3 reasons never to be unhappy

A coda for our course:

THE WAY I SEE IT, THERE ARE THREE REASONS NEVER TO BE UNHAPPY.

First, you were born. This in itself is a remarkable achievement. Did you know that each time your father ejaculated (and frankly he did it quite a lot) he produced roughly 25 million spermatozoa -enough to repopulate Britain every two days or so? For you to have been born, not only did you have to be among the few batches of sperm that had even a theoretical chance of prospering - in itself quite a long shot - but you then had to win a race against 24,999,999 or so other wriggling contenders, all rushing to swim the English Channel of your mother's vagina in order to be the first ashore at the fertile egg of Boulogne, as it were. Being born was easily the most remarkable achievement of your whole life. And think: you could just as easily have been a flatworm. 

Second, you are alive. For the tiniest moment in the span of eternity you have the miraculous privilege to exist. For endless eons you were not. Soon you will cease to be once more. That you are able to sit here right now in this one never-to-be-repeated moment, reading this book, eating bon-bons, dreaming about hot sex with that scrumptious person from accounts, speculatively sniffing your armpits, doing whatever you are doing - just existing - is really wondrous beyond belief. 

Third, you have plenty to eat, you live in a time of peace and 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree' will never be number one again. 

If you bear these things in mind, you will never be truly unhappy - though in fairness I must point out that if you find yourself alone in Weston-super-Mare on a rainy Tuesday evening you may come close. Bill Bryson, Notes From a Small Island

Don't know about Weston-super-Mare yet, the next item on my December agenda is to finalize an itinerary for that Study Abroad course in Britain I've been touting. Stay tuned...

And be happy.

P.S. - A post-coda

P.P.S. - Maria Popova ‏@brainpicker

4h

An antidote to our age of anxiety – Alan Watts, born 99 years ago today, on happiness and how to live with presence http://j.mp/JWKNvl 

 Retweeted by Phil Oliver

What's the difference between a happy life and a meaningful one?

For some it's lying on a sun-drenched beach sipping sangria, for others it's wallowing in a cosy cocoon munching on chocolate and playing video games. Many people will admit that these or other immediate indulgences are what makes them happy. And yet, even given the freedom and resources to live a life of hedonism, many of us find it's not enough - we want to have meaning in our lives too.
Unfortunately, what we mean by "meaning" has largely been neglected by psychologists...

Looks like they're also neglecting what we mean by "happiness," if they're only considering "indulgences."

BPS Research Digest: What's the difference between a happy life and a meaningful one?

Kat's Final Essay

Curiosity, Skepticism, and Happiness:

A Personal Story

            From an early age I’ve been interested in the mysteries of life. I can remember fervently exploring my backyard for hidden pockets of reality that maybe my parents or other adults didn’t know of yet. I thought there were still vast, unexplored parts of the globe, and while there are still areas that no man has been to, it’s hardly the landscape of unknown that I had imagined. I felt a severe connection, like anyone around the appropriate age reading the series, to Harry Potter. I wrote myself letters of acceptance to Hogwarts, green ink and all, wishing and hoping that the world I live in was merely a cover-up for something much more fantastic. Maybe I was a lost princess or the progeny of two explorers that left their only daughter with some random couple before setting off to discover Atlantis. I researched fairies, mermaids, ghosts, gods, magic, magick, voodoo, witchcraft, demons, trolls, gnomes, and just about anything supernatural I had heard of, but it seemed that the more curious I became, the more skeptical I was about the results, and happiness or satisfaction with reality slipped through my fingers like so-called “ghosts” that turned out to be gusts of cold air.

            Throughout childhood, I maintained faint beliefs, feeding kindling to the fires of hope that still held out for magic and wonder. I had imaginary friends, but I knew that they were only in my head. I was made fun of pretty harshly for even having these “friends,” especially so when I would explain that I made up these people just so I could pretend I was talking to someone other than myself. Often called “weird,” I knew that figures like Santa and the Tooth Fairy weren’t real at an incredibly young age. So young, that I have no recollection of ever believing—only of asking a kindergarten teacher how Santa gets in to houses without chimneys, how reindeer could fly, how he could make it around the world in one night, and so on. My parents were blunt with me growing up, refusing to use a cooing voice with me after I started speaking back. My father would practice advanced math and play learning-based computer games with me. When I would get curious about things like God’s existence or ethical dilemmas, my parents always encouraged my own searching and questioning to find subjective answers. I moved to Tennessee in the third grade and was immediately bombarded with churches, denominations, God, Jesus, and the general antics of the Bible belt south before I had had time for aforementioned religious investigation. This was particularly intriguing to me because while it was easy to dismiss the jolly Christmas-time gift-bearer and be met with acceptance and agreement, it was not at all the same for religious figures.

