Seek contentment, not happiness.
3
"Public happiness is discovered whenever and wherever people perform for the sake of freedom — and so taste the “birth” of their action."
This abuses "happiness" and "freedom" as well as Socrates.
Americans (and now Italians) abuse "freedom" by turning it into a mysterious elixir-feeling (see Bush, second inaugural). "Free" is nonsense unless its three faces are spelled out--Whose? From what? Enabling what?
"Free from foreign government" morphed into "free from government;" that morphed into feeling free and nothin' left to lose.
"Happiness" translates "eudaemonia"--good + demon/spirit--much like living with a "guardian angel." Blessed, "good fortune" and "fortunate" also work--"fortune" being a force determining events, like mythic Fates (Moiroi)-- Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.
"Happy" as in "happy hour" is like "elixir freedom" and indeed "feeling good" as in inebriated. But that's NOT what Socrates was talking about--neither for a psyche (personality) nor a polity--as in mass rallies--euphoria at a footall game, concert or a protest. These highs are short lived--even counting afterglows.
"Eudaemonia" for the Athenian trinity (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) always meant "living well" --the valuable life--not the popular conception of "la dolce vita" (wine women/men and song).
The Socratic concerns spawned the Cynics and Stoics. Many identified Jesus ("turn the other cheek, give all you've got") as a Cynic--a new Diogenes. The anti-Babbit-Gatsby-Trump.
2
Happiness is an inside job; not the responsibility of the government. The government is responsible for our collective safety AND to provide essential services the private sector either cannot or will not at an accessible price.
To that end, we have free k-12 education. We have police, fire, and a military (a large military). And we also have the government regulating industries that could cause harm - healthcare, for example. Yet, somehow, over the last 100 years our government sees it's roll as protecting us from ourselves. From our decisions that 'they' don't believe are good decisions.
There is a fine line, but it's still a clear line, between what the government should get involved in and what they shouldn't get involved in. Today, it seems that our Federal government wants to control outcomes. That is NOT their role in a free society. And, while many here don't agree, that control will NOT lead to personal or societal 'happiness.'
1
Similarly, the word "freedom" has been hijacked by the right wing crowd to think it means that one should be able to do what one wants w/o interference from another. Libertarianism is an outgrowth of that bastard philosophy.
The freedom that the great American thinkers extolled was that of being free, in concert, to decide one's fate. It, like the author's happiness, was a group concept. The king no longer got to tell you what to do.
This modern phenomena gave rise to people thinking that taxes are takings by jack booted thugs, never reflecting that the taxes were made via a collective voice.
Billions of words have been offered on how to be happy. I'll throw in a few more dozen, after over seven decades of seeking: 1. Find a purpose in life, 2. Cherish your family (if possible), friends, and neighbors, 3. Shun consumerism, buy what you need, not want, 4. Join am intentional community or more, churches/faith organizations, volunteers are needed everywhere, political, 5. Try to attain some financial security, it's a great stress reliever. To help you, see #3 above. Stay out of debt, have only one credit card, and if you have a mortgage, pay it off as fast as you can. Buy used cars if you need one.
I've been in most of the traps that have prevented my happiness, but through insight, thought, and sometimes just luck, I have escaped them.
1
“The highest good of all concerned” is the admittedly nanoo nanoo approach to maximizing the positive impact of policy, private or public.
Trump seems rather to value the unhappiness of his base’s targets as a key component in his calculations. Thus, his supporters will forgo personal improvement if others can be forced to suffer more.
This is greatness?
1
The whole idea of being newcomers at birth and being free to make new beginnings didn’t ring true to me when I thought of the push to force me to make reparations for things that happened long before my birth.
On the other hand, perhaps I would be much happier if it really were that way.
1
If Mr Cavarero refers to the ego-centrism that helps us forget about our neighbors and makes the world center on "me", then he has a great point. Name-dropping or idea-dropping to prove his point is a bit overdone. Can we modern Americans, or world citizens form values as ideals that transform happiness as something uniquely ours, that we might want to pass along to descendants as Mill & Arendt might have wanted? Can't imagine it, but the goal is noble.
Public Happiness, in tribal times, was a sign of fitness. The tribes who survived endowed us with this unalienable gift.
While I find the concept of what the Founders viewed as “happiness” to be thought provoking, the author’s supposed modern “progressive” parallel movements in the US are not. Prague Spring, the reformist lead up to Tienanmin Square as detailed recently on PBS are good parallels. Note both failed. The current movements she cites in the US are divisive, absolutist, and have no place for dissent within or outside. Correct diagnosis perhaps, but incorrect medicine.
The whole concept of pursuing happiness is misguided. Happiness is undefinable, and that quality renders it too illusive to be pursued.
Most people are happy - but they just don't know it. Happiness can only be achieved through the back door approach and not the front door approach like an active pursuit. The back door approach includes everything that we were taught: practicing the golden rule, being respectful, don't break the law, etc.
As you continue to live a life of self respect and respect for others, you will find that inner joy and peace that many people talk about. If you check yourself you will realize that you are indeed happy. You just didn't know it because you couldn't define it.
1
I appreciate the idea that people are seeking personal fixes when the causes of pain are societal or political. Even during the era of McCarthyism, persecuted individuals sought psychiatric help for their predicaments.
I think it’s fine to try to be happy, and I don’t think personal happiness and collective happiness are mutually exclusive. Good morale is energizing!
But I appreciate the author’s reminder that how to fix what ails us can be outside is.
1
Happiness is not a destination but rather a way of walking.
1
The Declaration of Independence was not, as some observers believe, a celebration of individualism. Jefferson's iconic definition of equality as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, usually quoted in isolation, should be linked to the closing statement in which the signers pledge to each other their lives and sacred honor. The Declaration asserts the right of an entire people to carve out for themselves a new destiny, one in which both collectively and individually they will enjoy the freedom to make their own choices.
The optimism that buoyed the leaders of the Revolution in 1775 stemmed from the belief that Americans would willingly make the individual sacrifices required to achieve the collective happiness promised by independence. The harsh experiences of the long war that followed disabused most of them of their naive idealism, but the conviction that the individual could pursue happiness most successfully as part of a community never entirely disappeared.
Throughout our history Americans have attempted to balance the yearning for personal independence with their sense of loyalty to the nation, albeit with only limited success. The celebrations associated with the fourth of July symbolize our commitment to the welfare of the national community, a kind of unity we otherwise usually experience only in times of crisis.
