I think we get too hung up on the idea of personal happiness—or ‘my’ happiness. The more disconnected we become from others around us, the more driven we are to grasp onto something that will make us personally happy. The more personal it becomes, the more insatiable it is.
And the vicious cycle continues.
Though I’m not a religious person, I’ve always been struck by what seems to me the perfect, self-contained spiritual teaching: love thy neighbor as thyself. Not ‘do good deeds for your neighbor and feel good about yourself’; but quite simply recognize that there’s essentially no real difference, no separation—no us and them.
In that insight might lie a key to true happiness, one that requires no pursuit.
108
I have always thought that people misconstrue the concept of happiness. Because we insist on seeing happiness as a more or less permanent state of being, we are constantly disappointed when we don't achieve it. Happiness is an emotion like any other. We don't expect to live our lives in a constant state of anger, fear or sadness, but we do expect to be constantly happy. We'd be so much more content if we could realize that, like other emotions, happiness comes and goes, is often situation dependent and isn't something we can sustain on a permanent basis. Day to day, we live in a more or less neutral state, experiencing many different emotions in the course of the day. Happiness is one of those. Expecting to always be happy will only lead to unhappiness.
29
Happiness and contentment should be defined not by how much it takes to satisfy you, but how little.
139
Beautiful statement @David Bartlett. I've written this down and will share with others - what an indelible quote!
5
@TP
Thank you for your gracious words. To be honest, after I wrote my comment, it seemed to read so 'proverbial' that I wondered if I had gleaned it unknowingly from some long forgotten source. So I googled it. Alas, nothing of similar wording appeared.
But just in case I have subconsciously purloined someone else's quotation, I wish to extend open credit to whomever that might be.
7
@David Bartlett
I agree. What a lovely comment. Hope you don't mind if I pass this along to my students.
1
Our canine companions experience happiness continually. Their human masters return from a trip to Trader Joe's and the family dog is ecstatic that they returned, just like they always do. Their food dish is refilled, just like it was yesterday and the day before that, but the dog is as happy as the first time he/she ate from it. Playing throw and fetch, day after day into old age, the dog is as happy as the first time this game was played. Do you know why? Because the dog doesn't fear, or even know about, Death. The dog's tail will wag even as he/she is being "put to sleep."
As for humans, security is more important than that impostor, happiness.
The reason? Death is our daily companion and for some reason we fear this, thus making happiness impossible; even though Death may be life's greatest source of happiness. A quick study of quantum mechanics demonstrates that Death is the doorway to unlimited possibilities, and who isn't happy about that?
7
@judgeroybean
I think it's important to be mindful that all animals, including our beloved pets, feel myriad emotions (not just happiness). More and more research shows that various species feel pain, loss, and grief. Let's not characterize our pets as mindless, dumb, happy beings. If we're cognizant of how similar they experience life as we do, it becomes harder to justify that awful mistreatment too many of them experience.
Just read any tome by Dr. de Waal, particularly his work on bonobos.
10
@Left Coast You miss the point. We are the mindless, dumb, UNhappy beings.
2
@judgeroybean - 'We are the mindless, dumb, UNhappy beings'
speaking for yourself ?
as for myself, I’m happy - having done Zen meditation to satori, I live in the now, and simply observe enjoy each moment as a precious jewel never to be repeated.
I see frustration as the gap between expectation and reality.
If you have no expectation, each moment is delivered as a new-born baby - joyous in the moment of uniqueness
If you expect something different to what occurs you can always be frustrated and unhappy - this is a product of your own febrile imagination and repetitive loop rat-race thinking - 'woulda/shoulda/coulda'.
And of course - a definition of madness is - repeating the same behaviour while expecting different results ...
so if you don't like your situation, you could always - OMG ! - do something different ... ?
1
I'm an introvert so am happy mostly alone, and am thinking about The Zone - where I feel absorbed and interested in my current activity as meaningful, fulfilling and probably contributing something to society by way of helping others
the longest lasting source of human happiness having been found to be - helping others.
But as I'm not an extrovert and only observe such, I'm thinking extroverts may bloom from interacting with others.
One tiny girl at childcare - an outrageous extrovert - apart from screaming together while holding hands jumping up and down and dancing together with another tiny girl, one day when I asked why she was ordering the other girl around like a boss ('go and get me this', 'go and get me that') - she blithely said 'I'm just making her happy ...'
Which set me back - an extrovert makes others happy by giving them something to do - some purpose ? ... hmm ...
6
I read and reread the definition of joy in this article. I think Mr. Rowson has the right idea but his description falls short and I do think it's a bit more of a male description. As a fine artist and graphic designer, I live for being in the flow. Flow for me is when I am in intense concentration - not forced concentration - working out a visual solution. I lose my sense of time and my day to day life in pure joy in the process of creating. Process is the key. Today we are more results oriented - winning, losing. As life gets faster and faster in part due to technology we are missing the enjoyment of the journey - the process. My enjoyment in is the doing. It's great to win, don't get me wrong but the love, the joy is in the process.
14
"As a fine artist and graphic designer, I live for being in the flow."
That's all well and good, but how do you actually earn a living?
What the author is describing here is what psychologists for decades already call "flow".
You are in your "flow zone" when you are challenged to do something that is meaningful for you, requires sustained concentration, and isn't so easy for you that you get bored nor so difficult that you get frustrated.
Human minds then tend to go into some kind of optimal state, that is experienced as a deep thriving, a being fully present all while not being self-conscious at all.
What the activity itself is here doesn't matter. For some it's chess, for others another competitive "sport", for others still writing a book, teaching a class, cooking a meal for you family, playing a concert (or just playing at the home of a musician whom you absolutely admire) ... it can be many different things.
"Happiness", however, doesn't require us to be constantly in our "flow zone" (that's impossible).
It has more to do with a deep undercurrent of serene blossoming, some mental state that you can always return to, no matter what the outer circumstances are.
And as Richard Davidson for instance (Univ. of Wisc.) has shown, meditation is a highly effective tool to create that undercurrent, and then learn how to connect with it "on demand". He did so by studying the brain of the "happiest man in the world", molecular geneticist and Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard.
Conclusion: today, science knows (1) that we all want to be happy, and (2) how to get there.
Now the challenge is to spread the news ...
82
@Ana Luisa
Human minds then tend to go into some kind of optimal state, that is experienced as a deep thriving, a being fully present all while not being self-conscious at all.
EXACTLY!
When I go birdwatching (aka, birding), I experience a frisson of joy when I find a rare bird. But the greater happiness, a kind of contentment, occurs when I am lost in the experience itself. The latter is, in the end, longer lasting and more satisfying.
14
Science has proven that joy and happiness ARE in our power, in the meanwhile.
See Chade Meng Tan's book "Joy on demand" for all the studies on this topic, and most of all, for finding out how human beings have achieved lasting joy and happiness for thousands of years already.
Happiness and lasting joy are the result of an "art of life". And that basically comes down to very specific mind trainings - which each and every single human being can cultivate.
Philosophy without science sometimes risks to be neither philosophical nor scientific ...
10
Dear Mr. Rowson,
I think most humans Want to be happy.
It's that too many Enjoy being angry.
3
I feel the same way about surfing.
If chess were really a model of conflict, then each player would have to be a self-aggrandizing sociopath who causes the pieces to kill or be killed on their behalf. And some of the opposing pieces would have to be kidnapped and forced into servitude.
1
And a shout out to Murray in Harvard Square
1
Happiness: Someone to love, Something to do, Something to look forward to.
6
I have read about 500 chess books. Doing so makes me happy. Mr. Rowson's Seven Deadly Chess Sins is one of my top ten favorites. And his Chess for Zebras is a classic. Just a brilliant chess writer.
1
Human Beings want to belong - we want to play a part - we want to do something good that is far-reaching; affecting the well-being and consciousness of others... the good … for others... the act of doing something good, for someone other than ourselves; and to being loved and appreciated for those unselfish acts.
Chess is not that.
1
@John OBrien
Bart Giamatti, classics professor and dean, later commissioner of baseball, in his insightful little book, “Take time for paradise”, shared with us that play and games connected us to the gods-and to all humanity. He was referring to baseball, but I suppose the gods too play games like chess.
Oh boy: Based on the articles appearing in the Times lately, to be a happy or joyful man is not good. Your magazines, your games, your drinks, your clothes, all bad. Any gathering of men with smiles on their faces and laughing is not acceptable.
My father taught my brothers and I how to play all the sports,hunt, play musical instruments and work on cars. But, he also taught us to respect women. I would say to see his sons grow up gave him great joy. Gives me great joy, to remember him.
Chess is a great character builder of a game. Mental involvement and strategy ,is of the utmost importance for success. Clarity of thought is hard to attain.
But beware,you may have to retreat to secret locations to play and revel in the beauty of the game because you are experiencing happiness and joy. There are forces out there that feel that men should never be happy.
I don’t know why all these comments are so critical. I thought this essay was absolutely lovely, fantastic writing.
Looking forward to reading the book!!!
3
'The Kingdom of Heaven is within' and reaching that Kingdom involves transcending the various elements we term 'physical' and 'mental' until we can exist day over day in the unique Being we share with all creation. That Kingdom is worth pursuit.
2
I've always questioned happiness, the pursuit of etc..
it(happiness) seems a byproduct not the goal of things. Great article - happiness, joy, chess, competition, pain, losing.."when we take responsibility for something or someone"
I will read more Mr. Rowson.
Talk about complicating some thing so simple.
1
Hmmm And... What is happiness?
An American invention to keep the poor masses "looking for happiness"... while they are paid a miserable minimum salary.
2
@Dr. Ricardo Garres Valdez - 'it's called The American Dream'
George Carlin said it best - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ
If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!
1
I think maybe the author should define what happiness is to them.
Work is its own reward.
Happiness is having work and other things to do.
Not everyone would find that the particular challenges of chess open doors to a sense of fulfillment more than a number of other activities. But I love hearing about what draws others to their obsessions.
Perhaps the key concept mentioned is purpose: when we have it we are at one with ourselves; when we lose it, I think we are bereft of one key thing necessary to keep us genuinely alive.