            Middle school was a time for shattering dreams, hope, and faith. By and throughout then, I had finally given up on mythological creatures and the existence of any proof of magic or fantasy realms, hidden but somehow reachable. There was no Atlantis with a thriving civilization, no fairies or fairy rings that I could get trapped in for what seemed like a day but was actually millennia, no gnomes or mole people, no trolls under bridges with passwords or riddles for me to guess, no mermaid society at the bottom of the ocean, and most importantly, those Hogwarts letters that I had written to myself were just that—letters to myself, from myself, for an imaginary school. My parents were my real parents and that was that, but this religious stuff had to be real, right? It seemed that everyone believed in something, and I wanted to have some of that faith stuff that they all glorified. To be fair, I never had a chance for faith when my starting position was utter doubt and want for proof.

            I went to church with my best friend Jordan in fifth grade. I was in a puppeteer group, youth group, choir, and I helped teach the youngest groups of kids for Bible study. Always asking too many questions about topics that were “too difficult for me to understand,” I was told to stay quiet during presentations and even during discussion sessions. After a mission trip, I decided that I was never going to believe in God or accept Jesus as my lord and savior. There were multiple reasons for this, but the most significant was that the girls on the mission trip bragged about kissing boys, gossiped, and talked about desired sexual experiences. It was like Cinderella’s gown and carriage—once the lights were out, all of that Christian idealistic mentality disappeared and the girls turned back in to girls. It wasn’t that I was disturbed with any of this behavior; I was actually excited to know that these normally-virtuous-yet-monotonous girls were people that I could relate to. It was that they had hid behind masks of their religious beliefs that drove me off: by day one way, by night another. They weren’t being honest with themselves, and if God required me to lie about, ignore, or secretly discuss behind the “authority’s” back what I thought and felt in order to be considered a “good” Christian, I wanted no part of it. I continued to go to church (because my only friends were there) until I got asked to leave for telling younger children that the eggs and bunnies from Easter have nothing to do with Christ, that these figures were pagan symbols for fertility, and finally, that the Church usurped dates for their holidays to “cover” the days with Christian beliefs and values instead of “heretic” traditions.

            Once I was done with Christianity, I rejected the other Judeo-Christian religions by association. Then, I delved in to typically-considered-rebellious belief systems for a white, teenaged, American girl. In about a year, I claimed to be a Wiccan, Pagan, Satanist, Voodoo practitioner, and Shaman in training, trying out many of the rituals while I extended my wardrobe to include mostly black clothes with chains on them (also known as my Goth stage). After it all started to feel like the same thing over and over again, I stopped trying to pick a religion. Though some Eastern practices (especially Buddhism) sounded intriguing, I couldn’t bring myself to do any more searching. I called myself an agnostic, leaving that tiny gap open for possibility almost as a joke towards certainty. My doubt and curiosity had brought me to a very low point. I had ceased to find meaning in life or myself. What was it all for? If death is just ceasing to exist, it sounded a whole lot better than continuing to be apathetic or nihilistic. Privately, I became suicidal and depressed. Even for a youngster, this kind of existential crisis is difficult and heartbreaking.

            This was until I found something that I thought was real and could be believed in—love. True love, to be exact, was the answer to everything for me. If I could find my soul mate, my better half, or whatever else you’d like to call it, I would have that real ideal to put my hope and faith in. I got used to loving and losing by having “boyfriends” from a young age, but when I saw all of the poetry, literature, movies, television shows, jewelry commercials, etc. that presented this “true love” concept, I wanted some of it for myself. Again, I approached it with skepticism and curiosity, much as I did with religious faith. As it does for anyone, this search led me through relationships, sexual encounters, and ridicule from my peers over the rest of middle school and in to high school. I was desperate for answers, for “the one,” to quiet my doubts about such a love, and because of this, I was not very appealing. I threw myself at people, hoping that one of them would love me the way I had imagined, like magic and fireworks inside my very soul. The more I pushed it, the more I questioned my relationships and doubted the validity of a “true” love, the more I found myself feeling alone and meaningless again.