Happy birthday, America!
1
At the farmers markets, I intentionally spread good cheer along with the tasty produce. Why? Because it feels right and seems to me to be a way to live out my Christian Faith. I find it interesting that most of the people I know who I perceive as happy have some sort of faith center and also it is NOT of the judgemental, guilt based type. Additionally, as we are taught in Jesus' teachings while we are given grace by faith (absolving us from blame for our inevitable errors), that faith is meaningless without action of caring for others and our world.
As a result, I see having happiness as a result of a chain. Decide to be as happy as possible, act toward others in a caring manner, look out for the common good, take pleasure in the simple and complex parts of the world that give pleasure (not always the same for everyone), share those pleasures in a manner that gives others a better life and repeat.
In my case this means growing healthy and tasty food, experiencing hobbies and reading and enjoying the bounty of the natural world and creativity, participating in community and church and family, sharing knowledge and advocating for a better society, country and world.
Does this make me happy all the time? NO. Does it make me able to interact with nearly all people in a mostly positive way? Yes.
31
@Organic Vegetable Farmer
Some keep the Sabbath going to church -
I keep it staying home -
With a bobolink for a chorister
And an orchard for a dome.
Some keep it in costly raiment -
I just wear my wings.
And instead of tolling the bell to church
Our little sexton sings.
God preaches - a noted clergyman -
And the sermon is never long.
So instead of going to Heaven at last,
I'm going all along.
Emily Dickinson
2
There is a general understanding in countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden that as citizens of those countries the first thing that matters is a we are all in it for EACH OTHER mentality. The general best interest and outcomes of the all parts of society are cherished and hoped for. The idea that I got mine and I can't worry about what happens to you...pull yourself up you loser...is repugnant in the eyes of Scandinavians. I've often been asked how Americans can live like that. The next question is why the citizenry puts up with it.
35
Strangely, in a longer than average life, I never found the concept of happiness of any use. Of course, I am not enthusiastic about being miserable but that's a whole different story. I enjoy being engaged in interesting activities which involves both failures and successes because they come in the same package, and happiness as a steady state seems to me to be not only unattainable but undesirable. I appreciate understanding the things in life that demand change and finding ways to change them but that's what life is about, and having difficulties gives me the knowledge I need to live. Like most people in the world. I am nobody special, and after I am gone I will be rapidly forgotten.
25
@Jan Sand:
You can be remembered for this: happiness as a concept is of little use! Success and failures, you suggest, come in the same package. One without the other would be to oscillate between euphoria and despair. Neither should be sought after, at least in most of our wakeful moments.
And in recognizing this bit of wisdom from freedom's promise, the Founders chose "happiness" to occupy that space. It is the choice of words meant to convey the sense of a common good, one made through the cooperation necessary to defend and support both 'life' and 'liberty'.
Thank you.
2
Don't want to quibble with the author as I think she is basically right on her main point. But since having mixed feelings about nearly everything seems to give me (mixed) happiness it seems, here goes. No one has ever agreed with me, but I think happiness is overrated. It does nothing for the species with whom we share the planet, have responsibility for, and who are in trouble, unless we happen to be sensitive and define our happiness around working on that. Then there's Postman's "Are we amusing ourselves to death." Is the pursuit of happiness diverting us from what we should be paying attention to? Have mixed feelings about public protests, too. While participating in them occasionally (when feeling internally compelled) and I get the value of adding a "1" to the numbers count, I wonder if it's really the best use of time? They don't do nuance, with which I view most issues. To the degree they spur possibly unnecessary backlash, they can reduce their later inning effectiveness. The Times recently had a column that even when successful, history sometimes misreads whom to credit for that success. And, yes, they can feel good. But the Times recently had another column about someone who admitted participating solely for that reason, with the particular cause being irrelevant. Still, I wonder if the author's valid point about relationships between the personal and public spheres can be extended to other areas? I'm about to explore that when it comes to mindset shifts.
8
@Matt Polsky I agree with you that happiness is highly overrated and is beyond our control. We tout it to our children as the end-all of existence. I much prefer the concept of contentment, which is a choice. We, as a society, however, are taught discontentment daily by the marketing and advertising sectors since a content populace is much less easily manipulated to purchase unneeded stuff.
13
Any movement that offers revolutionary freedoms and fosters wide support will initially increase happiness as people embrace hope for a better world. The last century illustrates though, that when the promises of the movement do not bear fruit the result is a state of misery far greater than before.
We should not be pursuing public or even personal happiness as an end goal. Instead we need to figure out what actually leads to our desired outcomes and pursue those things through patience and hardship. The end will be a better world and happier people.
10
@phil
Dr Cavarero left out an important part of the Aristotlean argument that she presents in her op ed. Happiness for Aristotle and Arendt is not a state of mind, and has nothing to do with contentment. It has to do with the cultivation of virtues and potentialities and that this cultivation can only be done in the company of others. So, you don't pursue public happiness as a goal. Public happiness is the result of acting in concert with fellow citizens, an offshoot of seeking the common good. Aristotle did not call us "political animals." The zoon politikon is an animal that lives in cities---it is our natural state to live and act with other people.
1
"We need to rethink the almost obsessive concern with individual happiness that pervades our culture."
No, we really don't. Socrates had to make himself happy first, then and only then could he possibly help others and society, if they'll listen, which few will, as history attests.
Socrates lived and died a happy man in an unhappy polis. Which makes me conclude that if he couldn't succeed in fixing things political, then neither can anyone else.
Lenin and Stalin sought to create a paradise on Earth through group solidarity. It was a bloody fiasco.
All of which brings me to conclude that there is hope for individuals, but not the body politic.
Granted, though, one cannot make herself happy through materialism or selfishness. Socrates concluded that only a virtuous person, i.e., one who is temperate, courageous, just, and wise, could be happy. To achieve that, as Spinoza said, is as difficult as it is rare. Societies haven't a chance of vast success in this endeavor, even though a just society would definitely make success easier.
But like the wise man in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, we should return from visiting the Sun, i.e., the Good, and re-enter the cave with the intent of helping perhaps a few others to climb out of darkness and into the light.
6
I guess this explains why people are so joyful at Trump rallies.
