Today’s Idea is about a misguided idea, happiness.
the Greeks were all over this idea that life was about happiness.
They spent a whole lot of time going over how a man could be happy,
with pleasure, with knowledge, with fame or success.
The medieval philosophers thought it was the closer to god, the happier a person.
We have the declaration of independence saying, Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But what if they are wrong! What if the purpose of life has nothing to do with happiness.
This pursuit of happiness is another lie used to give us some hope that we will find happiness
in life. think about it, think about happiness and sadness and all those other feelings we have.
They (feelings) are transitory, very fleeting, they come and go like the wind, never staying too long.
Someone says to you, I am sad because of … That event that caused the sadness is also transitory.
I am sad because I lost my job. I am happy because I am in love. I am mad because the Giants lost last
night. Transitory events which lead to transitory feelings. I am sad because I lost my job… will I still
be sad tomorrow? We don’t know, we cannot hazard a guess as to whither we will be sad tomorrow or the
next day or the next day. We might still be jobless, but our feelings, changes, transitory.
I have found in my life, when I was happy, I was doing something else, my happiness was a result
of doing something. My happiness was the byproduct of something else. I was happy because I was in love.
I was in love because I was happy, doesn’t work that way. Happiness, sadness, anger, are all byproducts
of something else. I was sad because … I am angry because … I am happy because…
the because caused the sadness, anger, happiness, not the other way around. Our emotions didn’t cause
the event, the event caused our emotions. I have noticed I don’t react the same way I used to react.
I recall being very angry after 9/11 and wanting to nuke every Muslim country. The feeling passed quickly
and I got over it. I remember feeling sick and angry over the various shootings that occurred, Virginia Tech,
and all the others. I heard about South Carolina this morning, it made slightly sad, but I know that will pass soon.
I know, know more senseless deaths and shootings will happen soon because we allow it. I have put
the recent south Carolina shooting into context and have accepted with a sad understanding. It is a wisdom
that allows me to take such sad events and put them into an historical and political context knowing I will
be reading about another such event, tomorrow and next week and next year. All because we are pursing
our “happiness” and allowing guns.
Life is not sacred, it is a biological event and biological events don’t
rely on emotions such as happiness or sadness or anger. biological events only
exist to exist and recreate. Biology is not about sadness or other emotions, but
about existing and then recreating itself. I don’t need to feel sad or happy or angry
to understand my purpose in life is not, IS NOT, happiness, but to recreate, to reproduce
for another generation to exist. If we go extinct, follow the dinosaurs, we have failed in
our biological purpose, which is to exist and to reproduce another generation. All our happiness
and sadness and anger means nothing if we fail in our biological purpose.
Now recall yesterday lesson, how we exist and we shall always exist to the end of time
because of atoms living on beyond our existence. How do we understand
this with any failure of our biological purpose? This is an contradiction. How do we
handle this contradiction?
Kropotkin