In Praise of Melancholy - ChronicleReview.com:
"A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85 percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least pretty happy. The psychological world is now abuzz with a new field, positive psychology, devoted to finding ways to enhance happiness through pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Psychologists practicing this brand of therapy are leaders in a novel science, the science of happiness. Mainstream publishers are learning from the self-help industry and printing thousands of books on how to be happy. Doctors offer a wide array of drugs that might eradicate depression forever. It seems truly an age of almost perfect contentment, a brave new world of persistent good fortune, joy without trouble, felicity with no penalty.
Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste? What are we to make of this American obsession with happiness, an obsession that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation? What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?
Surely all this happiness can't be for real." read entire article
I guess I would say that being happy sure beats being depressed in terms of personal comfort... but maybe it takes extreme discomfort to motivate us to see beyond our own happy little world.
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1 comment:
Interesting. I think happiness can make one self-centered, while joy is peace, hope, and contentment apart from one's circumstances. Love, though, would be the best motivator for people to look beyond their own lives.
Also, Yoda is not a cat.
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