1
"Public happiness is something that happens when we, in public, create something new"…
I certainly don't see why something "new" creates happiness, be it public of individual. This claim has been made by GAFAs since 30 years and all we got is being "welcomed" "in a New World of Possibilities" in which San Francisco has turned a spot for young wealthy wunder kids hovering the city in a bubble on their single wheel overboard.
I always understood the claim "pursuit of happiness" made by the Founding Fathers as a society offering the conditions of happiness to all,individuals… Something like a pre-Welfare State : after all Benjamin Franklin always refused to patent his inventions as he hoped to promote public good.
The pursuit of happiness as seen by Hannah Arendt seems somewhat limited to me : if public happiness should remain "public" it doesn't make much sense. "Public happiness" in a society where people are individually unhappy means little. The end of all that bears the name of social happiness must be the individual…
Of course fact that individual is able or unable to be happy due to his particulars is entirely a different story.
Then again selfishness has little to do with happiness or well conceived individualism as it merely implies consumption of market goods.
Hence public happiness is most desirable as it does away with selfishness… but it must return to the individual. Lest "happiness" is just a name for good social engineering.
While Arendt traces public happiness to the Greeks, Socrates et al were slaveowners.
Eugene Taylor, a cultural historian specializing in “contemplative” oriented movements in US history, speaks of 4 “Great Awakenings" having taken place over the course of our history.
The first took place several decades prior to the Revolutionary War. These awakenings are conventionally viewed as a kind of “religious frenzy” potentially leading to dangerous social upheavals.
Tracing the threads of that uniquely American philosophy of transcendentalism, Taylor sees each of these Awakenings as providing an “inner” basis for profound happiness and inner peace that has a kind of drive to manifest in society.
Along similar lines, Tibetan Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman suggests that by the mid to late 20th century (the period of the 4th “Great Awakening,” according to Taylor), there was a meeting of East and West of such portent as to be seen as the sign of a “Global Renaissance.”
In this time of world crisis and increasingly divisive polarization, a consciousness of global Oneness may provide a basis for a happiness far far deeper than that conceived of by the purveyors of “well-being” or worse, “wellness.”
“That” in which “we live and move and have our being” is ever-present and ever-available; the Ananda of That is the source of all true happiness.
1
In civics class, we were told that the pursuit of happiness was a way of saying the right to seek income, not what the article says here. Of course, this was in the 40s. I still think our forefathers were on to something!
Good summary of what Pride Week and its culmination on Sunday was al about!
"Could we be happy together, not simply as the sum of individual happiness but because the very experience of being and acting together makes us happy? "
No - if you are an intelligent person, then trying to do anything with all those idiots around you is a great exercise in misery.
2
@NH
Eloquently and succintly put. My view of everything neatly summed up in one sentence. Thank you. :-)
1
Our world of digitized social media thrives on the private domain of self, so it is not surprising that well-selling workshops on happiness today emphasize the individual.
The digitized, fragmented and distracted individual has become socially atrophied, emotionally immature and, in the worst cases separated from social conscience.
The privatization of the personal runs counter to developing civic awareness, and becoming sufficiently politicized to at least get a basic understanding of power, and how power actually works.
One of the ways power stays in power is precisely by taking public spaces and public education away from the public and into the private sphere.
This neoliberal grand strategy has been moving ever greater numbers of people into distraction, division, and disengagement from community.
As a result, many people's idea of financial freedom is about living high in a mansion with high walls, away from everyone else, flying in private jets, sailing in private yachts, and wallowing in to-hell-with-you money.
This is the model they see at work among the "masters of the universe", to whom they bow.
Happiness on those terms is not sound or free since it requires constant security systems for protection.
Rather than learning more "letting go" and becoming lighter as they age, the masters of the universe continue hoarding wealth on the backs of others. I call that blood money.
Self separated from its natural source is doomed.
oz.
3
Public happiness? Under this administration, which intentionally creates as much unhappiness as it possible can? Who the heck are you kidding?
1
I think a desire for agency is at the heart of this pursuit of Collective Happiness. People want to believe that they, as a like-minded group, can affect policy outcomes. And the outcomes people are most interested in are the ones that directly affect them, whether that be policing, access to affordable basics such as housing, childcare, healthcare, etc, or simply better parks and bike trails.
Lately there is a push to disenfranchise voters through gerrymandering and onerous voting obstacles. Laws are often passed with little voter input, or else community input is largely ignored. Hong Kong voters aren't the only ones frustrated. They're just more vocal.
1
A false view of individual happiness is suicide, of collective happiness, genocide. An artificial happiness brought on as a negation of the political, of course, being political itself; temporarily relieving and creating a momentary cessation of conflict. The true happiness and hence collective happiness is a view to pretension, posing, majesty, and the overshadowing of those who appear as to get in one’s way of that supposed happiness. In other words, a constant need to eclipse and dazzle the other by use of stratagems or otherwise. This, in and of itself, makes true happiness (collective or besides) a relentless arms race, not, an “experience of being free” or a “mysterious human gift.” It is, to put it mildly, Machiavellian, roughly meaning “its ends justify the means.” This is what individuals truly desire. And hence, by increase or extension, what a crowd wants. A thing as achieved by any means necessary; this, after all, being the true happiness.
The Taoists, contemplative Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, shamans of the Americas and many more through the ages have said that the primary obstacle to happiness is seeking happiness, not knowing that our essential being *is* of the nature of unthinkable peace ("the peace that passeth understanding") and unfathomable joy ("Ananda" - not pleasure or 'personal well being')
And contemporary neuroscience is slowly feeling its way toward understanding the revolutionary potential of a truly integrated brain and nervous system.
Shifting attention from the contents of awareness to the simple fact of awareness itself - "Being-Awareness" - letting go of the belief there are "problems" to be solved (but being moved by compassion and loving-kindness to care for all) - it is the most gentle shift imaginable.....
https://beyondthematrixnow.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/remember-to-be/
Whatever the place you’re in
Whatever you feel
Whatever is going on
Remember to be
Let go of the future
Let go of the past
Set all your concerns aside
Remember to be
CHORUS
No matter the grief or pain
We still can be free
With just the most gentle shift
Remember to be….
VERSE
Whenever the stillness blooms
The heart can breathe free
the chains on our wings are broke
just ‘membering to be
CHORUS
No matter the grief or pain
We still can be free
With just the most gentle shift
Remember to be….
