Someone else has been talking about the futility of searching after happiness on their Blog. Why are people so intent on persecuting happiness?
Yeah, I'm against happiness at the expense of other people on a political level which generally makes me very unhappy, but really. . .what do people have against happiness?
--The_Lex Wed Mar 8 11:40:00 2006
I don't think people are against happiness in general, but a kind of shallow form of it, and how if people can't find that easy happiness, well, it makes 'em miserable.
I guess this is rehashing some of what we discussed here:
http://www.kisrael.com/viewblog.cgi?date=2004.12.08
--Kirk Wed Mar 8 14:37:24 2006
Wasn't there a Slate or Salon article about the trend for LIFE being about having happiness in the US and this kind of philosophy being a bad one?
I guess I just hate the existentialist emphasis on loneliness and such and not wanting to be happy because it's seen as "selling out." That argument just gets so self-absorbed and boring. . ..
There's times to be happy, times to be sad, times to be angry. We're made in a certain way, and our emotions tell us something. . ..
--The_Lex Wed Mar 8 15:29:34 2006
Sure. There are times for all those things, and the trick is finding that balance. I think the trouble is the culture seems fixated on the relatively short term happiness over a lot of the other meaningful depths of human experience.
--Kirk Wed Mar 8 16:34:03 2006
That's one of the big criticisms of the Utilitarian philosophy.
--The_Lex Thu Mar 9 09:33:48 2006
Well, I like the idea of Utilitarianism, the trouble is it's often difficult to get the appropriate scale and scope of it.
--Kirk Thu Mar 9 09:54:11 2006
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