David Whyte, philosopher/poet of happiness

Whyte relates an anecdote about an "articulate Irishman" who, writing under an adopted Chinese nom de plume and style of mystic sagacity, asked and answered Why are you unhappy? -"Because 98.98% of everything you do is for yourself, but there isn't one."

And, from Wallace Stevens: "Sometimes the truth depends on a walk around a lake."

And:

...All of us have had the experience of looking back over our lives, where our younger self did something that our future self is very thankful for. You look back at that moment. Had you not gone out the door, had you not made the phone call, had you not made that promise, you would have a very different life now. You can go back — that person was the ancestor of your present future happiness. The great question for this weekend is, how could you be the ancestor of your own future happiness? What conversation could you begin? What promise could you make? What promise, even, could you break, that would make you the ancestor of your future happiness, that you could come back to yourself, this weekend, and thank yourself for having stepped out on that path into a future which has made both a better world for yourself and the world in which you have given your gifts? On Being, The Gathering 2018 (opening remarks)

David Whyte - What to Remember When Waking: Shaping A Resilient Self Through Poetry from SU School of Theology & Ministry on Vimeo... Whyte on YouTube

What to remember... What else... (U@d2) 

Stephen Law:Philosophy of Happiness - a short introduction

"Feeling good" is overrated, though Bobby McGee may have felt otherwise.

Blog: Stephen Law
Post: Philosophy of Happiness - a short introduction
Link: https://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2020/05/philosophy-of-happiness-short.html

Thanks, Dean.
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"Grandfather Philosophy"

Aka Ed, a distinguished alum of this course. You can follow him on Twitter (but of course, as Brian Cohen said, you don't have to follow anyone)...

Tweet by Phil Oliver on Twitter

	Phil Oliver ⁦‪@OSOPHER‬⁩ Finding the derecho's silver lining. "This is happiness"...   5/11/20, 8:36 AM

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Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Britons want quality of life indicators to take priority over economy | Health | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/10/britons-want-quality-of-life-indicators-priority-over-economy-coronavirus

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Humane Danes

For 19 cents p/$1 more in taxes Danes get free health care & education, low poverty, homelessness, crime , inequality. They live two years longer than Americans. And they're the happiest people in the world. https://t.co/TBI1jr70J5

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) May 8, 2020

The Danes have created a humane culture that could serve as our model, if we could just learn to stop reflexiviely villifying "socialism"... 

"Denmark lowered new infections so successfully that last month it reopened elementary schools and day care centers as well as barber shops and physical therapy centers. In the coming days, it will announce further steps to reopen the economy.

Moreover, Danes kept their jobs. The trauma of massive numbers of people losing jobs and health insurance, of long lines at food banks — that is the American experience, but it’s not what’s happening in Denmark. America’s unemployment rate last month was 14.7 percent, but Denmark’s is hovering in the range of 4 percent to 5 percent.

“Our aim was that businesses wouldn’t fire workers,” Labor Minister Peter Hummelgaard told me. Denmark’s approach is simple: Along with some other European countries, it paid companies to keep employees on the payroll, reimbursing up to 90 percent of wages of workers who otherwise would have been laid off...

Danes pay an extra 19 cents of every dollar in taxes, compared with Americans, but for that they get free health care, free education from kindergarten through college, subsidized high-quality preschool, a very strong social safety net and very low levels of poverty, homelessness, crime and inequality. On average, Danes live two years longer than Americans...

Indeed, polls find that Danes are among the world’s happiest people, along with Finns; Denmark is sometimes called “the happiest country.”

You can agree or disagree that the trade-offs are worth it, but as you sit at a cafe in Copenhagen, sipping coffee and enjoying a Danish (called Viennese bread), Denmark hardly seems like a socialist nightmare...

At a time when a pandemic lays bare longstanding inequities in the United States, maybe we should approach the Nordic countries with a bit more curiosity and humility. Hummelgaard, the labor minister, is the son of a porter and a cleaner but received an excellent free education and spoke to me in perfect English. He admires the United States but is sometimes baffled by it.

“Danes love America,” Hummelgaard told me. “But there’s no admiration for the level of inequality in America, for the lack of job security, for the lack of health security, for all those things that normally can create a good society.”

Be happy now...

It's the time of your life.



More short films from Humanists U.K., and a Humanist Manifesto...