Now all can join hands and sing
We all can create
A world filled with joy and peace
Just ‘membering to be..
A sure way to kill a sense of happiness is to drag it into the realm of politics. Let me be happy in my way, and you in yours. Politics addresses the need to create a situation where my happiness and yours can coexist, but the pursuit of happiness is not a joint undertaking.
2
I love, and believe into, the concept of public happiness. In the present context this would be one where the MAGA and pussy hats (and mainstream media) not only accept but celebrate everyone's right to expression and political action.
One where universities produce engaged civil servants and agents, rather than aggrieved activists who see freedom of expression as an intolerable threat.
Google: The Four Noble Truths.
It has been said, and I agree, the greatest happiness is in peace.
Namaste
2
“Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace?
Yes.
Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”
― Eckhart Tolle
2
Everyone needs to feel peace, happiness or whatever you want to call it, in their life. It’s not the world or public sphere that needs peace, happiness, freedom; it’s people. When the individuals are feeling it, it will manifest outwardly. Not the other way around.
1
Emerson said something like: The point of life is not to be happy; it is to be useful—to have it matter that we have lived and lived well. The science of happiness would probably lead us to conclude that Emerson made a mistake. Being useful is the path to happiness, publicly and privately. Or at least one good one. In other words, don’t seek money and recognition; help others and look outward. The psychologist Tim Kasser wrote a good book on this a while back.
5
"The pursuit of happiness" is a vague value contained in the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. The Preamble to the Constitution is more specific: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
2
The secret to happiness in the 21st century is to minimize the number of gadgets that need recharging.
60
@Plennie Wingo Nonsense! I myself am such a gadget.
2
@westernman, bravo. Keep recharging. The electronics, not so much.
2
@Plennie Wingo Perhaps. But I, an old man, find my electronics so very useful. Granted, sometimes the cause of extreme anger and unhappiness when they upset me. But of more importance than how many do you have or not have, I have long offered up the question, "Do you own your devices, or do they own you?" Standing in line to get the newest iSomething. Talking on the phone ignoring your children or the person you love next to you (often also talking on their phone!) Checking your mail and FB (Soul sucking!) first and last things in the day. Stuff like that.
Oswald Spengler said, "Materialism has been the effective religion of the West for 400 years". This suggests that happiness is to be found in our material lives. The pursuit of happiness is a goal best left to the individual; group happiness, communism in some form, is a cover for someone else's pursuit of happiness-- will to power, the state control much beloved of the left; their control of you makes them happy. this discussion also presupposes that you know what you want, a doubtful proposition--but does someone else know what you want? Modern liberalism is a cover for envy and cupidity disguised as a celebration of freedom. Liberals hide their selfish motives by insisting that they know what you (should) want and seek to increase your happiness.
1
Everyone wants to be happy, "1st said Socrates?"
Kidding?
Egypt, Persia, China, India, Babylon (Iraq), numerous African societies: were they really, in all their advancement immeasurably more sophisticated than Europe, yet so very ignorant, that as they created complex societies and rich cultures, it never occurred to any within them, that "happiness' is a universal goal?
How very, very Euro-centric. And racist. There is nothing else to call it. It's hard to read beyond that opening. This is "philosophy" western person style?
4
@AJ It might be Euro-centric but not necessarily racist. Is it possible that Western culture finds happiness more important than non-Western cultures do?
@Rose Anne
Ah, the old "what is happiness?"
Self contentment, self control and liberation, seem the objectives of most traditions.
I just love it how Jeremy Bentham is mentioned. His most notable act was having his body mummified after he died, to be put on display. However, the mummification of his head went horribly wrong.
Google Bentham's Head. It's really cool, yet creepy.
1
You can see this in the polls which show the "happist' countries to live in. The US is not one. They tend tobe those Democratic Socialist countries of Norway ,Swedwn ,Etc. Taxes create social good for all.
4
I notice that joy in collective action often seems more accessible in spaces led by black and brown women and femme people.
Man's Search for Meaning.
1
For most of the Founding Fathers, the Revolution was about the individual happiness of owning slaves, unfettered by the laws of England, collective happiness be damned.
2
I appreciate the argument made in the article and yet there is a corollary that it, the article, does not acknowledge. That is the underlying idea is a shared perception of "freedom as the the "freedom to", the release from restraints v. "the freedom from"
In many, if not most cases there is a source, often hated, of restraints that has been overthrown. That source of unwanted is generally shared so that public freedom entails some unwanted source of unfreedom that continues to be in the consciousness of the wider public for a long period of time.
In the American Revolution, Great Britain served as the figure of the unwanted source of the lack of public freedom.
In Great Britain, in turn, since the time of Edward 1, the source of restraint of English kings and later on the English people was the Roman Catholic Church.
"The Statute of Provisors (1306), passed in the reign of Edward I, was, according to Sir Edward Coke, the foundation of all subsequent statutes of praemunire. This statute enacted "that no tax imposed by any religious persons should be sent out of the country whether under the name of a rent, tallage, tribute or any kind of imposition". A much greater check on the freedom of action of the popes was imposed by the Statute of Provisors (1351) and the Statute of Praemunire passed in the reign of Edward III.[2]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praemunire
I will restrain myself from drawing contemporary comparisons.
Wonderful words of wisdom. Precisely the kind that Trump supporters could never fathom.
1
Not everyone was happy with the outcome of the U.S.’s Revolutionary War. Plenty of royalists moved to Canada or back to England. The “western” mountains of the then U.S. — the Appalachians — were inhabited by illiterate isolated ex-European serfs who didn’t understand what the democratic hoopla was all about.
My generation — the boomers — enjoyed great mutually shared cultural happiness, which we receive nothing but jealous contempt for today.
Neither collective or individual happiness is sustainable. We have now in place a ginned-up belief system of individual happiness successfully sold as consumer capitalism. This misuse of public communication was never envisioned either by the Greeks or the U.S.’s founders.
2
I stopped reading after "culture of mood-altering pharmaceutical drugs." Mental illness is, in many cases, a symptom of our lack of cohesiveness - without a support system, many individuals are unfortunately limited to chemical intervention. But framing those who are seeking relief as lazy hedonists looking to pop a quick happy pill shows that you are not yet ready to be part of the solution... not to mention a fundamental lack of understanding about how these drugs work and the side effects that those of us who take them must endure.