2
I have always felt that what we call happiness is much over-rated. Not being a chess player, I cannot identify with all the analogies Mr. Rowson presents in this article, but I do understand that the pursuit of happiness often leads to everything but. The word "happy" seems to most of us to be synonymous with "ecstasy." Who can live in that state for long? Personally, I prefer the word "contentment."
3
Utilitarianism is the view that it's human nature to seek personal happiness; but that can be countered by observing that seeking happiness does not always lead in that direction.
The author recommends joy as a substitute goal, but I would recommend self-fulfillment.
There's a conundrum in philosophy--if you could be hooked up to a pleasure machine that gives you the feeling of any pleasure you want, would you do it?
The problem is that you haven't earned the pleasure like that of coming home after a bike ride. The pleasure on the machine is undeserved.
Aristotle differentiated between (roughly translated) happiness and fulfillment. Happiness being the sensations arising from temporary pleasures. Fulfillment being an entirely different sensation that arises of its own accord from living a good life over the course of time.
While happiness and fulfillment are not mutually exclusive, doing the right thing certainly may, at times, result in temporary pain (physical or emotional or social.)
This distinction always made sense to me.
3
It seems fair to say some players seek adrenaline fueled moments of joy (with a risk of despair) when playing a single game of competitive chess. Happiness can be connected with Maslow's Pyramid and the long-running form of a player. Did they reach that title they planned to get? If so, some self-actualisation has been achieved and could help in them obtaining an overall level of happiness with their life through their needs being met.
I wouldn't say the pursuit of happiness is going to end in failure by going after it. Yet the need for survival, as mentioned, and accumulation of joys of varying size at surviving in games of chess, while momentarily pleasurable, is only a base level in Maslow and unlikely to equate to overwhelming lifelong happiness.
I will have to read the book to get a better understanding...
1
Competence, responsibility, humility, doing for others, and an accumulaton of wisdom bring joy.
1
I have a print of Maxfield Parrish's Ecstasy on the wall of my therapy office. It features a young, 1920's-faced girl in a wind-swept Grecian toga, standing on a mountaintop gazing at the beautiful blue world -- ecstatically. Most clients ignore the picture. Those who notice it usually comment on the girl who is about to jump to her death. Happiness is not a concept that lives, at all, in thought, and certainly not in intellect (chess). It's in one's bones from birth and infancy. If that's not present, then we create mentally doctored versions of it.
Chess for me has always been a boring game played by people who took it way too seriously (at least at my school) and over intellectualises it, this article is a textbook case. I prefer card games and I might sound brain dead but candy crush's colourful fast-paced whimsy will always have more appeal to me than chess. Ooh wow chess...
2
I once heard a saying (I think by an eastern philosopher) that really resonated with me: It's not necessary to be happy. It's only necessary to do the right thing.
I have thought of that saying often during tough times, when I question whether my life has value because of the frequent unhappiness I feel. Just stay focused on doing what I hope to be the right thing, and nothing else counts. Happiness will be great if or when it comes, but if it doesn't, it's okay,
4
@EB - 'It's not necessary to be happy. It's only necessary to do the right thing.'
reminds me a new book of observations about Japan by a Westerner who lived there for many years -
things like they adhere to ritual and fitting in, and doing the expected thing (shame-based society - raised to not even consider doing the 'wrong' thing)
and yet despite attending to religious ceremonies, they consider the outward appearances more than any spiritual aspect which they don't seem to really care about.
One anecdote was apparently of the Dalai Lama saying that when he visited Western countries and talked about ritual the audience would be bored, but would become attentive when he talked about spirituality.
In Japan he said it was the reverse.
In my Zen perspective (OK from China Ch'an) I like a snippet - about when you first study Zen a mountain is no longer a mountain, etc. - after you reach the goal in Zen, a mountain is again just a mountain.
'Sitting quietly, doing nothing - Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself' ...
3
A good read, but every devotee of an activity believes it the perfect reflection of life. In this case it's chess. But a champion cyclist would say it's cycling. An expert quilter would say it's quilting. A famous artist would say it's sculpting. This is all silliness of course since we all know that the embodiment of life is only found in baseball.
12
To each, his or her own. And from reading these comments, it seems HIS or HER may be the deciding factor.
If you want to make me UNhappy, joyless, blissfree, chain me to a chessboard. I've never enjoyed the game - the playing of it or the victories/defeats.
I practiced law for a decade and, likewise, found the adversarial process soul-sucking. On the other hand, I've found absolute contentment in moments of love and community, in particular with my children. An indescribable state of well-being...
Perhaps it's a testosterone thing?
9
@Marie S Oh my yes, our legal system is soul sucking!
1
Never having learned to play chess notwithstanding, I think we do cherish happiness, especially when we encounter it in others, when however fleeting, it offers us a moment of peace. And yes, a sense of purpose, especially when we are the better for it. Not richer or smarter. But happy.
2
Happiness is a byproduct of contentment that comes when when one stops seeking and the mind rests. Agree that the pursuit of " Happiness" as a goal is a wild goose chase.
2
I loved chess in high school and achieved a provisional rating as 'Expert', but found that I had too many choices when I started college - not to mention girls! My son made the same discovery in turn when he put aside sports to devote himself to the arts in high school. Now he's put the arts on the shelf to pursue studies in computer engineering and ROTC in college.
But chess as a game, a sport and a metaphor for life brings me full circle as I have a little more time now that I am semi-retired to return to this Game of Kings. That's not the case for our children who have so many more choices than we had. Not for my friends, either, who cannot find the time to meet me for a beer and some chess and darts at the local brewery.
But Jonathan Rowson may himself wish to delve a bit deeper into his reflections on life than he can with chess by turning to the Japanese version: shogi - far superior to Western chess in that it better approximates real war where men and materials continue to come into play. But if you think I have a hard time finding chess opponents, it's nothing compared to the dearth of shogi players outside the Seattle-Vancouver area!
3
There is no "we", despite the New York Times persistence in conveying that there is. Almost always, the "we" in the Times Op Eds is upper middle-class, white and entitled.
3
“ Joy is mysterious because we desire it as pleasure but cannot find it without pain.” This sounds profound, but I'm not sure it means anything. The most joyous thing I've seen lately was a three-year-old who had just discovered a fresh mud puddle, and his experience was completely unsullied by pain (his parents, not so much...)
5
@JL Williams - 'The most joyous thing I've seen lately was a three-year-old who had just discovered a fresh mud puddle, and his experience was completely unsullied by pain'
I volunteer in childcare and get to feel that joy - I love it !
Example - two weeks ago sitting playing Monopoly with a tiny 5yo girl - we had 3 dice so I was getting her to add up the three rolled dice each time as a mini-maths experience
anyhoo - she soon took off her hairband and started swishing her shoulder-length hair around - then across my face - several times until she misjudged - bang! her skull against mine - pain
she sat back with a smile and proudly declared - my head is very strong - I don't feel pain ...
nothing about the pain I felt - but that was quickly forgotten as we continued to share the joy – in the moment.
1
Mr. Rowson: I'm quite impressed by your essay, both the writing and the interpretation. I like your emphasis upon joy (though I hope C.S. Lewis' assumptions differ from yours). I'm a philosopher & look forward to reading your book. Best wishes...
The word happiness at the time the Declaration of Independence was written meant something closer to "the pursuit of [one's own] luck," and is connected with PERhaps and MAYhap, and happens and happenstance.
3
We want not happiness, but liberation from all desire for happiness. This is something else, which mystics call “bliss” and it comes from wholeness. We desire something because we feel incomplete. We think that thing will do it - make us whole. It never does, because, say Buddhists and Vedantans, we ALREADY ARE, we just don’t realize it. Deific religions say what we need is to be united with G-d. It means the same thing. These are just two ways of understanding the same truth. Happiness, or in the case of this article, “joy” are fleeting experiences that come and go, leaving us with the consciousness in which they appear. Even things like justice, learning, love, and power (winning at war or chess) are transitory and fall away as soon as you would finish a cookie.
In our intense desire to be free of the desire for happiness, we subject ourselves to all kinds of pain, and chess is one. Eventually, says the Buddha, we will all realize we are liberated, whole, completely free from all desire.
3
Happiness is DIY
It is with life and liberty a treasured aim
I think the Declaration is right
Joy= peace with one’s self and significance with the world.
3
A good catchline, "We don't actually want to be happy" but it's wrong, as is "our inalienable right to pursue happiness is self-defeating." I suspect the author stumbles upon some happiness now and again in his playing, writing and talking about chess.
Jefferson, or whoever came up with the phrase, was writing inspirationally. He knew not everyone had the right to life and liberty - they should but didn't then and don't now enjoy these rights. But all are endowed with the right to the pursuit of happiness.
It's up to us, not our country, not our government, not our job, and especially not our religion, to pursue happiness. No one can dictate where it is found nor how you should pursue it. That is why there are many happy people in many different pursuits and likewise, so many unhappy people in, what one would think, would be happy circumstances.
It's up to us, fellow endowees.
I find this column to be quite silly. Chess as a route to happiness? Oh well, .... I really doubt that happiness is in any way related to competition. And I believe in the old adage that when you are happy you know it. There's a great line in one of the Brazilian bossa nova songs that also puts paid to happiness having anything to do with glory or money (in the original it is "pobre de quem que acredita na gloria e no dinheiro para ser feliz").
2
Short summary: The author enjoys playing chess.
4
In America, we have complicated the happiness part in several profound ways. There is the idea of earning one’s place, of initiation periods, frats and sororities have periods they refer to as “pledging,” there is “earning one’s stripes,” there is “climbing the ladder” and “putting in your time.”
But essentially, it is assumed that being accepted and valued is not something you automatically get as a human being. So, what ends up happening is that happiness is postponed.
I’ll be happy when….
I’ll be happy when I lose the weight or get in shape, get that relationship, have kids, the kids finally move out, I get that promotion or that raise.
My pet theory is that part of Western Culture is dedicated to being unhappy, even if you have everything. In a recent Bill Gates documentary, he is still fighting tooth and nail. It seems obvious that what he relishes, is the fight. I think there are a lot of those of us who like the struggle.
Then there is the “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” and other cultural and psych-social phenomena that can get in the way of a truly satisfying and rewarding life.
There is significant evidence that biology and genetics may also play a large role… Sometimes people who are happy simply decided at some point to be so.
