Happiness : Idiotion


Oct

3

The downside of The Good Life

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 15:58 | Filed In Happiness | Add a Comment

My friend Kelly  sends a link to an article making the claim that the better your life is, the more upset you get when something goes wrong.

Put another way, a hidden price of being happier on average is that you put your short-term contentment at risk, because being happy raises your expectations about being happy. When good things happen, they don’t count for much because they are what you expect. When bad things happen, you temporarily feel terrible, because you’ve gotten used to being happy.

We’re all familiar with the idea of the spoiled little rich kid. We’re more resistant to the idea that there is a ungrateful brat inside all of us. Maybe we should schedule a good spanking when things go our way, just to keep things in perspective. Of course, for some of you, that would make you even happier!

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Apr

24

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Hard to say

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 19:38 | Filed In Happiness | Add a Comment

A California psych professor has a lot to say about happiness.

a state where attention, motivation, and the situation meet, resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Wikipedia

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Jan

23

Just Do Nothing

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 09:06 | Filed In Happiness | Add a Comment

An Independent Online Edition >article in the Independent touts the benefits of meditation, at least if you are a French academic Buddhist monk. If you are a biochemist, get out now and head straight for the Himalayas.

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Nov

27

Yippee and Yahoo

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 12:06 | Filed In Happiness | Add a Comment

Another happiness article, courtesy of Yahoo and Associated Press. Apparently, we might not be stuck on the same level after all. Think nice thoughts!

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Oct

4

Learned helplessness

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 10:53 | Filed In Happiness | Add a Comment

Another article about happiness. Joy, Joy, Joy!

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Feb

17

The Pursuit of Emptiness

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 00:18 | Filed In Happiness | Add a Comment

John Perry Barlow, rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist and cyber-philosopher is also notorious for his 1996 screed “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”.

But he also has an essay The Pursuit of Emptinesss that I find very compelling. The thrust of the piece is that the pursuit of happiness is an impediment to happiness.

Here’s what I believe. I believe that extolling the pursuit of happiness was a toxic stupidity entirely unworthy of my greatest American hero, Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, it is a poison that sickens our culture more wretchedly every nanosecond. I wish he’d never said it.

It produces a monstrous, insatiable hunger inside our national psyche that encourages us ever more ravenously to devour all the resources of this small planet, crushing liberties, snuffing lives, feeling ourselves ordained by God and Jefferson to do whatever is necessary to make us happy.

And yet the American people are miserable. Or so it would appear.

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