            After high school, I married the first guy that had told me anything remotely similar to what I had read in those poems and had stuck around longer than anyone else. Our marriage failed miserably for a variety of reasons, most importantly that I had rushed it and doubted it every step of the way. The divorce brought anxiety, loneliness, a distrust of love, commitment issues, and another spout of depression. I can trace almost all of my deepest moments of sadness back to curiosity, skepticism, or both, but what about my happiness? Where has that come from? It has the same source. The journey I’ve been on has been laden with upsetting moments, but each time I’ve fallen, I’ve picked myself back up. In picking myself up, I’ve learned and grown and made progress. In learning, growing, and making progress, I’ve found happiness and contentment with myself.

In being skeptical, I’ve always taken the time to figure things before accepting so-called truths, to let myself fail in order to figure out what success is. In being curious, I’ve lead myself to the greatest discoveries about myself as well as about the world around me. The mysteries are still there, I just have to keep pushing my boundaries. Sure, I may have rejected soul mates, religious figures, and mythological creatures (among other topics not discussed in this essay), but I still have the universe, real love, a rich diversity of people, ethical beliefs, etc. Healthy curiosity and doubt have brought me to where I am today. Proudly, I can say that I don’t have all of the answers, I don’t know, and that certainty is something that I’m still learning to be okay without. I can declare my love for James and my hope that we’ll live happily ever after, even though I can’t be sure of it. I can assert what I think is morally right and wrong without having to justify it in an endless cycle of hypothetical situations, and I can be happily disproved if ever I find myself in such a circumstance that changes my beliefs. No part of me is permanent, and I am fine with that. Meaning and happiness come and go just as apathy and sadness do, and I’m learning to live with that. I am Kat, a curious skeptic, attempting to create my own positivity in spite of all of the hogwash.

The Symposium pt 2

I apologize for the late post, I've been studying like crazy for my theory final Tuesday but I decided to take a break and finish this final post! Today's post will focus on the rest of The Symposium, starting with Eryximachus.

Eryximachus is a doctor, and looks at love from a medicinal point of view. Each part of the body works in harmony with other parts, and if a part doesn't work or is diseased, Eryximachus thinks we should deprive the bad parts so they can no longer be diseased, and we should gratify the good parts. Same goes for love. One of his ideas is the idea of opposites coming together and harmonizing, whether is be good and bad, hot or cold, etc. I like his representation of music to compare to medicine. A song is just a bunch of different sounds coming together to make something beautiful, and same for the body. In terms of Love, for Eryximachus it is more of a practice. Love is ever present and the our good actions come out of Love.
Some of Eryximachus's ideas are hard to understand, but he seems really full of himself. Maybe he just had too much to drink and it doesn't say. =]

My favorite speech is by Aristophanes. He uses a myth to illustrate the idea of love. He says that once humans used to be connected, with four arms and four legs and two heads. Soon these humans started to get too powerful, and thought to revolt against the gods. Zeus decided he needed to end this attempt, and sent a lightning bolt down from the sky and split the human apart. One of the cool parts of the story is how they describe the pulling of the skin together after the split and comes together where our modern day belly button is. What an interesting way to describe our bodies.
Once this human has been split into two... they are no continually looking for each other, their true soulmates. It needs to be noted that it was not always a man and a woman who were connected, it would also be a man and a man or a woman and a woman. This is also another interesting way to describe modern day sexual preference. It also describes that almost indescribable feeling we get when we fall in love.
I personally love this story. I think this could be interpreted in many different ways, and theres a condition to it that if you strive to be good, you can keep your soulmate, but if you are bad, you may be split into two once more. In essence, Love helps us strive for goodness.

Agathon, the host of the party, is the first to talk about the god of Love and not the idea of love. He states that this is the happiest of all the gods, which was the first reason I wanted to use this as my final project. Love almost automatically equals happy. Love is ... soft. Its a word that makes sense when describing love. Its not hard, and seeps into your mind, your subconscious.

Now, I would continue to talk about Socrates and his speech, but I'd like to leave something for you to go read for yourself. This entire dialogue has been a great philosophy reference, and always brings about questions about different issues, not just Love.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas break! Good luck next semester!