Finally, the bell curve indicates that life is just easier for some people. You can define that as luck or just random circumstance.
2
@SMcStormy - 'My pet theory is that part of Western Culture is dedicated to being unhappy'
as a distant observer across the Big Pond I'll posit the Protestant Work Ethic - from Martin Luther, et al, that inculcates the idea that hard work will get you to heaven, and indolence earns you eternal damnation - not least in this life from neo-liberals who like to blame the poor.
my favourite Attribution Bias -
If I win/succeed it's because I'm smart and hard-working.
If you lose it's because you were stupid and lazy.
If you win/succeed it's because you were just lucky.
If I lose/fail it's because I was just unlucky ...
1
In Ingmar Bergman's 1963 film, "The Seventh Seal," a cinematic masterpiece, the Crusader knight plays chess with death, and, as the game turns inexorably against him, the knight tries one cheap trick after another to delay defeat. At the time I thought that was a brilliant conceit. Now, as an aging man, I realize it's exactly true. Forestalling death with one cheap medical trick after another is just like playing chess against a far superior opponent.
5
@Ivan Light
Nicely put. I loved chess and The Seventh Seal in high school and, although I have yet to resort to trying to cheat death, I understand the implications of what Rowson refers to as "the open secret".
1
I think what we all want is a combination between connection, fun, health and purpose. Everything else is noise.
I found the following quote the most interesting:
"An unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."
I am a Red Sox fan, born in 1963. I was 41 when they finally won a World Series. My dad died having never seen them win a World Series. I can tell you that it used to feel special to be a Red Sox fan, and that it no longer feels special after having won the World Series four times in the last 15 years.
(That said, it was really great when they won in 2004.) So, fellow Red Sox fans (especially those that endured 1975 and 1986), I am curious what is your experience?
Cubs fans?
Mariners fans?
4
@CraigNY
I just felt compelled to respond to this comment. I'm not sure if this reply has anything to do with happiness. I suspect it speaks only to the irrationality of sports fans.
I'm a NY Ranger hockey fan. From the 1950s until the 1994 Stanley Cup, I embraced the identity of the "long suffering" Ranger supporter. I set my expectation level as low as possible, one Cup in my lifetime without any further demands. In 1994, I happily passed the mantle of "long suffering" to the Toronto faithful. Another Cup would be nice, but I've already made the psychological bargain not to "suffer" or be "unhappy" if it doesn't happen.
Well, here's the weirdness. I'm also a NY Yankee fan. My expectation is a World Series winner every year, nothing less. The Yanks could win the Series every year forever and it still won't make me 'happy" because of the the unrelenting demand for perfection. It's bizarre.
2
I am not sure this argument is only confined to chess itself. I seem to be reading the point here as develop a worthwhile, metaphoric hobby and you will find some purpose in life. Chess will not resonate the same with everyone, as I am sure the author realizes, or at least I hope he does. So this is dependent on the individual and her preference on some level. One can make a similar analogy to tennis or sports in general, which can also bring participants great joy-- but also agony! The point, I think, is at the very least, these hobbies, give us goals, which can make life much more interesting!
1
We derive happiness by employing our talents to master a skill regardless of its specific form. We suffer in the ongoing pursuit of perfecting it while deriving happiness only in those fleeting moments of improvement during that endless struggle. The challenge is to convince yourself that the struggle to improve is a source of happiness in and of itself. Otherwise, Schopenhauer was right. Life is suffering.
3
@Jimmy - 'Life is suffering'
'Suffering comes from Desire' - I think Buddha said that.
https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-suffering-10-buddhist-teachers-weigh-in/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/beliefs/fournobletruths_1.shtml
Having done zen meditation - I have no desire - I only witness with interest, and take action accordingly - when things happen (like police visit re burglary yesterday) it's not 'bad' - it's interesting - if you enjoy the moment.
So - no desire - no suffering. Try it - you might like it !
C. S. Lewis was, most notably, a Christian theologian, who relied upon a doctrine based upon the next world that imbuing this one with meaning - which is a bit of a dated sentiment, and one that, as the one the author espouses, excuses a whole lot of lousy behavior. Chess is, as the author suggests, a sublimation of the sense of having to survive. Our survival, however - certainly mine - is nowhere near as doubtful as it might have been a thousand years ago, or ten thousand, and certainly isn't reliant upon my competing successfully with the person next to me (or across, as the case may be). In fact, my survival nowadays is much more implicated in my ability to connect, get along, and harmonize with my surroundings - human and otherwise - than defeat them. Holding on to sublimated heroic notions of life and death struggle is what is happening on Wall Street; and Washington DC; and in the NFL; and pretty much everywhere that masculinity and its discontents make the rules. And it is ruinous. To the author, I say enjoy the game, but please, don't extrapolate it to a weltanschau - because that world view already exists, and is guiding us steadily toward massive inequality and environmental dystopia. And no matter how assiduously or fanatically this world view is manifested, it does not help us to avoid the inevitable (by which I mean death, because taxes can clearly be avoided if you 'play the game,' well enough). Enough games. Time for humans to grow up.
15
"I like the moment I crush a man's ego," Bobby Fischer once famously said. His "joy" obviously came at another's expense. If chess shows the way to achieve happiness, then only half of the world can achieve it.
3
An odd person to use as an example of the "happiness" that can be derived from chess. Do you think Bobby Fischer, whose win record is one of the most impressive in history, was a happy person? Kind of hard to imagine anyone familiar with his life could come to that conclusion.
This article didn't do a lot for me, but I think it's clear that different people find happiness in different ways, or fail to, and that applies to different chess players too.
3
I am consoled by the fact that happy people only think they're happy.
3
Joy "... a stab of longing that unexpectedly wells up during moments of contemplation, that yearning convinces one that there is another existence beyond this world."
and...
“... the scent of a love we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”
- C.S.Lewis
2
Sure lots of people get pleasure from the adrenaline of playing a game and like the experience even if they lose. And then there are those like me that HATE that feeling even if we end up winning. Then again I find happiness pretty easily in the most mundane aspects of life. Everybody’s different.
6
Emotions are painful. Seek the Middle Way.
4
@Miss Anne Thrope
Love your "handle", brava!
And yes, the "middle way" is one that seeks to bring a more neutral, balanced perspective. If we focus on the good, then the same focus goes to the bad.
1
Having played chess for almost fifty years, I agree with GM Rowson that it is extremely enjoyable, precisely because it is so complex and challenging. You are constantly learning new things and getting the opportunity to be creative. In addition, you can get real pleasure out of admiring the ingenuity of other players, whether top-level grandmasters or your own opponents. But for me at least, "purpose and meaning" are not the point of chess. It's just an absorbing way to take a break from more important pursuits and to temporarily forget about your problems, because it demands your full attention.
3
As usual, The Stone finds a way to clothe an obvious truth in academic gobbledygook. What Rowson is saying is that joy can be experienced while playing chess, but not necessarily winning. Duh.
1
@Stefan
Maybe a "duh" for you but this can be an analogy for those of us who do not play chess. What is an obvious message to you may be one that needs to be illustrated for others.
1
Your supposed to be unhappy. If you were satisfied you wouldn't consume so much, and your purpose is to consume.
This topic may be the archetype of where Western philosophy fails. Blah, blah, blah. Analysis, different analysis, yet still different analysis. Parsing words, challenging the meaning of words, debating.
I daresay most human beings have experienced different experiences that have in common what they call happiness. I know I have. Finishing the last final exam of a year of college. Lying on the grass, on a sunny day, drinking cold beer and listening to Dixie. Lying in bed next to a lover and smelling the faint, wonderful odor emanating from her skin. Etc etc etc.
Worrying about what it is or how it can be achieved is, qujite simply, stupid. Wake up and smell the coffee.
1
@joel bergsman
Interesting comment. You're basically talking about the moment; we're all told to "live in the moment." It's something I find impossible to do. My troubles - and those of the world - never leave me. But like you have described, if I think about times I was more or less "happy" they are fleeting moments, or perhaps hours. A high-speed boat ride on a lake in Switzerland, fishing on a remote river in West Virginia not caring if there was a fish within 100 miles, making a great over-the-shoulder catch, waking up the first day of summer vacation when I was a kid, Christmas Eves. A sustained, all day every day happiness I can't imagine.
1
@Stevenz - 'My troubles - and those of the world - never leave me'
'you worry too much !'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW2ebN3PWT0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B4gZZYYa-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t6IIdmOIOQ
Ahhh, the Joy of Chess, AKA Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Chess* (*but were afraid to ask) . . .
The more kindness and empathy you give in life, the happier you will be.
11
"... Rowson ... is a chess grandmaster ..."
Rowson completely overlooks the social hierarchy that he is in. Even casual players are socializing.
Further, there is sex and age segregation, with separate rankings under "Open", "Women", "Juniors", and "Girls". (per fide.com)
Thus the chess world merely replicates other social hierarchies.
5
@HSW
Must everything come down to that, every time? You are likely not a very happy person when so much of the world meets with your disapproval. It might be better to respect the the rights of a writer to say what they want to, rather than impose your standards.
If you seek happiness in a competitive field you will never find it. You live in a world of winners and losers, your happiness depends on someone’s loss.
I’ve met some extremely competitive people and happy is never how I would describe them. A holes would be a better description.
3
@Paulie I would. To be driven is not necessarily to be unhappy which is my biggest problem with this article (as well as many others). Pursuing what one loves is usually the key to happiness, be that family, career, activism, religion, a cause or, erm chess?
I didn't swallow the overblown metaphors of chess as a life or death struggle. You might as well call football that or Halo. And it seems to elevate the male chess players with their anxious faces has having more purpose than let's say a mother at the park with her child, though who is living life with more purpose? Clearly the mom.
It is also an idiotic thing too say we as a society do a terrible job of being happy when we are clearly much happier than generations before us. More personally fulfilled as well.We whine about it more precisely because we have the time to think about such things. In the past we couldn't think about whether we were happy because first we had to live to the next day.
@NSH During my skydiving days, something I did for the shear joy of it, I witnessed many competitive jumpers that due to their love of being competition driven, turn a fun activity into a job. Rarely did I see them smile, more often they were beating themselves up for a small mistake they made.
Me, I was happy to fall through 12,000 feet of nothing and live to do it again.
I never experienced a bad skydive, the competitive people had plenty.
