Welcome to Happiness (Reposted from 8.11.11)

(Originally posted in Wordpress)

Welcome to Happiness 101, as I like to call it, a course at Middle Tennessee State University.

This is our new class blogsite, in the Fall of 2011, when our special focus will be on “the secret of life”… whether there is one Big Secret, or several variable secrets, or none at all. What is happiness, anyway? What have philosophers said about that? What will we say about it? Why do we, or should we, pursue it?

I’ll refer to our course,  in my own posts here and on my personal blogs Up@dawn andDelight Springs, as SOL. That abbreviates “Secret of Life,” obviously, though the cynics amongst us may well give those letters the standard military interpretation instead. My own view is that happiness is indeed available to most of us, most of the time, though we do have to work for it. If we expect it to be delivered on a silver platter, without our active pursuit, we may indeed expect to be “shit out of luck.”

Oh, yes: you can follow me on Twitter too. But you don’t have to follow me. You don’t have to follow anyone. Not even Brian.