Interview with Dr. Oliver

Hey everybody,

The interview I did with Dr. Oliver is now available in its entirety!

Check it out below.

Taking it back Old School

I must be one of the only ones posting a final blog report, so I’m hoping that any of you still checking up on this blog are interested in the idea of Love and Happiness. I picked this because I’ve recently started dating someone that I’ve known for years and there is that potential for that L word! I was thinking about what I could do in terms of this topic, whether I should just Google “love/happiness/philosophy” or pick a book. I decided on The Symposium. All of these men come together and have a “drinking party” and decide to go around the room and praise the god of Love, Eros. I have always been fascinated with the old school versions of philosophy, and I really love this dialogue, mainly for the story told by Aristophanes (which will be told a little later on! Stay tuned!). 

In these mini blog posts, I will be summarizing the speeches done by each man at the party, so hopefully if you haven’t read it for yourself yet, you’ll want to! Let’s get started!

First off, Phaedrus:

                This young man speaks of love as the oldest and the mightiest of all gods. He states that Love, through a lover, can help us in many ways. We benefit from a lover in that we gain pride from doing well, and we learn shame if we act wrongly. One of Phaedrus’s most notable quotes is”

                And I saw that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable ac, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonor is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved that at being seen by his father or by his companions or anyone else.

A part of me agrees with this very much, because unlike loving parents, a love from a partner is not necessarily “unconditional” the way you think a parent’s might be. Its sad to know you have disappointed the one you love. In essence, Phaedrus tells us that Love is what teaches us how to be good people. Another quote that I love from Phaedrus is that Love is the “chiefest author and giver of virtue in life and of happiness after death”. In my own life, I interpret that in such a way that applies to my faith, because it is of my love for Christ and his love for me that my happiness stems from.

A very different take on Love is that of Pausanias. He states that there is more than one God of love, an old one and a young one. Because there is two Aphrodites, then that means there is two different kinds of love, common and heavenly. Common love is that of fulfilling physical desires and no interest in the mind. Heavenly love, which is focused mainly on male-male relationships, are  focused not just on physical desires but also the idea that the lover can give wisdom and knowledge while the young male is mentored and takes in the knowledge and wisdom from the lover. It is based on intelligence and virtue instead.

In my next post, I will cover Eryximachus and my favorite, Aristophanes! 

Happy Trails!

Wow!

I can't believe our little happiness class is over. This class has been phenomenally interesting and I do so look forward to seeing you all around. The happy hour invite is always open so come drop in and see us sometime!

 In the meantime, I'm afraid I must leave us with one last musical pun.

 Happy Trails!

 Until we meet again,

 Jon

P.s.,

I've distilled all (by my count) 16 songs that we've posted throughout the course into a youtube playlist, below:

Happiness and Generosity

It's hard to believe that the Happiness project we started in August will end tomorrow in December.  I look forward to hearing Brennan and Joshua present.  And one more circle for the road?

I will try to discuss Generosity without ruining it for anyone who is still reading.  A good ending--surprising to me, though perhaps it shouldn't have been.  I am reminded that perception is so important--my attitude can take my experience of the same circumstance from one extreme to the other.  Nothing "outside" has changed, only the internal assessment.

Considering Thassa's experience of happiness and the demands made upon her (the pursuit of Happiness, literally), I remembered the discussion about the experience machine when we read Sissela Bok.  I appreciate the value of resilience born of adversity.  Not sure I would trade that--it's a great Ativan substitute.

Thanks to all of you for a wonderful and insightful experience.  I enjoyed the books we read, especially Bok and JMH.  The group reports left me with a long list of reading to do, to keep the happiness coming.   One final thought about happiness--"how important is it?"  Figuring out what is important to me and letting go of what only seems important has left room for more happiness in my life.  What works for you?

Cherry-Picking Your Poison (and your happiness)

Welcome back, everyone!  Hope you all had a wonderful break, short as it may have been.

Here's a brief preview of the interview I did with Dr. Oliver, which will air on party934.com at 7pm on Friday, December 6.

Group One: Happiness, Absurdity, and Suicide

For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking about Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus.  Here's the main thought in the book: "There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide…all the rest [philosophical and existential questions] comes afterward."