Humans spend their time sleeping, working......and trying to be entertained.
Or am I missing something here?
Happiness is the absence of misery.
2
@Eli - 'Happiness is the absence of misery'
no Mr. Negative
happiness is a joy - a peak sensation - hormonal feelings of a rush of pleasure - tends to be momentary and transient
contentment is a longer term feeling - of being satisfied with one's larger life situation.
Chess.
Do yourself a happy favor and see the movie “Queen of Katwe” - the story of Madina Nalwanga.
Best spent chess couple hours.
2
“The Richest Man Is Not He Who Has The Most, But He Who Needs The Least.”
10
Happiness:
Bacon
Unhappiness:
Too much bacon
6
Fine. I play slide guitar and solve existential problems all the time.
2
Competition is not the cause for joy, rather, it is the measure of our IMPROVEMENT from moment to moment and day to day. A painter or writer can experience the deep satisfaction of an illuminating moment of creation - the perfect color or word in context. Chess can be social, but also anti-social. Other games, like tennis or bridge can be more sociable, a locus of social activity with the pleasure of becoming more skilled at a game which is intricate and disciplined. These elements increase the challenge of what is possible for us. Overcoming challenges makes us happy. A cook can be triumphant in making a perfect soufflé.
4
True that chess has characteristics that simulate life and death but so do many other activities (e.g. American football with "sudden death" overtime). The truth is that just about any harmless activity that keeps one's mind fully occupied provides "joy."
2
Dear Mr. Rowson,
It is my continuing belief that the edges of philosophy are found and forged by individuals who travel to places strange and far and with reckless disregard for either the destination or the meaning of the journey.
Such as you with your relentless crusades upon the chessboard.
Alex Honnold and his relentless strivings upon vertical rock.
Toni Morrison and her lifelong struggle to carve hope out of the evil granite of history.
Thank you, sir, for showing that the way to a good life, to a happy life, to a joyful life, is complicated and simple, impossible and easy, that we are pawns and we are kings, we mate and we are check-mated, we serve, we rule, and, inevitably, inexorably, we vanish from the field of battle and into the dreamy landscape of oblivion.
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
5
Happiness is liking yourself. It has a lot to do with friendship and love and little or nothing to do with anything else. Why would happiness depend on things (money, jewelry whatever) that did not exist for most of the past 4.6my (since the Chimp-Human split)? That's why "pursuing it" is pointless -- people who assiciate it with getting some externality don't have it to being with and probably never will.
1
I’m all for analogies that help us learn about and understand complex abstract ideas, especially regarding the illusion - and elusiveness - of happiness. But this headline is misleading, unless one is passionate about chess - and being misled definitely does not make me happy. Case in point: why not skiing? Running a marathon? Reading a book a week outside of one’s usual easy genres? All are challenging/exhilarating for some people, and all instill flow for those motivated to move past their own personal best.
The scientifically vetted blue zones of happiness” are more reliable vectors: purpose, pride and pleasure have been proven (with significant quantitative data points) to define true happiness in various places around the world. Happiness, IMHO, would be to spare us the grandstanding elitism about chess and other so-called cerebral “sports.”
3
Chess is intellectually stimulating, but not everyone wants intellectual stimulation. Also to say that “humans are too complex, restless, dark, impish and transgressive ever to feel at ease with feel-good purposiveness alone” is too broad. Some of us are much more altruistic than others. Too many generalizations here.
Every population needs all kinds of people, those who need stimulation and those who are just happy to be. Too many people needing stimulation leads to all kinds of issues. 
2
"Justice would be a real joy to the world." from the most popular post. Try telling this to most of the world.
And what about "Peace on Earth"?
3
Life is what it is. Advance planning will make every activity much easier and more successful. If I do this, what's the worst thing that could happen? Rather than asking myself if I'm happy, I ask myself if I'm UNhappy. Nope, I'm reasonably content, and every day is a new day with new challenges, hopefully not too negative, with me able to handle whatever comes. You're right--the active pursuit of "happiness" is a ridiculous waste of precious time.
3
I put "happiness" in the same category as "romance": if you want to believe it, it could be true.
1
Great article, so many profound comments as well-
I would add:
Thats why we get 'the pursuit of happiness'... not 'actual' happiness.' Ah founding fathers, nicely phrased-
1
The real religion of America is money worship. We see consumerism that staggers visitors from other countries as our people beggar themselves to acquire the latest fads and fashions regardless of their price. The pursuit of money is where that philosophy is at, and has always been its real meaning. Now we will see the bizarre transformation of our society into a stoned age with the onset of legalized cannabidoids and their super-profitability, at least for a while. Another aspect of the illusory pursuit that is invidiously linked to filthy lucre...
2
Rabbi Heschel: "Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me."
2
“He who catches the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.” - William Blake
This verse has long been my micro starter kit for living into your exquisitely worded question. It’s proved a remarkably reliable rule for the road.
1
Cheers to the author. This article could not have been more personally timely. Thank you.
1
But didn't Beethoven say all this in a phrase that even a 5 year old can bang out?
I am confused by this, but perhaps the joy is about WILL POWER.
If we make strategic moves, forward, we may gain will power.
As JB Conan said: "Behold the turtle.
It only makes progress when it sticks its neck out."
--------------------------------------------------------------
It also occurs to me that chess encourages jig-jag moves,
and perhaps if we jig-jag, mentally & physically we wake up more.
I look forward to the new book.
Perhaps, it can help to motivate students.
www.SavingSchools.org
Joy is within our power. It is a deep contentment born of an attitude of gratitude.
Give thanks for all things because this is the will of God (Divine Love) in Christ Jesus (Divine Love Incarnate)for you.
1
i don't know that we want "happiness" which is such a loaded term and probably different with each person. and perhaps conventional "happiness" is not possible because when we satisfy one itch another pops up. the circumstances of our births, our mental capacities, our curiosities and our luck may determine how we thrive and how "happy" we are. and our search for something that is as ephemeral as "happiness" may ultimately lead us to a dead end...and pain. since all is fleeting and bound to end...
1
I expect that the author did experience joy at the moment he achieved his final grandmaster norm. And that he experienced the same thing upon reaching his master level. But it appears he will never become World Champion or outplay Stockfish -- both downers if one thinks about it.
True. There is strong evidence to suggest that our key aim, in a society where one has awareness about the existence of others, it is the desire to see others suffer - is really what we want. Pursuit of happiness? Bah humbug. It is the imposition of unhappiness and misery on others that we crave beyond anything else.
In a hyper informed society, we are fully addicted to trauma sharing, poverty and violence porn.
There is no other explanation for the right wing extremism that is gone full scale mainstream in America, Europe, and other parts of the world. Letting others live happily, in peace, making their own choices is so bothersome to us, that we are very willing to shoot ourselves in the foot. What other than this explains America's love affair with Fox, AM radio, churches, and our wonderful republican party?
1
@Kalidan
You make me ponder what is the opposite of happiness. I would venture to say it is not unhappiness, but maybe it's anger or nihilism. Happiness, however you want to define it, is ennobling, the other is self-abnegating. There is a lot of self-abnegating going on.
As a pawn in the game of life I'm pretty happy to get home without being run over on my bike by a texting Audi driving bishop or a phone addicted truck driving rook.
3
Is it generational, or is no one here familiar with Ingmar Bergman’s masterful movie, The Seventh Seal? The Knight plays chess with Death. The Knight knows he will ultimately lose the “game” but happily announces that he is nonetheless living at that moment a life full of meaning and even joy by playing his pieces cleverly enough to keep Death at bay a little longer. Mr. Rowson boldly states that “chess simulates the conditions for a life of meaning.” Bergman, ever the great cinematic artist, agreed, even though, in the end, we all are mated. Please do watch: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/seventh-seal-chess-match-analysis/
1
Happiness is a by-product of function.
2
It is in this column posed …
"Competition is not of ultimate value, but we are often most alive in those arenas where winning and losing make sense."
I don't play chess … but I knew 'anyway' that the absence of competition (and the loss of ability to compete well and 'winningly') is why I never took up jogging once my early years of track stardom ended/never played baseball once I could no longer 'turn' on a good fastball or 'hand-eye' a good curveball/last played basketball in the NYC Lawyers League at the age of 45 (when my first step 'beat' no one 'worth beating' and wearying legs left too many of my jump-shots short).
(At 70YO, I'm pretty good with Crosswords … but it ain't hardly the same. Just as Chess would not be.)
1
"Happiness" as we generally use the word refers to an experience, a moment, perhaps a mood, at bottom a transitory state.
A different approach comes to us by way of Aristotle, who suggests that true happiness (which he calls eudaimonia) is an ongoing achievement. It results from continually challenging oneself with the question "How ought I to live my life?" and then carrying the answer over into daily life. Aristotle argues that a genuinely happy life is one lived in pursuit of a set of virtues to which one has given some thought and is able both to defend intellectually and to represent in one's own actions.
Thinking of happiness as a transitory state allows us to hop from one pleasure to another, to be deflected into distractions or amusements that while momentarily enjoyable, have no cumulative direction or meaning. Thinking of happiness as a lifetime's achievement challenges us to think about what we value and why, and how we enact this every day. This is a much more challenging conception of happiness, but it leads to richer, fuller living.
3
@John This is the best response of all!
Chess is an artificial exercise that may lead to a touch of joy that will vanish, as in life. The Torah ends with Deuteronomy, the Fifth Book of Moses. Moses is atop Pisgah looking over at a Promised Land he'll never reach. It's across the river, over the next hill.
There is joy and meaning to be found in exercising the specifically human strengths nature, nurture and culture have given us. Chess exercises strengths like reasoning, ambition, creativity, perseverance, prudence. The original source of all joy and meaning, however, can at any and every moment be found in a deeper place. This is at the still center within all experience.
2
Perhaps I am only saying this as the father of 3 moody, infinitely complex teenagers, but no game of chess is nearly as complicated (or meaningful) as parenting.
3
Among many activities chess has played a role in rounding my life, a life of participation in the spiritual, physical and intellectual. With chess there is the intellectual, of course, but also the spiritual in the friendships - regularly I sit for 3 plus hours over a game with an old Navy buddy of 50 years every 3 months or so after a lunch at the club. It then leads me to take a good long walk afterwards through the woods. In all, the day is beautifully balanced with friendship, intellect, and a rewarding walk with reflections afterward. Thank you Mr. Rowson for a very articulate essay on what I always felt, and more, about the game of chess since my teenage years.