2
Would it make one publicly happy to violently overthrow the established government, confiscate millions of acres from the just the Penn family, jail the Governor of New Jersey and not redistribute the wealth? The American Revolution was as much a land grab as a freedom grab and we should stop over romanticizing it. It wasn't public happiness or due process for the half of the colonies that were loyalists was it? Just saying.
1
So the inalienable rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of public and political happiness through collective action? Hmmmm.
It is interesting to note how far the Western civilization came from the time of Socrates and Pithagorous - “happiness” has become an objective construct to be achieved by external actions only. All ancients Saints and Rishis always viewed “happiness” as internal state of a person and self generating and not an object. The state of happiness manifests when “fear” recedes. The harness and fearlessness are same thing and achieved gradually through the life’s experience of first solving “survival” challenge and then “manifesting freedom”. As long as survival problem exists, fear grips the person and happiness can not shine. Only when survival problem is solved, through state policies, person slowly unfolds the inner fragrance and can achieve the “freedom” and reach the state of happiness. And this can be achieved through many ways like Bill Gates, Yogis like Sadguru or statesman like Washington or Lincoln - work, knowledge, devotion or concentration of mind. The public happiness is the outcome of happy people - we can not put the cart before the horse.
This dovetails with Victor Frankl's observation that happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."
But first, make me happy by bringing the rich down to earth. That will make them very, very unhappy.
You simply cannot find a common thread of happiness in American history, if you are going to bring in Washington, Jefferson, Madison and other slaveholders. A large percentage of the south were slaves, prisoners to the greed and brutality of the slaveholders.
Women were clearly second class citizens, and we are still waiting for our first female President.
God is spirit, that which is generated by a common people on a common journey, and that is the happiness of which you speak. But we are not a common people on a common journey, so my crushing unhappiness is built of real stuff.
Cheers.
Hugh
2
I think being a political reactionary makes one just as happy as being a revolutionary. It gives equal community and accomplishment. Saving something old and traditional is just as satisfying. Do we need political cataclysms to be happy? Revolutions often kill and destroy and the good guys don't always win. The takeaway here is group action. Revolution or book club.
Nice little essay – a thought experiment really. Unfortunately, its optimistic and idealistic spirit evaporates as soon as it encounters the toxic, deeply embedded American atmosphere of individualism and private property, and a rapacious capitalism designed exclusively to enhance both of those. It is a dream whose delicate sentiments withers and collapses under the flames of Trumpian rhetoric.
“Joyful emotions of birth through collective action” is translated as “socialism” (the anti-Christ) in America. “Public freedom” in America means the Bill of Rights, not collective outcomes.
Well – we can dream can’t we?
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Shantideva: “Those desiring to escape from suffering hasten right toward suffering. With the very desire for happiness, out of delusion they destroy their own happiness as if it was the enemy.”
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@Michael Wow! Thanks for sharing this. Never heard it before, but it feels right.
I'm a septuagenarian entering the last stage of his life. I wonder, did I lead a happy life?
I’m not sure. Happiness, the oft used marker of the good life, varies. My view of it changes daily.
I've witnessed happiness, children at play and, this spring, fifteen ducklings swimming on a pond, following their alert and wary mother.
Thoreau, in his “Journals:” “My life [as a boy] was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me.”
My sweetest hours have been hiking in the wildernesses of Idaho. I felt ecstatic hiking to Diablo Lookout on a trail that rose through a forest charred by a wildfire.
Outside the wilderness the sky is grayer. My happiness moulders. Television screens blare—school shootings, illegal immigrants forced to drink water from toilets—an unhappy world.
Montaigne claimed the ultimate purpose of life was pleasure and that to study philosophy was to learn to die.
In seven decades of life, I’ve found that happiness is not found just in children at play or ducklings or mountain hikes but that happiness also exists in sorrow and decay, in death and dying, in the skirmish of a finite life, and that philosophic contemplation, as Montaigne imaged it, changes a dreary life into an interesting life, even a happy one, that to study philosophy is not only to learn how to die but to learn how to be happy.
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@Dave Thomas
A note to thank you for taking the time to pen such a wonderful response. We would all do well to reflect on your comments daily.
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@Dave Thomas Very well put. Happiness comes in moments, it's unpredictable. I have been depressed on vacation and laughed in jail.
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Thank you for this extraordinary comment.
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This is still found at events like state fairs, where amusement, wonder, thrills, feasting, chance, trickery, and the celebration of simple human achievements are shared and joyous. The crowds I see are largely poor and working class, and ethnically diverse. I highly recommend it.
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Organic Vegetable Farmer, your Christian Faith propels you.
To everyone else, you cannot avoid unhappiness because it is a fact of life. In fact, how can you distinguish being happy unless you’ve been unhappy?
But you don’t have to be unhappy all the time. I know. I was daily...for almost 63 years. I was unhappy about myself, my career, my personal relationships, everything. I even had an intellectual understanding about God. I thought I knew enough about life to be happy. To overcome. To win, if only once.
But nothing worked. My last attempt at happiness came while writing 4 novels and publishing the first. It failed in spectacular fashion, not selling a single copy. And it still hasn’t.
I considered suicide for a third time. I told God that nothing matters. I gave up, yet again.
Then I let everything go. I prayed, but I asked for nothing in return because I knew it was hopeless. I knew God would never answer.
And now I am happier. I have nothing to live up to. I have nothing to judge myself against. I accept the fact that nothing will happen, certainly nothing positive. I expect nothing. I worship blindly, expecting nothing in return.
And I am becoming happier. I have faith that things will be better but I’m not stressed if they don’t. I know nothing exists without God because life is centered around God. The material and temporal leads to extinction.
Blind faith and blind trust. And for now, that’s all I need to know.
You are missing a major driver of Public Unhappiness. Our focus on the pursuit of maximizing growth and the GDP at the expense of all other measures of wellness is causing a great disconnect between Economic Growth and Economic Wellbeing.
See David Pilling’s Growth Delusion gives an excellent explanation of why it is important for our business and political health reporting to stop focusing only on GDP. We are unhappy because we are damaging our future and we know that but aren’t including it in our top line economic measures.
The Maryland Genuine Progress Index is a far better measure of societal wellbeing and economic health than GDP and more states need to implement it. Our nation can do much to start measuring Public Happiness and this is a good way to do it.
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"a course at Yale called “Psychology and the Good Life,” aimed at teaching students to lead happier, more satisfying lives."