Whether Camus is right or wrong, the question still stands--if only as a matter of degree.  Although I've yet to traverse Russell Stone's Generosity, I understand the philosophical question afoot: would or should we as a society genetically (permanently) tweak our temperament into an eternal state of happiness?  What would this mean?  Two questions immediately came to mind:

1. Would people get bored being in a state of happiness all the time, and, therefore, become miserable?
2. Would eternally happy people from one religion want to kill eternally happy people from a competing religion.

Okay, many more questions came to mind, but here's one more:

3. If everyone were happy, would they take anti-happiness drugs for a change of pace.

I like the ups and downs myself.  I don't see how anyone could write a decent song or create good art if they weren't pissed now and then.

Thoughts?

I guess Paul McCartney career is doing okay though…silly love songs.   Here's another addition to this semester happiness soundtrack.

Generously happy

Thassadit Amzwar  "seems immune to anxiety. Her positive energy is amazing. She maintains a continuous state of flow." She seems happy, really happy. But can you be too happy? Is she sick or weird, hyperthymic or hypomanic? Can we get whatever she's got, in a pill or procedure? Should we want to?

We're reading Richard Powers because Generosity strikes yours truly as raising some of the most profoundly meaningful questions we face: questions about the very possibility of meaningful human experience as we move forward into our increasingly engineered, digitized, hive-minded, televised, entertained future, questions about our own authorship of the meanings of our lives, questions about fact and fiction and (sci-) fiction becoming fact. Will our successors even know what we meant by "happiness," let alone how to pursue it effectively?

May I suggest that anyone who's having trouble with the relative density of this novel might consider giving a tandem listen to the excellent audio version available at audible.com...

I've been urging everyone to get started reading Generosity all semester, in anticipation of the time of reckoning to come near semester's end when presumably you'd not want to have postponed the whole thing. Well, here we are. Looking forward to seeing everyone's posted thoughts. 

For those who've not heeded the call, here (for what it's worth) is a small CHEAT SHEET and (ironically) Oprah's guide... my goodreads review... more reviews... "What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness?" Or will it?

Carry the book (or audio recording) with you over Thanksgiving, it just might be your salvation. It might give you something more interesting and constructive to talk about than the Dallas Cowboys or your cousin's reactionary/paranoid politics.

One of my favorite early moments in Richard Powers' Generosity: An Enhancement  comes when the preternaturally, transcendentally happy young Algerian woman Thassadit Amzwar (whose name means "liver") disputes conservative icon Milton Friedman's famous declaration that "there's no free lunch." He was talking market-based economics, her purview is wider:

"My father was an engineer. He always liked the English expression: There's no free lunch. That's crazy! There is only free lunch. We should all be nothing but clouds of frozen dust. This is what science says. All lunch is free. My father was a scientist, but he never understood this one simple scientific fact, poor man."

In the existential economics of personal well-being, Thassa is saying, Richard Dawkins is right: we're lucky to be here. Existence, even the hardest of lives, is a gift. A bonus. And it's over in a flash. We should be happy. Shouldn't we? If we're not, isn't there something wrong with us?

Generosity, luck, & lunch@dawn

P.S. Thanks to our classmate Jon, aka the "Incoherent Rambler" & "Part-time Cynic," for inviting me to share his air yesterday. Happy to do it!

Generosity: Richard Powers

I have only gotten through part one of this book (a 10-15 page theory paper has got my pulling my hair out) but I thought I would still post so others could give their feedback on the novel. Russel Stone is just starting to become obsessed over his Algerian student and her unwavering happiness.
I love reading parts of the story with her in it. She makes ME happy. She makes me want to be a better human, to not ignore others around me, compliment people more, stop and talk to those who may not get to have good conversations throughout the day (like security officers or doormen).
Hope everyone is having a good Monday!

Greetings!

Wilhlem here.

I've been out sick! I got diagnosed with an auto-immune disease similar to Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. Click the links if you're a nerd and into weird (and perhaps gross) diseases. Earlier in the year I'd had a similar diagnosis after being sick for a few months, but at the time, they simply said my immune system was weak, and I had a case of Dermatographia. The Dermatographia was pretty neat though. I probably engaged it more than I should've.

At any rate, I'm all good now (or am I?), and ready to spread some happiness (or bloody-thirsty pathogens).