1
It seems to me that Rowson is conflating the game itself with his purpose, which is competition. In every arena competition is fun until it isn't. Whether it's sports, business, or pie baking, human endeavor becomes stressful when winning becomes the only "worthwhile" goal. Rowson is talking about the pursuit of championship. There are legions of people who play chess as a pleasant, engaging social diversion. It's the same with running, tennis, etc. It is emblematic of the American culture that nothing is worthwhile if it doesn't involve stress and pain. No wonder happiness is elusive.
1
I feel sad when I think of all the people who ended their lives by their own hands that hadn't found their way to the game of chess. Perhaps they found the very pursuit of happiness too much to bear?
I am disastrous at chess, though I can see its appeal; but nothing, it seems, can make me as sustainably happy as growing a garden and feeding the wild birds.
3
@Hypatia:
I love both.
You completely ignore love in your analysis, something life is capable of supplying that chess can never supply. (No, your chess board can’t love you back the way a human can.) For many people love is the only reason for living. Also, chess is a great game I agree, but far from perfect. Too many matches end in a draw. You guys need fix that bug.
8
I’m not sure how relevant this essay is, given that chess is about as far removed from ordinary life as a game could be. Chess in its classic form (i.e., with humans not computers as players) is one of the rare games in which luck plays absolutely no role: there are no dice to roll, no cards to draw, no random numbers being generated, no arbitrary changes in the balance of forces during the game. Nor does physical strength matter. But chess is also not purely a game of skill or logic. At the highest levels it also requires a deep knowledge of the history and theory of the game, particularly in regard to openings, which can confer a tremendous advantage on a player who is better informed than an equally skilled opponent. Thus chess rewards players who are part-obsessive, part-genius. Not exactly role models for the rest of us, but at least better than today’s typical video gamers obsessed by the need to obtain ever-more-powerful weapons in order to blow away the maximum number of enemies.
9
Joy is one of the most important experiences we have in life. When an infant has hunger pangs and cries, the baby is blissfully happy to be fed. When my granddaughter was three months old, I sang to her and she smiled. (Not gas). I was so excited to see her first smile, I sang, stopped and sang over and over. Each time, she smiled. Her joy fed my joy. How could we not get hooked on joy?
4
You can never be happy for long. It's a relative state, that if maintained, loses its luster.
Pursuit of happiness is our liberty and right, not having happiness which is ephemeral.
Playing chess with the chance to win is part of pursuing happiness.
Victor Frankl, survivor of the Dachau slave camp, said that happiness cannot be found by pursuing it—but only as the byproduct of discovering Meaning and Purpose in life. I considered that to be a definitive observation, and perhaps it is. However this essay also guides us to reflect on the sources of Meaning and Purpose. Bravo!
3
This is why I'm not at all interested in playing chess. I don't want to be defeated and I don't want to defeat someone else either. Ken-Kens are much better: a lot of struggle and a lot of thinking, and then finally ... you win! No one loses. Everybody's happy. Difficult Ken-Kens (9x9s) are great for those times in the middle of the night when you can't sleep. Much better than trying to read.
4
@Rick , it seems by your response that you have completely missed the point of the article which, given your desire never to suffer or inflict defeat, is not at all surprising.
Aficionados almost always think that their passions reflect the mysteries of life. I am a passionate (if mediocre) recreational tennis player and can make similar arguments about tennis reflecting the mysteries of life. I think such arguments are overdone at best, and just kinda silly at bottom.
16
The ultimate point of life, all life, is simply to continue to exist. Enjoyment is a sensation experienced when the continuing bit is going smoothly. Broadly speaking pursuing happiness is the goal of having a successful life. All living things want that.
2
If you want to simultaneously feel joy and pain at the same time, try rowing at 5am on the frozen Schuylkill River. Unforgettable even if you want to.
6
As a novice chess player, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr Rowson's analysis of the emotions felt during a chess game. All of life is "What do I do next," and the right choices provide advantage over others.
Then again, as a long-time teacher, now retired, "What do I do next" was my guide when I wanted others to have the advantage. When students seemed confused, I had to give my explanations, my teaching, a different slant until I was certain the others (students) acquired the advantage of having mastered a body of knowledge.
All of learning and acquisition of skills are uphill battles, but the joy of knowing makes the struggle worthwhile.
2
@ultimateliberal Learning and struggling is the pursuit of happiness for many.
1
Chess is, at least theoretically, a “solvable” game. That is, there exists a strategy that ensures a player the best possible outcome whatever his opponent will play. This spoils the interest of the game, despite the fact that no strategy has ever been implemented and most probably never will, because that would involve delving with too many combinations. (Nothing to do here with AI playing chess).
The symbolic of chess can also be far away from joy. In one of the best movies ever made on the meaning of life, Bergman’s Sixth Seal (not Monty Python’s !), chess represents a fight for more time in a lost battle against death.
There are so many aspects of games that make them satisfying (or as Bryan, below, says - - it "tickles his brain stem) beyond winning. Whether it's a great chess move, or a terrific cross-court tennis shot, or a smoothly swum 200 yard freestyle, there's great satisfaction in mastery. Perhaps we'd all be better off if we let go of our culture's obsession with winning and instead focused on the inherent pleasure of the game.
4
Ingmar Bergman’s film “The Seventh Seal” investigates “what should I do next” in life by having a Knight play chess with Death. That the Knight will lose is a foregone conclusion, but putting up a spirited fight is the whole point. I don’t know if you can equate that chess game with joy, but, in recognizing life as a gift and a challenge, even if a fight against impossible odds, the match deserves to be called noble.
1
This explains why so many amateurs participate in extreme athletic events such as marathons. Cross finish line = feel joy.
2
I have played chess since I was a boy. The excitement and rush of a beautiful move or a delicate position waiting to explode was like a tickling sensation to my brain stem. Now, with the onslaught of unbeatable programs like Stockfish, there is a missing element that has evaporated and left no joy for me.
What can I deduce from this? Did I enjoy the destruction of my human opponent or could it be the hopelessness of never winning again against a cold calculating machine that I will never be able to match? Does this relate to other aspects of our AI future as a whole I wonder.
1
Back to CS Lewis (Narnia) -- "Surprised by Joy."
Having lived three score plus 15 -- happiness means different things at different times of life... but I have always found happiness elbow deep -- well wrist -deep in clay!! Perhaps, it's the spinning wheel, the somewhat obscene motion than one uses centering clay -- one creates an lingam and then flattens it into a disc, or the joy of production and the huge surprise at the end -- one never knows until the final glaze firing. (even then one can alter-- nail polish works well.) I think everyone would be happier if he had a craft he practiced in a group setting with others rattling about, most likely NOT speaking... Perhaps, all members of the administration need to work out at the studio at least once a week. Clay is a great teacher -- and a source of joy, teaching perseverance, patience, acceptance ( you will get to love the ugly mug!)
1
@Auntie Mame Brava! What a great attitude.
Fun observation, but I think when Jefferson used the phrase "the pursuit of human happiness" it was with epicurean rather than a hedonistic intent. Happiness is found in the struggle not in the outcome. It is after all better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
5
@Roger C There's no need to concern yourself about "intent," as the idea is you are an individual who gets to pursue your happiness without regard to mine so long as we do not victimize the other, AND the government should protect that right, not try to coerce us into some centrally planned concept of happiness or how to pursue it.
"Chess simulates the meaning of life because it is a ritual encounter with death in disguise."
Sounds like he's overthinking this one . . . . Chess may be a cerebral exercise, but in the end it's essentially an ego trip. Not my idea of the pursuit of happiness/joy/pleasure.
3
Excellent existential discussion.
In addition to our lives being defined by "the open secret of our inevitable deaths," we also come to the realization that life on earth is ultimately purposeless. (Thank you Charles Darwin.)
Nonetheless, we can still infuse our accidental existence with meaning.
The philosopher Peter Singer has said we make our lives most meaningful when we reduce or eliminate any unnecessary suffering in others.
10
Try Meditation. Add Altruism. Precede this with generosity, forgiveness, kindness and compassion. Do this every day.
Recognize craving, fear ,hatred, and delusion when they arise.
Meet these with equanimity and an absence of judgement.
We are all the same. May all manner of things be made right.
10
I have played chess. At some point, years ago (I am old), winning no longer mattered. Thus have this and other interests and commitments throughout my life moved along. Lying in the sun, likewise. Being applauded by a roomful of strangers, likewise. Having things, likewise, thing by thing. Happiness and joy, in the end, is the happiness and well-being of those one loves, and being fully embraced by their eyes when they look at you - is joy.
11
Mr. Rowson, In other words, which were penned by the chess-playing Ralph Waldo Emerson, "life is a journey not a destination."
5
"... the chess-playing Ralph Waldo Emerson ..."
Emerson also cites whist as a game that leaves one "vacant and forlorn":
"He [a boy] is infatuated for weeks with whist and chess; but presently will find out, as you did, that when he rises from the game too long played, he is vacant and forlorn, and despises himself."
"The Conduct of Life" by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1860).
2
My wife and I sailed alone for most of ten years in a beautiful sailboat. While enjoying the inside passage to Alaska we were anchored in a beautiful quiet bay with eagles in the air and a bear or two on the beach.
We sat down for a sundown evening if chess. An hour or two later, I experienced joy, happiness and contentment as I was able to completely destroy my wife in this game of chess. As I was on my way up to the deck to enjoy the final joys of sunset I felt my first mate wife’s presence behind me. As I turned around to invite her to enjoy the evening with me I stared directly into a sneering face and a large butcher knife in her hands. We both agreed from that moment on that fun sailing for years at a time might be better served if we just played cards.
Three years later she was pregnant in Bora Bore. All was well.
7
Rowson’s point about responsibility giving rise to meaning and purpose for an individual is a powerful one. It is unfortunate that he distracts from it by some less than credible references.
