That was a result of the Puritan influence (which was very strong in Massachusetts then).
Duty is fine. having a work ethic is fine. But there is no reason to put off, or deny happiness in the here and now either. Sometimes work and happiness can go together - like when you buld something and are surprised and pleased at how well it turned out. Sometimes happiness is a matter of breaking the routine and doing something different - go to a ball game, go fishing, watch a sunset.
There is nothing wrong with being happy. You just can’t expect it to be the “permanent condition”.
Some stress is necessary - the desire to improve your condition, the wish to fix something that isn’t right, a drive to get ahead (ambition is a good thing within limits and greed is a good thing within limits).
Stress (and not meaning frazzle haired bulging eyes levels of stress) are the driver for progress.
But to expect to always be happy all the time, is unrealistic and impossible. It’s just as it is unrealistic and impossible to “make” people wait until they are dead (from the John Jay quote) to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying life.
Duty to improve the world and the general condition of humanity. A lot of great men were not very happy through their lives: Alexander Hamilton, James K Polk, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon were widely despised and certainly not jolly ol’ merry men.
I personally am a quite a jolly fellow but at the same time I know that true, lasting, substantive happiness can come from material things or hedonistic pleasure but from God.
Your opinion, thank you. Not that I think material things or hedonistic pleasure are the be-all of happiness…I just take issue with the whole “only from God” idea.
I think you have mis-typed something here; do you mean that true, lasting, substantive happiness ONLY comes from God? If that’s what you mean, then I would also dispute that, and I would also dispute that you “know” that. I would say that you “believe” that. The distinction is very important.
This (bold) is a point of agreement, the song ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ comes to mind on this. This type of state of mind is not earned though, so how is happiness/joy earned in your thinking?
Can you provide an example of a societal problem that is caused by “social individualism”? I think most problems are due to people not taking responsibility for their actions.
Our society would have us believe that we should all seek happiness, as though it were some external consumable. When, it seems to me, happiness comes from within, seeking it from external things is a fools journey.
I believe one of the greatest sins in life is consuming happiness without producing it.
Sort of like love, really. If you don’t have love in you, you won’t find it coming to you.
I think emotions in general are currently treated like little bonbons (pleasant to experience, but of no nutritional value) if they are nice and like illnesses when they are the unpleasant ones, and in all cases as if they convey no content to the person experiencing them.
I don’t think we “want too much happiness” so much as I think we have been led to expect it as our due, as in “As a citizen, I am entitled to the right to vote, the right to travel at will in public, to be happy, and to worship or not worship God as I please”. (One of these is not like the others)
Life is going to be a mixture of feelings (which is how you assess what changes need to be made and what directions you should take in life) but taken as a whole one’s life can be more or less happy depending on how well one makes those assessments. You can’t make the assessments if you don’t take the feelings serously enough to bother to figure out what they are telling you.
At the risk of getting back on the same old soapbox, advertising/marketing/consumerism has a lot to answer for for this idea - that things and stuff will bring you happiness/contentedness/satisfaction. There’s also a certain truth to the idea that wasting your time chasing after stuff takes away from time and energy that you could be spending on more worthwhile pursuits (like learning to sit quietly with yourself, instead of needing constant external stimulation so you aren’t alone with your thoughts).
That’s the first thing each of us needs to give up on, then.
The chances that we can actually live the life we want to live are not very good - and here’s the thing they never talk about: that is true even if we don’t want an absolutely perfect life.
Life today is competition, basically, and not just for material things. People assume things like love, friendship, peace and contentment are scarce, so they behave as if they really were. That changes the rules of interaction for everybody. Cutting someone a break becomes a personal weakness; strong people are hard people “on principle,” even if the principle is nonsensical and gains them nothing more than a quick atavistic head-rush.
Never mind that it should be impossible to truly take someone’s peace of mind. Blocking them feels like a victory and gives a cheap sense of confidence and security. So we do it, or become bitter because it’s done to us.
So I guess I would add a Darwinian dimension to the Newtonian metaphysics I posited last month.
I would suggest that happiness and contentment are not the same thing. I am happy much more than I am content; restless discontent leads to striving and struggle, and in that striving, I can find happiness.