Joining a club can provide a lot more happiness than salary increases and promotion. Durkheim and Marx produced concepts of alienation and anomie - Freud 'normal unhappiness' and most of us know what it is to be lonely, what happens when we move, mates leave and so on - or even the 'bowling alone' syndrome of the collapse of organic solidarity as opposed to more mechanical structuring of society. Most science in this area, mostly brain-mind science is coming round to regarding us as social animals. Farmers are well aware of what happens to stock when they are stressed. Too many students don't enjoy classes or study, feeling it all imposed, something not to enjoy and so on. My grandson has just had a row with his mother over (not) getting out of bed to go for a new school blazer - she wants to stop him going paintballing tomorrow - happiness being something he can be deprived of for discipline purposes. I have noticed many people interfering with my happiness over the years and plenty who get happy doing this to others. Kids enjoy handing about with each other and in doing so can make others very unhappy. King Mouse in social mice, makes other mice 'unhappy' - and human communities in history have specialised in this. Empirical work in the area might use experimental results, but what's empirical here is what people are experiencing. Are we really 'happy' consuming junk products made by forced child labour or workers being paid less than slaves once cost to maintain? Letting certain kids show indiscipline hurts other kids and 'tough love' has a role in happiness.
On Sep 1, 3:14 pm, rigsy03 <[email protected]> wrote: > http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/happiness-philosophy-...