These days a lot of people note that happiness and life satisfaction are distinct. I feel happy when I'm not at work; I feel satisfaction when I provide for my children, which of course requires going to work.
And mentioning children, the happiest time of most parents - including me - is when everybody else in the house is asleep. But I would never give up the satisfying and fulfilling life as a parent for personal happiness.
Happiness isn't all it's made out to be.
I am going to express a series of contradictory thoughts, but progress is rarely straight line. The election of Trump was a group of people who had been abandoned by the major political parties, reclaiming their power and trying for happiness according to their lights. Trump like any savvy con man, hijacked a mood of discontent and is using it for his own glorification. The Trump experience is important because I believe that it is showing the nation what happens when we go too far in one direction. In this case, personal success at the expense of everything, and I do mean everything, else.
I think the nation now stands at a cross road where a decision must be made between a participatory government and one where a strong willed leader imposes his or her vision on the nation. I will put Trump, obviously, in the last category, but also Sanders and Warren. They are the face and reverse of a coin I will call "I know what is best." When a leader has the best interests of a nation at heart, imposing his/her will can move the country forward rapidly. When the leader is narcissistic and of limited capacity, we get the mess we currently have.
A participatory government on the other hand is messy, and if the major players do not take up their share of the work, as now, it can lead to gridlock, also as now. However, when it works, it reflects the consensus of the nation and can lead to, I think, the greatest happiness.
So now, our choice, America, what is your will?
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It's very easy to applaud the American revolution - if you don't consider slavery, or the genocide of the Native peoples. The list can go on, but it's too easy a target.
And also, while I think we should all give consideration to the ideas of others, when I read some of Arendt, I came away thinking of the phrase, "there's no 'there' there."
The graphic that accompanies this piece is both ironic and misleading. The Washington family was quite well-known among Native peoples as "town destroyer." And there's this, from the website "Indian Country Today": "His anti-Indian sentiments were again made clear in 1783 when he compared Indians with wolves, saying 'Both being beast of prey, tho’ they differ in shape.' After a defeat, Washington’s troops would skin the bodies of Iroquois from the hips down to make boot tops or leggings. Those who survived called the first president, 'Town Destroyer.' Within a five-year period, 28 of 30 Seneca towns had been destroyed."
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@Tom Conquest and slavery have been the history of the world not just the US. The events you mention are not unique in space or time. Anyone can read about atrocities on any side of any war. What would you replace Independence day with? I would love to see just one person give their home to a Native American and stop benefiting from the empire we all benefit from. Some empires are better than others.
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Jefferson was only the most obvious example of US founding fathers' happiness having been purchased at a considerable price.
Arendt was one of many expatriate Euroskeptics who got inebriated on the freedoms of their adoptive state.
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What about those of us who disagree with what the public mass is doing? What about those of us who like quiet, and don't like whooping it up in large groups? Isn't there something conformity-imposing in Cavarero's vision, that leads sooner or later to the hemlock and the re-education camp?
It's worth remembering that the Greek polis system produced plenty of civil violence, thousands of exiles, and a whole class of people, the metics, who preferred to emigrate rather than share in the public joy.
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@Ashley We now have the idea of a public mass, whooping it up together, more than we did before and I think it's social media to blame. I remember hanging out in public reading a book in a coffee shop as an experience less like being part of a public mass, and more like enjoying my quiet and privacy alongside others. But now you can't be alone with your thoughts in such a situation, you need to be on your phone. You need to assert yourself in the public mass, unfortunately.
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David Brooks today points us to the Nordic countries for their blend of economics and social programs. We can also look to them on how to describe happiness. It’s called hygge or a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellbeing and content. Or the word Lagom—not too much not too little just about right and finding a balance that works for you. The helter skelter life style in this country makes it difficult for families and friends to just get together and enjoy each other’s company.
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Dear Professor Cavarero,
To paraphrase the novelist Khaled Khalifa, discovering happiness is like seeing a bouquet floating down a river; catch it quickly, or the river will sweep it away.
However, if you present a bouquet to everyone you meet in every way you can, happiness will become the river, and you are the one who will be swept away in it.
Happily,
S.A. Traina
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@S.A. Traina
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
Dalai Lama
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@marino777
Yes.
D.L. also said
Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.
@marino777:
Absolutely. After selling his soul to Satan yet never finding bliss, Faust finally finds it by being in the service of others. Compassion rains happiness on all who practice it, and yet what a pity that so many of us insist on keeping our umbrellas open even on the sunniest of days.
Fun fact about Jeremy Bentham;
After his death, he had wanted his body to be mummified so as to be put on display for science. The method he had his head mummified was...not the best choice aesthetically. The result is very creepy, yet fascinating. I don't have a link, but Ask A Mortician on YouTube has a great video, which is titled 'Iconic Corpse; the head of Jeremy Bentham'. I am not affiliated with her (Yet, I hope), I'm just a huge fan and future mortician.
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It is not only unfashionable but inconceivable to think outside of preserving individual autonomy in our pursuit of happiness. We worship ‘freedom’, itself a negative definition focused not on what we can do but what we cannot be obligated to do. Our civilisation understands itself not as a product of history and maker of future history, but as a facilitation — like a big shopping mall with a legal system — of individuals doing what pleases them, so long as they do not interrupt others doing the same and disrupt the peace. Yet this condition has not made us happy. While we agree that liberty, equality, fraternity and open economies are noble methods, the goal of these — having a better civilisation and individual lives — has not manifested itself through those methods. By basing our ideal on freedom, we have closed ourselves off to obligations outside of ourselves, which coincidentally are the things that make us feel most alive. We are prisoners of the self, and it is no surprise we act selfishly as a result.
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If you pressed successful people about when they were happiest, I suspect many, if not most, would answer the years they spent in college - days spent in public spaces: classrooms, campus hangouts, at games, concerts, and perhaps a demonstration or two with masses of their fellow students, not to mention, dormitories where 40 or more might share a shower room! (Obviously my student experience preceded the amenities revolution!)
Amazing that these same folks' highest aspiration coming out of school was a private office and an acre or more estate home well removed from their neighbors!
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@vcbowie of course those people would choose those college years also because those were the years they were young and largely carefree...
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@Jim I think the author would argue that the "carefreeness" and the living in public are connected.
J'applaud the association between collective happiness and freedom, but would add another, as relates to our individual, inalienable right to pursue "happiness." Chasing after something as illusive and variously defined as happiness creates vague/false expectations of finding it, without the ability to recognize it. Perhaps a better way to look at that freedom, individually (and communally) is to relate it, first, to the goodness of fit between who we are, personally (e..g., likes, dislikes, personality traits, talents, and abilities) and what we choose to do, vocationally. Happiness is best, or at least better, defined by the results of matching one's individuality with jobs of work that best utilize that individuality most productively, in terms of its beneficial effects on the world(s) around us. We don't pursue it; we create/produce it through our vocations (from "vocatio," meaning "I call"). Happiness is a result of how well we match our individualities with our work, best realized when our work also helps others. The best (happiest) of both worlds, then, is when what I do best (what I am "called" to do, per my individuality) produces the greatest benefit for others, however widelyor narrowly conceived. It is a result, not a pot of gold at the end of some illusive rainbow.
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Happiness is a western ideal. I'm afraid the Buddhist and anti-natalist have this right in that on balance existence is on the negative side of the ledger and release from it would be to the benefit of sentient creatures. The suffering of our fellow animals, and often of ourselves, is a horror show we are only too happy to be distracted from with work and entertainment. But have a nice day!
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The examples in the article seem to verge on the sort of bliss found by joining with others in fighting an enemy. This is shared by both "good guys" and "bad guys".
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Happiness is certainly a public good worth pursuing; and once present, maintaining; but it must start with the individual, with self-assertion, and being at peace with oneself; and then, seeking to share it with others, as we are social beings and depend on each other. There is a saying that we are happier by making somebody else happy seems to hold true; while trying to seek happiness for happiness sake may be a vane pursuit. As is the idea that one can achieve happiness for ever, when we ought to know better how fleeting it can be. Then, we may find that happiness requires a modicum of freedom to think and say and do as one pleases -provided it does not harm anybody else- and some justice in our midst. It sounds complex perhaps but, basically, contentment is in the eyes of the beholder, especially when the joy grows more by giving, and listening, than by receiving and talking away. Personally, I feel happiest when able to forget about the ego, either idly playing wiht my mind ( non-guilty idleness) or 'becoming one' with nature or with whatever is being done. There, clear as mud, right? But that's the way it is. 'Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think', seems a good advice (as said by Guy Lombardo).
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Reminds me of the recent article regarding the Republicans’ lack of devotion to democracy. People who have self rule are fundamentally different from people who don’t. We could call that gift public happiness. Or we can just take it for granted and It will go away.
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The happiness of the individual cannot be separated from the collective happiness of the group. If the individuals of a group are not happy, the group will not be happy. Happiness is a feeling of well-being in the human mind that stems from how well the extended "I" believes it is doing. Things can be terrible, but if the mind perceives its "I" and those things attached to the "I" are doing well, it is happy. Things can be going great, but if the "I" perceives itself as not doing well, it will be unhappy. There is much we can learn about the human brain and what drives it, and when we program the mind in a computer, all sorts of things will come to light.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive and what makes us happy. With our beliefs, we produce minds programmed de facto for unhappiness and destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of all - the survival of a belief as more important than our own happiness. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity. We will find true happiness.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
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The pursuit of happiness is the key. Happiness itself tends to be fleeting.
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I've read that many Canadians are descended from former American colonists who disapproved of the American Revolution and were forced to flee to a less hospitable part of North America. I doubt that they were happy about the situation. Nor were the slaves who were cut off from the British anti-slavery reforms. Nor were the Native Americans whose rights to the land were protected by the British government and realized that they wouldn't be if the colonists won.
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The 1960’s might be called an era of great happiness if you imagine Woodstock as the culmination of the movement. Unfortunately, maybe the reality on the ground (the mud?) wasn’t as “happy” as we imagine in hindsight. But it was a complex time of great happiness (new found freedoms) infused with great tension and violence.
Socrates lived around the time of Plato, for whom happiness consisted in a satisfying balance between mind and passion, which was called "eudaimonia" (good spirits); Aristotle, Plato's pupil, wrote extensively about happiness, which he thought consisted in the exercise of the human mind in contemplation, surrounded by friends and relatives -- something Jefferson replicated centuries later in Monticello; he also lived before Zeno of Citium, who lectured in the Stoa Poikile about happiness consisting in a life of virtue, which he called "living according to nature" (kata physin), a philosophy later called "Stoicism" and preached by Epictetus, the freed Roman slave, and by the emperor Marcus Aurelius; and he also lived before Epicurus, for whom happiness consisted in a life balanced between pleasure and pain, for which one had to develop a certain strength of will which Ignatius Loyola would centuries later call "indifference."
He also lived almost a thousand years before St. Augustine, for whom happiness was the satisfaction of all desires and expectations, possible only by the possession of the one item that could be so perfectly satisfying, namely, God; and two thousand years before Thomas Aquinas, who agreed with Augustine.
Bentham thought that the role of government was to procure the happiness OF ALL, not just that of the greatest number, as he is often said to have argued. But today, most people follow Ayn Rand, who argued for the virtue of selfishness. Oh, my!
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@Ignacio Gotz
Jefferson wasn't surrounded by "friends and relatives", but by slaves -- something that is obvious if you visit Monticello and see his mansion surrounded by slave quarters.
And, by the way, Socrates didn't just "live in the time of Plato". Plato was one of his pupils. The Greeks would say that Plato lived in the time of Socrates.
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@Charlesbalpha To say Jefferson had no friends is absurd. I bet even the slaves had friends.
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@Sean
I think Charles was so set off by the negative comment on Rand that he chose to allay this with Trumpian "truthful hyperbole."
1
Social science, not just philosophy, if needed to show what creates happiness. And once again according to the UN world happiness report for 2019, Finland is first followed by the other Scandinavian countries in overall happiness. The US ranks 18th. The difference appears to rest in the Universal Health Care and education provided by the Scandinavian countries, and the US ranking is driven down by our great economic inequality.
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I think some of the happiness of those countries lies in the fact that, as cohesive societies going back many centuries, they share societal values & goals, and a sense of themselves as one people. Much of the problem in the US lies in the fact that, inherent in the creation of the nation, we are not & never have been, one people. We do not share a cohesive society - the country comprises distinct racial & ethnic groups, economic classes, and political alliances, along with geographically distinct groups and other units of people who define themselves as “different or distinct from” every other group. Sometimes we are atomized to the extreme of “me” or “me & my family (however that is defined)”, against everyone else in the country.
It is almost impossible to see this roiling, angry, divided mass of competitors for the power to define the nation and its goals, as a society, let alone a society that could achieve public happiness. We have to remind ourselves that those who did so 2.5 centuries ago were elite, wealthy, white, educated English males. They did not look anything like the US today, except for the leadership of the Senate. Public happiness may be beyond the grasp of this country at this stage of its existence.
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@CatActually, it is also the case that less religious countries are on average happier. The much stronger religious fervor in the U.S. hasn't made us a happier nation than the less religious Scandinavians.
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This brings to mind Bernie Sanders and his "democratic socialism" or Joseph Stiglitz' "progressive capitalism." Also the attempts by certain countries in Europe to provide a social safety net to produce a lifestyle conducive to "happiness."
Otherwise we are are an old southern plantation where everybody knows his place according to his/her birth. Where the disadvantaged receive no respect and seethe with thoughts of revenge rather than "happines."
We must remember "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was the goal when America was founded. It hasn't been achieved quite yet, but this generation and those to come must take up the banner.
2
A very interesting and important essay--yet I am not convinced that Arendt would perceive all of today's collective movements as public in nature. Arendt drew a sharp distinction between the public sphere and the social sphere. In the former, individuals come together to deliberate freely; in the latter, both public and private life vanish. Free action relies on privacy; to speak in public, one must have a place for retreat and thought. In the social sphere, there is no retreat and no true deliberation. I imagine that she would look warily at some of today's collective movements, not because their causes are wrong but because they subordinate speech to social identity. The question then becomes how to recreate the public sphere, which is where the kind of happiness you describe can be found.
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Jefferson was a follower of Epicurus who spoke of the pursuit of happiness centuries before Christ. Epicurus was all about groups as the sources of happiness. Unfortunately we are now finding ouselves as isolated consumers. Just the reverse of what we need for pursuit of happiness as the author points out here.
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@p mainardi
Yes, definitely regarding Epicurus. Have you read "Swerve" by Stephen Greenblatt?
@p mainardi
Epicuras, How we have distorted his message. He says to find joy and beauty in everything and this changed to the false interperation of only getting the ' best'. To Him friendship was one of the great sources of joy.. He was very anti superstition. He was from a group of Philosophers which were originally from The Anatolia region not Greek. Only problem was that he thought sex was overrated. Oh well, almost perfect teaching.
1
Is the collective not the sum of the individuals? In that sense, what we are talking about is the way that group action leads to a collection of individuals finding happiness in group activity. So, that is public happiness vs one being happy at home in a soft chair with a cup of hot cocoa. Still, it depends upon each person experiencing happiness in the collective action.
I also wonder if it is "birth" alone which brings this collective happiness, however one defines birth (I presume it is about starting something new). There is also great happiness and satisfaction (they often go together) to be found in service to others, in re-birth in the form of repair or renewal, and in simply finding connections with others (often in the midst of collective activity).
The focus on individual, i.e., private, happiness has lead politicians/society to focus on individual accomplishment, to elevate individual effort (the boot-strap idea), and to disparage those who struggle. Happiness, then, becomes tied to economic success or power with the belief that those who have success deserve it and have earned happiness as well. This view leaves little room for concern for those in need.
15
Coming from a different tradition, but making the same point:
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!
....For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.”
Psalm 133.
In the Psalter, life, blessing (happiness in biblical language) and co-humanity are intertwined.
Of course Arendt would have been deeply familiar with this second tradition as well.
7
Yes, the traditional liberal (and libertarian) view is that happiness is an individual thing. That the happiness of society is the sum of the individual happinesses. But it's not only a philosophical thing. Governments are terrified of collective action, of people acting in concert and finding happiness in the process of collaboration. Of the concept of government as the representative of a collective will, not as a referee in a neutral marketplace. The idea that happiness is individual is a political ideology. One that defends certain types of interests (usually elitist of some sort) at the expense of others (usually collective).
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@Diego
Great comment. But are governments inherently terrified of collective action? Or just the financial interests who pay for politics?
7
@Martin The financial interests you speak of are virtually indistinguishable from government as it currently exists, so they are both of course terrified of democratic collective action. One can imagine, however, a government not dominated by corporate elites and high finance, and such a government would not necessarily be terrified of collective action—indeed, the only way it could become the government in the first place is through collective action of the masses.
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@Martin Yes, I should have said "powerful elites are terrified of collective action".
2
Much of the early settler's history in America was in small towns run by a handful of (literally) Puritanical male family hierarchies, where the eldest son inherited it all.
The 18th-century brought both commerce and more opportunities as younger sons made their way west (largely facilitated by genocidal suppression of the local Indians). While some of the so-called Founding Fathers had large land-holdings, many were part of building the new economy.
The law wasn't external -- no prisons and no police per se. When people transgressed, they were actually brought to live within the homes of the leading families, so they could be both educated and useful.
One's farm thrived only by one's labor, and one could only commerce based on a good reputation. Both made it clear that one's temperament, education, and actions mattered (which made e.g., Franklins Almanac critical to livelihood).
Arendt is right to find in the Revolution a sense of public freedom and a good deal of political literacy, but the overall interest in the public sphere likely stemmed from the increasing economic egalitarianism.
That sense of controlling your own destiny is lost today, and it won't come back with renewed interest in public comity.
Socrates experienced both the Age of Pericles and the terror of the democratic tyrants who put him to death. Pericles put into economic practice Solon's democratic laws, but the Sophists capture democracy, and used it for their own ends.
Sound familiar?
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Great essay. It isn’t just that we (i.e. the media & the marketplace) encourage people to seek happiness in their separation from society. It’s that we (i.e. the media & the marketplace) provide self-defeating substitutes for happiness that depend on disempowerment & passivity & isolation. 24/7 entertainment. The phony ideals of celebrity culture. Technology that turns our connections to the world into tools for manipulating us. Unending consumption. Politics that disempowers people through their participation, telling them they are rebelling against the establishment elite that they are actually voting for. We need to reclaim and strengthen parts of life that can only fulfill their potential by being protected from the marketplace & its manipulations: politics & government, family, the press, education.
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@Martin
If voting was really important, they wouldn't let us do it.
1