Happiness
It is snowing outside. The streets are hazardous for travel. Hawaii is recovering from a false alarm of a ballistic missile attack. Our President is tweeting madly to deflect the response to his comments characterizing Africa and Haiti as “shit-hole” countries. Individuals who happened to be in proximity to him when he made the statements are segregating themselves into two groups. There is the “I didn’t hear him say anything” group. There is the “He is a racist” group. How could a sizable number of us elect this desperately unhappy man to the White House?
It seemed timely to offer some wisdom from Aristotle on the subject of happiness. Aristotle believed that happiness is the goal of a virtuous life lived over the arc of a lifetime. To begin….
Well, so far as the name goes there is pretty general agreement. “It is happiness,” say both intellectuals and the unsophisticated, meaning by ‘happiness’ living well or faring well.
Persons of low tastes (always in the majority) hold that it is pleasure. Accordingly…they ask for nothing better than having a good time. The utter vulgarity of the herd of men comes out in their preference for the sort of existence a cow leads.
it is the generally accepted view that the final good, happiness, is self-sufficient. By self-sufficient is meant not what is sufficient for oneself living the life of a solitary but includes parents, wife and children, friends and fellow-citizens in general. For man is a social animal. A self-sufficient thing, then, we take to be one which on its own footing tends to make life desirable and lacking in nothing.
There is another condition of happiness; it cannot be achieved in less than a complete lifetime. One swallow does not a summer make; neither does one fine day. And one day, or indeed any brief period of felicity, does not make a man entirely and perfectly happy.
In ‘doing well’ the happy man will of necessity do. Just as in the Olympic games it is not the best-looking or the strongest men present who are crowned with victory but competitors–the successful competitors –so in the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
—excerpts from Nicomachean Ethics Book I by Aristotle
That is enough. The question remains.
What aberrant ground-wave of unhappiness in this society prompted the election of this desperately unhappy individual to the White House?
We are haunted……
One thought on “Happiness”
Desperately unhappy people who found a kindred spirit elected this desperately unhappy narcissist who is still trying to prove his worth to his father. The majority of people who elected him are looking for solace and support in the wrong direction. They are looking to someone who does not have the capacity for empathy or compassion instead of looking into themselves to find what is lacking. They will never find what they are looking for yet they will continue to believe, so it is a no win situation regardless of what DT does or says.