Euphoria!

Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! Happiness isn't good enough for me!

==

"There's more to life than being happy" (Atlantic)

Real life

Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe and his affirming amor fati attitude: worth a moment's reflection on this Thanksgiving morn.

Frank's remembering the day he bare-handed a foul line drive off the bat of the Cubs' Hall-of-Famer Andre Dawson, in Philadelphia.

“The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when "Hawk" Dawson actually doffed his red "C" cap to me, and everyone cheered and practically convulsed into tears - you can't patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks" or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me.” ― Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land

Happy AND Dissatisfied?

Mariana Allesandri in The Stone-

I had just arrived home from my summer vacation — a week in a Minnesota cabin whose brochure warned “no crabbiness allowed” — when I came upon a study that declared New York the “unhappiest city in America.” I doubt many people were surprised by the results — New Yorkers, both in lore and reality, can be hard to please, and famously outspoken about their grievances — but as a born-and-raised New Yorker, and as a philosopher, I was suspicious of how the study defined happiness.

The survey in question, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asked how “satisfied” Americans were with their lives — very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. But the National Bureau of Economic Research used the data to conclude things about their “happiness.” Some might not have minded that the terms satisfaction and happiness were used interchangeably, but I did. The study was titled “Unhappy Cities,” and the headlines that followed it came out swinging against New Yorkers.

I was certain that a person (even a New Yorker) could be both dissatisfied and happy at once, and that the act of complaining was not in fact evidence of unhappiness, but something that could in its own way lead to greater happiness.

At times like this I appreciate philosophers’ respect for words, and a number of them have argued to keep happiness separate from satisfaction. In his 1861 essay “Utilitarianism,” John Stuart Mill carefully distinguished between the two, saying that a person can be satisfied by giving the body what it craves, but that human happiness also involves motivating the intellect. This means that happiness and satisfaction will sometimes conflict, and that those of us who seek happiness, and even attain it, may still be dissatisfied. Mill considered this a good thing: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, one of history’s best-known pessimists, also believed there was more to life than satisfaction. Better to honestly describe a negative world, he believed, than to conceal it with beautiful lies. That sounds very New York...

(continues)

People Think Experiences Bring Happiness, Still Opt For Things

Silly people!

"You might assume that a new purse, painting or pair of shoes will bring happiness. Although you’d probably get a bigger kick out of attending a play or spending a week in Paris. But people still mostly opt for items over experiences—because the value of items is more easily quantifiable. That’s according to a study in the Journal of Positive Psychology. [Paulina Pchelin and Ryan T. Howell, The hidden cost of value-seeking: People do not accurately forecast the economic benefits of experiential purchases] "

People Think Experiences Bring Happiness, Still Opt For Things - Scientific American:

Roger Ebert on the duty of happiness

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”  Life Itself