These aren't *my* opinions, never have been, never will be, spent way too
much time and air shouting at people who thought it was. These are the
opinions I hear every single day, on both the college campuses I've
attended, in the parties for my parents' friends, even from my
grandparents and the locals in my area. People have this hopelessness
about these two issues that really frustrates me. But it's not *my*
hopelessness, and believe me, you don't have to convince me they're being
dumb. I think it's all of a piece with the "trapped, no fun" things I was
talking about before.
>
>>All you can possibly do is worry about your self, and therefore I'm
>> going to college, even though I don't want to, because then I'll get a
>> good job. I'll be happy. Tomorrow.
>
>Why in the world can't they do something to just help a few people just a
>little? I agree everyone needs something larger than themselves to be
>dedicated to. I agree that everyone needs to have faith in something. But,
>what I find amazing is a parallel dissing of conventional religions for the
>failings of the members and a parallel longing for that which I find through
>my faith.
>
>I'm not jumping at you, because I don't think you have been unpleasant or
>nasty about it. But, I do see the discontinuity. Perhaps it would be
>worthwhile to accept human imperfections while still striving for
>perfection.
Again, I completely agree with you. My arguement is that a lot of the
current memes seem to be reinforcing this antisocial fatalistic behavior,
*not* addressing it as is necessary.
As for religion... I wasn't, I don't think, intending to diss
Christianity; I was intending to diss a very large number of people who
claim to be Christians (see the other post) and the "marketability" of
the Christian ethic that seems to be so popular these days. I think the
problem is less that Christianity provides an inadequate basis for faith
and hope- it does not- than that it lends itself too readily to a degree
of wish-fufillment and immediate gratification. It's become another prop
of the American Dream. I've got this nice car and this nice house,
therefore I'm Successful; I'm a Christian, therefore I'm Good. If I'm
Successful and I'm Good I must be Happy.
The (inevitiable) failure of the meme leads to the dissatisfaction with
and bashing of Christianity that is, as you noticed, so popular amoungst
my generation. The status as another fill-in-the-blank prop leads to a
sort of false spirituality that I described (or tried to) in my other
post, and false spirituality is, I think, another major cause of
unhappiness.
Kat Feete
I hope this is coherent. It's sort of late here.
------------------
Now, remember. You've got to burn the HOUSES and rape the WOMEN.
(Cohen the Barbarian)
-Terry Pratchett