C.S. Lewis’ idiosyncratic and sadomasochistic definition of the term “joy” isn’t standard usage even in Christian theology and is very far from the the emotional state the word is taken to represent by contemporary science and society. The common definition is well summed up by the amateur Environmental Psych researcher Ingrid Fetell Lee in her recent book Joyful: “An intense, momentary experience of positive emotion.” It would have been fascinating to read an argument from Rowson that this is what we actually seek rather than happiness.
Rowson defines that term (happiness), for his purposes, but also indulges common fallacies about the “pursuit of happiness” asserted in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It has been pretty firmly established that the inalienable right signified by the phrase is the right to flourish by seeking to live a true and good life and not the right to seek a specific emotional state.
6
Rowson’s point about responsibility giving rise to meaning and purpose for an individual is a powerful one. It is unfortunate that he distracts from it by some less than credible references.
C.S. Lewis’ idiosyncratic and sadomasochistic definition of the term “joy” isn’t standard usage even in Christian theology and is very far from the the emotional state the word is taken to represent by contemporary science and society. The common definition is well summed up by the amateur Environmental Psych researcher Ingrid Fetell Lee in her recent book Joyful: “An intense, momentary experience of positive emotion.” It would have been fascinating to read an argument from Rowson that this is what we actually seek rather than happiness.
Rowson defines that term (happiness), for his purposes, but also indulges common fallacies about the “pursuit of happiness” asserted in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It has been pretty firmly established that the inalienable right signified by the phrase is the right to flourish by seeking to live a true and good life and not the right to seek a specific emotional state.
1
Rowson’s point about responsibility giving rise to meaning and purpose for an individual is a powerful one. It is unfortunate that he distracts from it by some less than credible references.
C.S. Lewis’ idiosyncratic and sadomasochistic definition of the term “joy” isn’t standard usage even in Christian theology and is very far from the the emotional state the word is taken to represent by contemporary science and society. The common definition is well summed up by the amateur Environmental Psych researcher Ingrid Fetell Lee in her recent book Joyful: “An intense, momentary experience of positive emotion.” It would have been fascinating to read an argument from Rowson that this is what we actually seek rather than happiness.
Rowson defines that term (happiness), for his purposes, but also indulges common fallacies about the “pursuit of happiness” asserted in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It has been pretty firmly established that the inalienable right signified by the phrase is the right to flourish by seeking to live a true and good life and not the right to seek a specific emotional state.
Joy and happiness are ephemeral. So, they are not worthy goals.
We should be seeking satisfaction and contentment.
That doesn't mean not striving or not giving it your best.
It means learning how to give it your best AND realistically evaluating yourself and the outcomes you've achieved.
9
"The pursuit of happiness" has Aristotelian roots in the ancient Greek concept of "Eudaimonia." It does not mean joy or amusement, but comes closer to "fulfillment" or "well being." Humans are fulfilled when we live according to our nature, which means freely pursuing our own ends or purposes.
13
I know nothing about chess but I have experienced ultimate joy and it's never been part of any type of competition or war-like scenario. It was my first true love where I felt truly loved; all three births of healthy children who are now kind, compassionate and loving people; doing the right thing though there were non-joy ramifications. It's every random act of kindness I try to do on a regular basis. I'm no poet or philosopher but I believe joy, happiness, contentment is extremely personal and intimate.
19
What Mr. Rowson leaves out is that Lewis was making a specifically Christian religious point. His opinion wouldn't have changed one bit if he had taken up chess (I believe that he had his own versions of flow, but that he came to see them as gifts from the Christian God). However, as commenters have pointed out, flow is possible in a secular context, a statement which I don't intend to invalidate the experiences of religious people who have experienced it.
1
@Stephen Merritt I beg to differ. Lewis was Surprised by Joy after the intense, bottomless pit grief period of losing his wife. He discovered joy by finding out that it was not dependent on external experiences but by embracing his own present moment life.
2
The pursuit of happiness is a joyless journey that inevitably leads to dissatisfaction. Regardless, most people I know are typically trying to be happy. Perhaps a more accurate but less provocative title for this article would have been, "We may want to be happy, but that doesn't make it happen." Ironically the pursuit of happiness is mentioned in our county's founding documents.
2
Happiness is a steady stream of joy and an enduring state of contentment in life. Because we live to be happy, pursuit of it is the most basic activity of human life, although we are not always conscious of it. However, life is unlike playing chess. One can be happy by engaging in achieving meaningful short term wishes and long term desires that are compatible with your value system. Journey is the reward.
Happiness is a steady stream of joy and an enduring state of contentment in life. Because we live to be happy, pursuit of it is the most basic activity of human life, although we are not always conscious of it. However, life is unlike playing chess, a game. One can be happy by engaging in achieving meaningful short term wishes and long term desires that are compatible with your value system. Journey is the reward.
2
Chess requires a suspension of thought apart from our daily cares, which have multiplied very greatly lately; it is not a solution, nor does it pretend to be. Can we thus avoid worry ? We can, but only temporarily, for the world is always with us.
5
Nah. My daily cares have not multiplied greatly of late. The state of the world may seem chaotic and disturbing but my own personal state of mind is separate from that. Be here now. Not there now.
2
I am not sure why this author is singling out chess as the game that symbolizes the struggle between life and death other than this his game of choice. Perhaps everything we do or say can be seen in this contest. It is the idea that happiness is only about winning over an opponent, death being the ultimate opponent.
But perhaps the most fulfilling source of happiness is the freedom one finds in mastering ones self and in cooperating and serving ones world. The survival of the fittest ethic can not supply any lasting happiness because it does not help us to experience who we are in this moment and this place, but only pits us against each other and our world and this conflict can never help us find a sense of happiness or peace.
10
I agree with and applaud your points. However I would also assert that chess is like many good things of our civilized life: a dance that moves us through an ordered progression which is both meaningful and beneficial - and necessary towards the alleviation of the fallen human condition in which we find ourselves, left to our own “devices.” Literally, without such things we are hapless, depraved, creatures.
A few lessons from the dynamics of a chess game - that are so ingenious:
1. The typical first move is the least powerful player, the pawn, always goes first.
2. The most powerful player, the queen, is usually introduced towards the end of the game.
So interesting!
Such instruction, in proper use of power.
Oh but, “it’s only a game.”
1
While the author's venue is the chess board, I have been observing that Americans seem to prefer being enraged to the point of mayhem and sometimes outright murder. That being said, the will-to-power/conquer is all-too-human.
Happiness may come out of compromise, but satisfaction comes from absolute power and domination over everyone in view.
Chess is a sublimation of the same concept without blood on the floor. Pity that we cannot replace actual warfare with a board game.
5
I prefer to pursue contentment, or at least attempt to arrange my life in a way that invites that state of being.
Finding meaning + being useful + having something to look forward to, is a pretty good formula, I think.
24
As a lifelong casual chess player i have never seen what i would call real joy coming from chess. The fleeting sense of joy that might come from a clever sequence or a winning strategy is not real joy because it is derived mostly from ego, which seldom spawns anything akin to lasting happiness. A few minutes of Yoga is probably a better way to go.
11
It seems that today that the English words Happiness, Pleasure and Joy are used interchangeably in common speech. It also seems that when people point out a distinction between the words the precise definitions assumed can vary so much from speaker to speaker as to render a presentation or essay difficult to grasp.
I agree that the use of Happiness today often means pleasure but I also do not believe that that use is what the Founders understood when they included the word in the Declaration of Independence.
Rather, I think they almost certainly had in mind the concept of Eudaimonia as found in Greek philosophy and probably the use as found in Aristotle.
It is not just having sufficient material goods to enable one to study the Virtues, ethics and understand rational thought but to be actively engaged in living a virtuous life and actively engaging in rational thought. It is a condition of being but it requires continual action to remain in that condition. It is, in a sense, a condition that is never satisfied but is, nevertheless, very satisfying.
For an introduction see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia
18
@Bill Someone once said: “Be virtuous if you would be happy.”
The last time I played chess, a young man persuaded me to play, checkmated me in about five minutes, thanked me, stood up, and walked away. I felt used, annoyed at myself, most UHhappy, while he didn't act particularly happy, judging by his body language.
Sometimes, a few miles into a wilderness hike, I know I am "in the zone," seeing a lot of wild country and moving smoothly through it. It's a time when I want to shout (but don't, because quiet is part of the charm), "I am alive!!" That's happiness. Contentment is looking back on years of such days.
Happiness is wonderful. Contentment is longer lasting. It's like comparing being married for a week versus for a half century.
36
Among all the fuzziness (“Losing is painful but deeply meaningful.”) one thing Jonathan Rowson makes sure we know is that he’s attained “the level of grandmaster.” This says it all, since chess like all competition satisfies a biological imperative we share with all other primates: the social striving for hierarchy and dominance. Chess may be inordinately complex but it’s still basically football. How many wonderful scientific discoveries remain undiscovered while such first-class minds seek instead to slug it out?
11
happiness? Joy? When I play chess I'm anxious.
8
Happiness is a word that is hard to define, as it is different things to different people, as shown b the comments in this section.
To me, it means to have something to look forward to everyday, mostly simple things.
Joy, on the other hand, can hit you over the head like a hammer.
It appears to me to be instantaneous. And it can last a minute or days.
Both happiness and joy are necessary for us to move forward.
You can feel happiness and joy, even when you are trying to keep your head above water.
2
Waking up alive every morning gives me great joy . After that moment, the rest is up to me.
19
This is a provocative article, but its understanding of joy seems uniquely "male" to me (yet is presented as universal). I would posit a guess that, for most women, power is not at the heart of joy at all.
58
I've always found it odd that people seem to find happiness so hard to understand.
It's actually pretty simple. Happiness is, by its nature, something that is a "side effect". You do things you enjoy and doing those things makes you happy. What things do you do? Depends on who you are.
Also keep in mind that if you have a lot of things dragging you down in life happiness might not be in the cards for you unless you deal with those things first(examples would be long commutes, unsatisfactory work, relationship troubles, and so forth).
To recap, for happiness you just have to find things that make you happy and reduce or eliminate the things in your life that mitigate or wipe out that happiness.
11
This sort of joy is applicable to playing music also.
19
As in all completive games we are playing against ourselves. We just use our competitors as the impetus to do better.
5
Perhaps a few definitions of "happy" would get close to the state various people experience. But that state is a) very individual, and b) also determined greatly by the society/culture in which one grows up.