I also figured I'd post this. It's from the show "Big O", that has some extremely crucial philosophical overtones, directly relates to many of the things we speak about in class, and is where I derive my alias. This speech is a bit less moving out of context, but sums up the character, Schwarzwald, fairly well.

Subjective Experience and Living on Your Lonesome.

This is a dual-purposed post. The first is to share something with you all, this an excerpt from Demian by Hermann Hesse touching on a relevant topic for our class. It's the prologue to the book, so if you like it, I hope you feel inclined to read it.
The Prologue is in video form above, and text form below. Catering to different types of learning styles I suppose.
" I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. If it were possible I would reach back farther still - into the very first years of my childhood, and beyond them into the distant ancestral past. Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude towards their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him---for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not an invented, or possible or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but a unique being of flesh and blood. Yet what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood than ever before, and men---each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature---are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; and that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross. Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, just as I will die more easily once I have completed this story. I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams---like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves. Each man's life represents a road towards himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that---one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth---the slime and eggshells of his primeval past---with him until the end of his days...... Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us----experiments of the depths---strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone. "

Those who read this, I hope it touched you in some way- whether it be understanding the essence Hesse is trying to capture, despite the limits of language, or whether it be a particularly poignant line you found simply well articulated and relative to your own life. Now that we have done that, here is another video, this one by Dr. Brule, with a few tips for happier days while living on your lonesome. Watch it, ya turkey.
Enjoy!

Group 3 Triumph

Enjoyed Tuesday's class discussion, especially as it touched on Thanksgiving with, and without, the family.  It connected quite well with JMH's section on Celebrations.  This has been a wonderful book.  Now on to Generosity.

FQ:  According to JMH we can't do everything we want in order to be happy.  Why?   The 3 kinds of happiness conflict with one another.  P. 314

DQ:  On p. 313 JMH discusses working through the complex feelings we have around abundance so that we can make the most of what we have for the greatest number of us.  What do you see is the relationship between abundance, meaning and happiness?

Link:  For more myths on happiness:
     bigthink.com/videos/the-myth-of-happiness
      An interview with Sonja Lyubomirsky

second place photo

ok guys, here is a little shameless self promotion for my link/photo post for my home run. this is my photo that won second place at the Artlightenment Show in Nashville last week. It was held at the Celebrity Center of the Scientology Center last weekend. this is a digital scan of the color print (that i developed and printed myself in the photo building)

Listless?

Jennifer Michael Hecht's parting practical advice, in Happiness Myth: first, free yourself of the conviction that you already know exactly how to be happy. That’s the “myth of knowing.”

Then, in this less certain state, start sketching out your happiness lists. Start with writing things you actually do; then make additions to each list, noting what you might like to add to your gallery of daily-happiness-type pleasures…

Never sign off on those lists. Stay on your toes, keep your books open,

do some experiments… Talk to neighbors… Inspire a young person… When someone says that “they” have now got [happiness] figured out, you may say aloud or in your head, “No, they probably don’t.”

But happy people don't give up on happiness, they revisit and revise their lists and they keep moving.

If you want to envision a happy person's stance, imagine one foot rooted in the present with mindful appreciation of what one has—and the other foot reaching toward the future for yet-to-be-uncovered sources of meaning. Indeed, research by neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has revealed that making advances toward achievement of our goals not only causes us to feel more engaged, it actually helps us tolerate any negative feelings that arise during the journey.

What's on your list?

Since this is our last day with JMH, I suggest we look back over the entire book. If there are any topics we've shorted, that you'd like to discuss, please initiate that discussion in class today.

On Tuesday, everybody please post your thoughts on Generosity. Our remaining class time will be taken up by final report presentations, as many as we can get in, since we have only one class session remaining after the holiday and will not be convening for an exam. In fact, if anybody were ready to report today it would be a good thing.

If you're planning to do a presentation, please be present and prepared on Tuesday. If you're not planning to do one, please be present and attentive (and "generous") anyway.

And... who's planning our Dec. 3 Holiday Party? Who's bringing the egg nog and the fruitcake?

Group 1: It Turns out that...

Hecht insists the phrase "It turns out that…" is a generally inappropriate, that we are simply in another era of “deeply integrated nonsense”—a disenchanted world.  I agree, but for different reasons altogether.  For me, the phrase seems to imply a disconnect from participation, or an off-hand comment from the stands rather than the arena of life—as if one is standing at the Heraclitian river waiting to step in as soon as it settles into something more permanent.

