Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Lifelong Learning/Introductions

Almost time for our Lifelong Learner's course on the Philosophy of Happiness, mainly for older non-traditional students... students-for-life, who've learned to value education for its own sake and not merely as a vocational credential.

Gina Logue of WMOT and MTSU News gave the course and me a nice introduction:
Dr. Phil OliverDr. Phil Oliver, a professor of philosophy, will bring multiple perspectives to the “Philosophy of Happiness” course, a distillation of an MTSU course he has taught for several years.
He draws from an education philosopher for his beliefs about keeping the brain engaged as we age.

“My favorite pithy statement on the value of lifelong learning is from John Dewey, who said in ‘My Pedagogic Creed,’ ‘I believe that education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living,’” said Oliver. “In other words, it’s forever. It’s never too late to learn. It’s always too soon to stop.”
I'm reminded of the way I always like to say good-bye to students at the end of every semester:

Good luck with your goals!

But I'll bet my Maymester students will already have figured out something crucial about the goal-centered and purpose-driven life:

"Whether or not we achieve our goals, in fact, is not the essential matter. We aren't going to wait until we've reached all our objectives before we start being happy. The path matters more than the goal: happiness comes as we make our journey." Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide

In other words, don't tie your happiness down to outcomes.

And, as Emerson said, we must seek to "find the journey's end in every step."

He also said
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Hmm. I suspect being useful, honorable, compassionate etc. makes most people happier.

Well, there will be four steps in our course: four class meetings, on the first four Mondays of May. I'll be happy if I can get some grading done before then, I've never commenced a new course before signing off on all the old ones first.

But I'll be happy no matter what. I made that decision a long time ago.
==
Let's introduce ourselves, May 2016 Lifelong Learning Happiness collaborators!

I invite you all to hit "comment" and reply with your own introductions, and (bearing in mind that this is an open site) your answers to two basic questions: Who are you? Why are you here? (in this course, on this campus, in this state, on this planet...)

Please read your classmates' intros and post your own, if you wish. (This is not homework, just a fun and entirely voluntary way of getting acquainted. Also not homework, but a fun game you can play along with if you like: Scorecards.)

I'm Dr. Oliver, aka (despite my best efforts to discourage it) "Dr. Phil." I live in Nashville with my wife, Younger Daughter, a dog (Angel) and a cat (Zeus). Older Daughter is a film student in another state.

My office is in James Union Building 300. Summer hours by appointment. On nice days office hours will probably be outside. I answer emails during office hours, but not on weekends. Surest way to get a quick response: come in or call during office hours.

I've been at MTSU for over a decade, teaching philosophy courses on diverse subjects including atheism, childhood, happiness, the environment, the future, and bioethics.

My Ph.D. is from Vanderbilt. I'm originally from Missouri, near St. Louis. I was indoctrinated as a Cardinals fan in early childhood, so I understand something about religious zeal. My undergrad degree is from Mizzou, in Columbia MO. (I wish my schools weren't in the SEC-I don't approve of major collegiate sports culture or football brain injuries, as I'm sure to tell you again.)

My philosophical expertise, such as it is, centers on the American philosophical tradition of William James and John Dewey. A former student once asked me to respond to a questionnaire, if you're curious you can learn more about me there.

What you most need to know about me, though, is that I'm a peripatetic and will encourage you all to join me in that philosophical lifestyle as often as possible during discussion time. (If you're not sure what "peripatetic" means you could look it up. Or just ask.)

I post my thoughts regularly to my blogs Up@dawn and Delight Springs, among others, and to Twitter (@osopher), and sometimes in podcasts (also here). Follow me if you want to.

But of course, as Brian Cohen said, you don't have to follow anyone. (Extra credit if you get that reference... and real extra credit if you realize that my "extra credit" is usually rhetorical.) However, if a blog or podcast link turns up with the daily quiz (which will always be posted on this site no later than the night before class), you might find it helpful to read or listen.

Enough about me. Who are you? (Where are you from, where have you been, what do you like, who do you want to become,...?) Why are you here? (On Earth, in Tennessee, at MTSU, in philosophy class)? Hit "comments" below and post your introduction, then read your classmates'... and bear in mind that this is an open site. The world can read it. (The world's probably busy with other stuff, of course - Kardashians and cooking shows and other examples of what passes for "reality" these days.)
==
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Lucky as Lou
Grading time again. Best way to learn? Practice, practice...
Image result for grading cartoon

"Mature" learners, like those I'll be meeting Monday in my Lifelong Learning class on happiness, know that practice counts.