In the West, it's possible we are so obsessed with the idea of happiness that, in the end, we have only fleeting feelings, brief encounters, and fervent aspirations. Or worse: We don't even slow down or stop long enough to participate in happiness, however defined. We believe we deserve it because we deserve it, instead of performing acts that result in it, for example.
Chess is a good response for the title here, "We Don't Actually Want to Be Happy." We just want to be distracted, engaged, or entertained. I castle, therefore I am.
6
The most surprising facet of this clever article is the use of Joy vs. Happiness and CS Lewis. It is, in fact, noteworthy that one of Lewis’ books was entitled
“Surprised by Joy”. One of Lewis’ contemporaries, Albert Camus, in “ The Myth of Sisyphus”, dealt with finding happiness and meaning in the face of absurdity in stating “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”.
There is a strong connection between joy and imagination and it is fertile ground for finding meaning within, but our opponent is reality. If we agree on the rules of the game we have to admit much of what happens is really out of our control.
I am terrible at chess but have always loved the game for its applications to life and this article is beautiful for an opening move.
5
Einstein's mathematician, Kurt Godel, summed up incompleteness as constancy's built-in precursory. So merely wanting to be happy hardly guarantees ever being fulfilled by it.
For example, it's like MAGA retroactively endeavoring to make great again what greatness can only attain in perpetuity MOVING FORWARD. Moreover, what's the draw to chess if stalemates can't be precluded?
4
"Einstein's mathematician, Kurt Godel, ..."
Einstein and Gödel were friends and intellectual peers. See "Incompleteness: the proof and paradox of Kurt Gödel" by Rebecca Goldstein.
"... summed up incompleteness as constancy's built-in precursory. So merely wanting to be happy hardly guarantees ever being fulfilled by it."
Gödel's incompleteness theorems have nothing to do with happiness. They are theorems in mathematical logic.
Appropriating Gödel's results for completely unrelated purposes seems to be popular with people who don't know what they are talking about.
See "Gödel's theorem: an incomplete guide to its use and abuse" by Torkel Franzén.
1
Happiness? As in Thomas Mann's postponement of fulfillment?
(Bettcha @HSW loves how Kurt Godel also found Christ plausible as his personal incompleteness wound down too. LOL)
C.S. Lewis probably meant that "unsatisfied desire" was the return to the womb. Probably the intensity and concentration of chess is as close as we can get.
1
@Richard C
Maybe the womb, maybe home. Why would an impersonal cosmos affix such a strongly universal desire to find belonging ? The point is , maybe there is more than we can know
within , and we are closer to things we do not understand than the things we do.
Not to preach , friend , but using your own words, “unless a man be born again...”
@Matt
In my own words, it wold be more like "unless a man be borne again..."
The cosmos seems to be working towards a state of maximum entropy, and to have evolved a species working towards a state of maximum entropy, consisting of individuals working towards a state of maximum entropy. Maybe it's a fractal thing.
Chess and the human condition?
The problem of the human condition appears to me that humans are a species locked in a time/space continuum that is so absurd and painful and corrosive it can be stated that we began as X (in primitive form) and over millions of years have been evolving and now are at point to state that we must process ourselves somehow into Y, but we are still vastly uncoordinated and blindly striking out at nature and ourselves, and what we need to do is somehow coordinate, align ourselves in a cleaner, more imaginative form of development, begin to develop intelligently over time and space the chess pieces that we are.
Chess seems a harbinger of this understanding because although a game humans play against each other it sets the essential problem of how to get pieces to develop over time and space in the cleanest, most imaginative fashion, and to have sacrifice if necessarily made directed to maximum end, which is to say chess, like music, indeed all great artistic and scientific endeavor, seeks the optimal method of organization to have humanity least subject to the vicissitudes of the time/space continuum.
All great thinking pushes up against the boundaries of time and space, seeks to transcend. Medicine works against the corrosive effect of life, works to grip death itself. Music works time and space to leap beyond. It's a type of superconductivity of species we desire, faster, cleaner escape from grip of time and space, horses heads toward eternity.
3
Competition in sports and games can serve as two distinct paths to happiness. The first lies in the relatively simple and short-term pleasure that lies in winning, even when (or more darkly, especially since) it comes from beating your opponent. For evolutionary reasons, men have this tendency more than women.
The other reason is much deeper, and doesn't depend on winning. It's the happiness coming from sincere effort, from trying to be the best version of ourselves. It allows us to enter the state of flow, where there is nothing but the present moment and the task at hand. Winning then becomes a sort of validation of preparation, of having made the right choices in giving up short-term little pleasures, and instead having pursued purposeful training and practice. But winning is not all-important, because we recognize the opponent as another human who is on their own path to becoming a better version of themselves. That's why we shake hands after a game, call "good race" to the other boat. We're all celebrating the journey that is life.
20
@Véronique
Well said. Yes, happiness can come from “sincere effort from trying to be the best version of ourselves.” And, yes, competition in sports and games can be a road to this virtue we call happiness. So also, I suggest, are many other human interactions and accomplishments, whether they be completing a project at work, witnessing a child graduate from grade or high school, completing a course of study or obtaining a degree or award, or accomplishing an individual or group goal, or even scaling a mountain pass to see what is on the other side.
Food for thought. And chess is a wondeful game but not far outside the 'norms' we impose on ourselves, and everybody else, when playing competitively against somebody else (even ourselves). Wouldn't it be nice we could imagine, then create, a game where all participants are winners? Or is that too much to ask from our nature and that pesky ego that won't let go? Being assertive, and able to wonder, and become one with nature, and being humble for the little we know, may remain our biggest challenge for the time being. But joyful to contemplate. In regards to your point about happiness, I concur it is foolish to chase something that ought to occur, or not, as an afterthought. I know, this idea wouldn't be good if one intends to sell books promising happiness...by following certain rules, and the adoration of a cultish fellow with all the answers (Ugh!).
2
@manfred marcus I would say that playing music is that kind of game. It is done just for the fun of creating something beautiful.
1
@Al Bennett And dancing?
1
Some years ago, I served on the hiring committee of my academic department in CUNY. I remember my chair commenting on one very promising candidate: "I don't think he'd be happy here". I responded: "Why would we want anyone who would be 'happy' here? We should hire people who will be dissatisfied and who will improve our department and college." Happiness is all right in small doses, but in a broken world there are more worthy objects of pursuit.
21
@David A. I like your anecdote, but sate my idle curiosity, did the committee hire that promising candidate?
4
'... my chair commenting on one very promising candidate: "I don't think he'd be happy here".'
Your chair means that he doesn't want to hire that candidate. Academics are notorious obfuscators.
2
Or you can reread Anna Karenina.
17
@DaCapo: excellent point. Indeed Anna Karenina contains many delightful passages, but, like life, it forces us to slog through Tolstoy’s theories of how to manage a rural estate and the vagaries of local government in Czarist Russia. A good metaphor for the limitations of the possibilities for happiness in life.
1
@Claude Vidal: Thanks Claude. I was thinking about our grandmaster's fascination with Joy as the ultimate aesthetic outcome, the human comedy's checkmate. AK comes back to that question again and again - where is joy? - and leaves it to the reader to judge a life well spent.
1
I do not want to be part of all the obligatory happiness and chronic positive thinking. Happiness is an emotion that comes and goes, just as every other emotion does. I don’t want a “happy life”; I want a life of meaningfulness. Happiness is neither a goal of mine nor a way of life.
39
Many parents raise kids with this addage "we just want you to be happy. " we took a different tack. Be a good citizen, first at home , then using those habits and values as you move through the greater world. Find enjoyment in the now-- a great family meal, a sunny day, taking a walk in the woods or by the shore. Recognize that the moments or days of "well-being " need to be acknowledged and celebrated, and called upon for strength in darker days or moments.Stuff isn't as important as "having the right stuff." So far, pretty good outcomes.
8
@karen beautiful, Karen!
1
Because a meaningful life would make you.........happy?
2
To me chess is a mental, not physical, challenge. So can any chess experts please explain why chess competitions are divided into men's and women's categories?
3
@Donna Gray
That is generally false - most chess competitions are open to anyone, regardless of gender. This includes all competitions leading to the world championship title. There are no, as far as I am aware, men's-only categories. However, there are women's-only categories (i.e. men are not allowed to compete in them).
The main reason for this is the dearth of women participants in chess. Having separate women's/girls' -only sections encourages more female participation since prizes/medals are easier to attain when compared to the open sections. When a woman chess player attains a very high level, she may very well stop competing in any women's events, but, as you can imagine, getting to the top is not easy. In the last twenty years, just two women - Judith Polgar and Hou Yifan - went that route. Polgar, I believe, *never* played women's-only events. That is clearly the most ambitious attitude, but, just by sheer probabilities, very few can make it high enough in the rankings (top 20, say) to be able to make a decent living that way. As you may guess, chess professionals typically earn a modest living.
3
@Ana Luisa
Hi Ana. See my response to Donna. The breakdown is:
- open sections: any gender;
- women's only sections: women only.
1
@Donna Gray The strongest female chess player in the world is Hou Yifan of China. She is ranked about 90th in the world. Judith Polgar was one of the top ten players for a while back in the early 2000s. For whatever reason, the best male players are better than the best female players.
In this universe comprised of stored energy, everything must somehow coexist with its own opposite to exist at all. Happiness and sorrow are no exception.
13
Nice piece ,pun intended. I love chess and find it very relaxing and indeed nail biting at the same time. I have been playing on and off for over fifty years. I don’t so much feel pain in my defeat ,if I played well, then a good beating is...well fun! I do feel the pain in a foolish move. The anguish as soon as I lift my finger from the piece. Oh well it’s just a game. And I think happiness is in the eyes of the beholder. People should do what makes them smile so long as it’s legal that is. I was reminded of how I was taught the game. My neighbor playmate taught me, showing no mercy as pre- teens he thumped every single day. This went on for a very long time, until I learned the game well and the student became the master. I never lost another game to him and the funny thing is after awhile of his defeats he simply stopped playing me! I guess it wasn’t making him happy any more.
4
I’ll never forget playing the smart aleck kid in chemistry class. He’d brag about going to a big name university and was looking to show off. I just played for fun occasionally, but agreed to give him a shot at me. While he was writing down his moves, I had him in checkmate in seven. I don’t think I was the only one in class that was happy about my winning that game in that fashion. No rematch of course. Sometimes you get lucky.