I stumble upon an interesting line in Book I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics this week. “And Just as Olympic prizes are not for the finest and strongest, but for the contestants—since it is only these who win—the same is true in life: among the fine and good people, only those who act correctly win the prize” (1009a).  In other words (to use a baseball metaphor for extra bonus points), you have to swing the bat. Hecht suggests we should start by “working to shake off the myth of knowing, and demand evidence when someone claims to (pp. 320, 321).

For many people in America—a land flowing with milk and honey—the wolves are constantly at the door.  For some, their minds are chained in darkness and superstition, fearful of the dim shadows cast on the walls by charlatans.

But Hecht offers a way for everyone to seek happiness: if it’s broke—fix it.  Her idea is “not to abandon the search for happiness but to be suspicious of the same old ways of thinking about it” (p. 314).

That seems like pretty good advice. 

Upon reflection, if there are hellhounds on your trail, take Robert Johnson’s advice too, and keep your little sweet rider by your side—and don't worry how it might turn out.

Buddhist Terrorism

The danger of enlightenment is very real...

Group 3 Celebration

FQ:  What Greek tragedy is about the Dionysian festival?  Euripides' Bacchae  p. 266

DQ:  Do shared vigils or festivals or celebrations help create bonds among us or is their value more personal?

Link:  fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/8/15/music-festivals/
          28 festivals and 8 reasons they can change your life
 

group one post from 11/14/13

sorry for the last post. it has been a busy weekend with a sick hubby! last thursday's class was by far one of my favorite do far. i hate to beat a dead horse but i love this book compared to the last one. i especially loved our "in the circle" group chat thursday. we spent out time talking about jennifer hecht's section about bodies. we started off our discussion with professor oliver's reading from up at dawn and then had our group talk. i find it interesting that we had so many in the class with varying forms of pain that we deal with on a daily basis and how we manage it. we talked about different diets that people are trying. there are so many different diet fads out there that everyone seems to be following something. there is always something that seems to be wrong with a food that was fine for generations. the moldy coffee with toxins is the one that i am reminded of from class. brenna and i had a side conversation discussing the perils of gluten and i found out that it can cause inflammation so i have decided to try gluten free for a bit and see if it will relieve some of the pain from the pinched nerve that i deal with daily. we discussed how hecht does not like exercise pretty much in any form. i have to disagree with her in this part just for the fact that exercise does not always have to feel like you are going to die when you are done. my back feels better when i can get a small amount of exercise during the week, but for me that is only walking right now so that i don't injure the back further at this point. we all need some exercise just to keep all of the organs working correctly. if you want to go to the gym and work our for hours and be in pain the next day, that is great, but just don't expect me to be there! and i can't believe that we didn't get into the sex part of the chapter before we ran out of class time.

Bodies: Group 3

FQ:  Who invented basketball in the 1890's?      YMCA employee James Naismith  p. 211

DQ:  JMH says we are not in our bodies, but we are our bodies.  So does care of the physical rival care of the emotional/spiritual/mental in importance?   What gets most of your attention and care?

This is a fun Ted talk--especially the information about the Danish safety council and its walking helmet recommendation:  ted.com/talks/aj_jacobs_how_healthy_living_nearly_killed_me.html

Old Stuff from the Past

I have been preparing to apply for film school and i have had to go through some of my past stuff i've helped film. Back in 2009 I had the opportunity to film a short documentary with a woman name Alyssa Nobriga- who is now a relationship councilor and leads bliss retreats to Bali, but in filming the documentary I was enabled to listen to some very powerful advice towards relationships and happiness from some very enlightened people. I wish we could have included the hours of extra footage, but there was a time limit restriction. Alas, this is what the product ended up being.

I hope you all enjoy.

Bodies: Group 1

Question: What book by American journalist and author Upton Sinclair detailed the plight of immigrant workers in a Chicago meatpacking plant, which inspired the passage of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act?  Answer: The Jungle

How many of you have every gone on a diet?  Any thing crazy, exciting, fun or just plain weird?  I'm currently on a green juice diet, which involve a lot of kale, spinach, apples, carrots, cucumber, celery and a really big juicer to squeeze it all up.  

Please share your stories.  Here's a link to the site and movie entitled "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead."