Invitations have been issued, we'll get everyone else on board here by Tuesday (Sep.6), when we'll be discussing the first three chapters of Ehrenreich's "Bright-sided."
Group leaders, please post your summaries and questions from last class here as soon as you can. Everyone else, please reply with your own comments (including bios) before Tuesday's class if possible.
Happy Labor Day!
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A late post to the old blog, reposted here:
Posted by generik01 on September 5, 2011 at 4:09 pm edit
My name is Erik McInnis, and I’m in my fifth year of college (not sure what you call that) as a video production major or as MTSU calls it, electronic media communications. I hope to one day be a movie editor/director/producer/whichever part of it I feel like doing at the time. There’s a great deal of philosophy in film which is why I’m minoring in philosophy.
As for my take on happiness, I think that it’s not some external, inherent “thing” that you can just go get. It wasn’t part of nature before we got here. It’s just an idea we made up, a thought. I’m not saying your enjoyment of that cool new thing you just bought is empty, nor that you shouldn’t have bought it. What I mean is that there is no inherent value or property of happiness in that thing, but rather it is you that decides that it makes you happy, and so it might as well. When we ask ourselves in our minds, “Am I happy?” it seems we half-way expect some other voice to chime in and say, “Yes you are.” Only you can answer that for yourself, you just have to believe that’s it true, because if you do, then it is.
As for my take on happiness, I think that it’s not some external, inherent “thing” that you can just go get. It wasn’t part of nature before we got here. It’s just an idea we made up, a thought. I’m not saying your enjoyment of that cool new thing you just bought is empty, nor that you shouldn’t have bought it. What I mean is that there is no inherent value or property of happiness in that thing, but rather it is you that decides that it makes you happy, and so it might as well. When we ask ourselves in our minds, “Am I happy?” it seems we half-way expect some other voice to chime in and say, “Yes you are.” Only you can answer that for yourself, you just have to believe that’s it true, because if you do, then it is.