They (unlike Calvin) also know that "youth's a stuff that won't endure," and that "to see the daylight still under any conditions" makes us lucky as Lou Gehrig. He died at 38, had a horrible disease named for him, and considered himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Lou knew. We're all lucky and, happiness researchers confirm, happier when we know it. Happy people are grateful to be alive. They treasure their good health for as long as it lasts, and turn it into gratifying experience. Many of them practice gratitude, some even keep a gratitude journal. I guess that's kinda what this blog is, though I sometimes use it to complain about politicians and ungrateful students.

What else will I tell my mature students on Monday? For one thing, that happy people know what they know, but don't pretend to know it all. They're Socratically humble and self-effacing. They live and learn, remaining always open to new possibilities and perspectives. I probably don't need to tell them that. I'm looking forward to learning from them. I always do.

And the happiest mature people know that so-called little things matter a lot, like Grandpa at the softball game last night with Coach's toddler. He couldn't stop effusing over how smart and cute and clever she is. It's when we stop to look and appreciate the promise of the next generation that we really get it: "Oh, but the long, long time the world shall last," after we're gone.
==
Friday, April 29, 2016
Sacred space

Happiness, the Briefer Course commences Monday. I've billed it as a distillation of the course I've done many times before, but deciding what to distill and what to leave out of our four May sessions is a challenge. And, how to begin.

I've lately been concluding some of my classes, on the last day, with a quote from Joseph Campbell about following your bliss and not following a guru. Maybe he'll be good on Day 1, too.


[Sacred space] is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen. Power of Myth, Brainpickings

Something like happiness may even happen there, and may be mobile - so long as you remember to make your way back to the sacred space again tomorrow and the next day and the next, and don't bog down in unreasonable expectations of personal perfectability. Errors and false starts happen, inevitably, but they're not irrecoverable. Or so I think I've learned.
==
Time and memory have much to do with happiness -

Two millennia after Seneca’s acutely timely treatise onhow to extend the shortness of life by living wide rather than long, Wittmann examines the psychology of expanding our experience of time:
In order to feel that one’s life is flowing more slowly — and fully — one might seek out new situations over and over to have novel experiences that, because of their emotional value, are retained by memory over the long term. Greater variety makes a given period of life expand in retrospect. Life passes more slowly. If one challenges oneself consistently, it pays off, over the years, as the feeling of having lived fully — and, most importantly, of having lived for a long time. (continues)
...hence the tragedy of Alzheimer's.

But on Day 1 we're all young and vital, with all the time in the world!
==
From the Happiness archives:

Welcome to Happiness, 8.11.11... Get Happy, 8.29.11... Barbara Ehrenreich on the Daily Show... "Happ" @dawn... naturally happy 8.19.09... the last man 8.25.09 (on the wrong kind of "happiness")... whale's journey 8.31.09 (opening day)... "No!" 9.1.09 (Hap opening day)... flamboyance & gusto 9.3.09 (Lyubomirsky & WJ)... different strokes 9.8.09 (Lyub.ch3, self-diagnostics)... walk & flow 9.10.09 (Csikszentmihalyi)... The Happiness Hypothesis 9.15.09 (Haidt)... in pursuit 9.17.09 (Haidt on Buddhists & Stoics)... premeditation 9.19.09 (Seneca, pneumonia)... between 9.22.09 (Haidt ch9)... renunciation 9.24.09 (Ricard)... WJ on conquering depression 9.25.09... suffering 9.29.09 (Ricard, Buddhism, optimism & meliorism)... I I Me Me Mine 10.1.09 (egoless happiness)... sourpuss 10.2.09 (vs. Schopenhauer on happiness)... The Rock 10.6.09 (Ricard on negative emotions, WJ on attention & positive emotions)... Ricard, finis 10.8.09... Hey Marty (Seligmann) 10.11.09... Against Happiness 10.13.09 (Eric Wilson)... vital living 10.15.09 (Against Wilson)

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