1
While I never "got" chess, I'm glad (won't say happy) that its pursuit helped the author, and then responders, explain insights about both happiness and joy.
For my part, I've shocked some people, even more than intended, by saying "happiness is overrated," or "I'm not overly interested in it." They're such pursuers, they can't believe what they've heard. I then add I'm not against it, thinking of brief historical moments when it occurred, usually with a granddaughter. Once over their shock, sometimes someone will take it deeper, suggesting it may be a definitional thing, which it might be.
Now in a society and world that seems to me to be in the process of falling apart, the suggestion of adding "purpose" to it, particularly through efforts to do something about it, does help somewhat with my objections. Although those efforts tend to include a lot of frustrations that go with that turf. Still, they at least address the pervasive happiness-promising distractions thrown at us, to which we seem so vulnerable.
So I'll take it when it comes, and I like another insight that it is one of those things best pursued indirectly. But I'm more worried that if we're just learning to dance better on the Titanic, or engaged in chess on the port bow, we're really fooling ourselves.
I would rather more of those who have that potential think about how to dig us out of our of our multiple wicked messes. If by doing so, some version of happiness or joy comes their way, it's a nice bonus.
10
Being kind. Helping others. Loving one another. Therein lies both happiness and purpose.
68
For years I took some kind of odd pride in my disdain for sports. When my colleagues were caught up in the World Cup and prodded me to declare a favorite team I demurred and asserted my uninterestedness in any sport or game. One young man challenged me « Not true! You’re sport is politics! »
Yes, he had me there. I may be a bit player, but I am a keen participant - not just a voter but a canvasser and precinct official and volunteer, unpaid lobbyist. For me it is the most obvious thing in the world - at stake is not some tacky trophy but physical infrastructure, fiscal policy, health care, climate policy, education, and human rights. Of course as with chess there are countless unending frustrations but a win puts us on a path of hope while loss goads us to find our way out of our predicament.
Rounding up and motivating volunteers to go knock on more doors always forces me to wonder why so many people will drop everything to cheer and support their favorite baseball or hockey or basketball team but can’t be bothered to vote much less work to encourage and empower their neighbors to do the same. Maybe if we could figure out that enthusiasm gap we could inspire more civic engagement but I’m still at a loss.
26
We Don’t Actually Want to Be Happy
Who is this "we" and is the author projecting his thoughts and feelings to the greater "we"?
I keep coming back to a basic divide in people. Optimists and pessimists. Optimists seem more likely to be happy. They tend to see the good in others and in things want to help and are disappointed when things don't turn out well.
Pessimists seem more likely to be unhappy. They tend to see the bad in people and everything else and that enables their desire to see others hurt for it. In fact expect things not to turn out well and take satisfaction in that for what passes for happiness.
I believe that optimism, seeing good, desiring to help and making things better, and pessimism, seeing bad, desiring to hurt others and protecting whats yours are the underlying characteristics of Democrats and Republicans. For Republicans someone else is happy that must mean they are losing. These different outlooks on life has only been amplified of late which makes it almost impossible for them to see anything in the same light let alone eye-to-eye.
10
It's true that moments of joy are what inspires human life, but what most of really want is justice....legal justice, social justice, political justice, environmental justice and economic justice....all of which would make life and the world a much, much better place.
Justice would be a real joy to the world.
187
Even young children know what is it or isn’t fair. We all crave justice from an early age. Hard to imagine people being unhappy if there is fairness.
30
@Socrates
Don't fully agree, justice is relative, much like perception of issues. Linking happiness or joy to something external is a recipe for unhappiness in my opinion. My feeling is that it has to come from inside oneself much like love. The joy of just being. However your point did make me initially agree with you, and is a important goal to strive for, much like winning in chess.
16
@Socrates I hope that's true. Justice is certainly what I want, and what I fight for. But I think what most people want is comfort, security (however their ill-reasoning minds define that) and a little status they can lord over their peers. I realize this is rather misanthropic but I just haven't seen enough evidence to the contrary.
I do hope that for those people, it is possible to create a politics and a civic discourse that at least frames compassion and justice as worthy public ideals--so that in supporting them, people at least feel that they are displaying civic virtue, and thereby gaining in status. Trump has shown that appealing to their inner decency won't help.
5
"the pursuit of happiness" has been reinterpreted in modern times to refer to an etherial goal of bliss. Personally, I think the important word here is pursuit. It is that we reach for it ~ achieving is not necessary. Second, I wonder if we define happiness differently than our forbearers. Happiness could be creature comfort, a sense of well being, not joy or emotional rapture.
While chess can put a body in a state of total engagement on many levels, I doubt it is what the founders were referring to in 1770s.
7
Being at work solving problems in a fulfilling pursuit is close enough to happiness to be better than the real thing, which is usually here and gone rather quickly.
3
Castiglione, in The Book of the Courtier, says, "Remember, when you have mastered chess, all you have learned is a game." The same might be said of go, Magic: the Gathering(c) or Fortnite(c). I believe the author is correct in saying that a meaningful life is what satisfies us in the long run. The question if, is we're not struggling for mere survival, and joy can't be "won" in the conventional sense, where should we find that purpose which brings meaning?
3
@Lauren McGillicuddy
In learning how to love ourselves and all other sentient beings, and to care.
Because it matters that you care.
Chess is a zero sum game. Life is not.
Those that treat life like zero sum game are almost never happy because no one can have it all, because someone else has something you want, even if you are multi-billionaire.
148
@Marie
Exactly correct. The key to happiness in this life is knowing when you have enough and not worrying about getting more.
37
@Marie
I am confused, but perhaps the joy is about WILL POWER.
If we make strategic moves, we may gain will power.
As JB Conan said: "Behold the turtle.
It only makes progress when it sticks its neck out."
--------------------------------------------------------------
It also occurs to me that chess encourages jig-jag moves,
and maybe if we jig-jag, mentally & physically we wake up.
I look forward to the new book.
Perhaps, it can help to motivate students.
www.SavingSchools.org
@Marie No it's not. Draws are common in chess.
2
I am a bit weary of "winning" things via competition with oneself or others as the key mindset for looking at the world philosophically. This seems to be a male dominated way of looking at the world (not that all genders don't compete too in search for happiness), derived from man-against-beast contest of wits back in the old days. What about the women raising the children making food and clothes left back at the ranch when the guys were out stalking the mammoths ? Did they find any happiness in this childcare, and creative ways of making do that could be handed down as wisdom to us? It may be that all the greek and most of the following philosophers were all men and had no clue about anything but competition. Personally, even though I am not a mother, I think you would find many many women, mothers or not, that could contribute some ideas on how to find joy.
110
Agree, there are more men at chess tournaments than women. But, have you ever been at a typical contract bridge tournament? Mostly women. And having played chess and bridge competitively, I must say that 'joy' is found in both games.
8
@marylanes I have also played chess since childhood and continue to play today. For me, chess is not about competition or winning, about concentration, learning, and the process of considering two moves (your's and your opponent's). To play chess is to enter the moment, defined by the position, fully. It is in this moment, attained through chess, meditation, or flow, that happiness, joy, and meaning arise.
3
@marylanes Competition is a real phenomenon in the world. Don't be so quick to label it as "male"--the message you are sending to women and girls is that it isn't for them.
1
Having started to play the game go midlife, I have a good sense of what you mean. I began it to exercise my brain cognitively in some new way, but the beauty and discoveries of the game move me to continue it out of, well, “joy,” is as good a word as any.
The end of a poem by Su Shi about go:
“Victory is surely pleasant,
but defeat can also be enjoyed.
Leisurely and unhurriedly,
This is the way for the moment.”
22
The author fails to peel the onion of happiness to its core. Perhaps he could read Aristotle, who says that happiness--what he calls "eudaimonia"--is a by product of fulfilled potential.
I would alter the author's credit to responsibility or competitiveness, and restate happiness as the development of latent potential, which in this case is the evolution of skill and learning.
29
Mr. Rowson:
If you play chess with the same level of intellectual rigor, playful curiosity, and clarity of thought that distinguishes your writing, you must be very good indeed.
I've never played chess and never desired to do so. Until I read your piece.
I don't know if, consequently, I'll learn the game of chess and start playing it. But your essay made that possibility exponentially more likely.
It also persuaded me that whatever you write would be worth reading. And I look forward to whatever philosophical insights I might glean from your book, irrespective of my feelings for chess
24
Substitute any intensely competitive game or athletic endeavor or even vocational pursuit for chess. The author’s device allows him to tell a story that is apparently interesting but actually is not.
3
A French 18th century thinker said that "happiness was a new idea in Europe." He meant that the old struggle just to survive might be replaced in an age of reason with something better. But no one knows what happiness is, whether it can last, and whether it is good to dwell on it. I suspect one should never think about it if one wants to be happy.
31
@n1789
FYI: happiness has been at the very center of Western philosophy as soon as it was invented, 2,500 years ago.
It's also the very goal of Buddhist psychology - also already 2,500 years old.
And today's neurological studies are more and more proving the Buddhists to be right on this.
So I don't know which French "thinker" you're referring to but it seems as if that person didn't really read philosophy ... ;-)
Happiness is an art. The art of life. And like in any art, you won't get very far if you decide to even not think about it ...
7
@n1789
For large tracts of human history life was so physically demanding and difficult that contemplating happiness, and the fact one may not be happy, was almost a luxury. One spent their time merely trying to survive. Religion was there, for instance, as a means to get you out of this mess. With the rise of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and simple material improvements, happiness came more into view.
1
@Ana Luisa
Philosophy arose with questions such as, "what is the right life?" Or, "how do we know this is true?" It's beginnings had virtually nothing to do with happiness. Walk into any philosophy department--analytical or continental--and ask them what courses they teach regarding happiness and they'll likely laugh. Epistemology, ontology, naturalism--none of this has to do with happiness.
Even Buddhism wasn't about happiness; it was about how to manage life with the understanding that pain (perhaps the antithesis of happiness) is a part of the equation.
Enjoyed the article and looking forward to reading the book.
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I started playing chess at age nine, and I frequently play on the computer as a break from work. But to call the game "an integral part of civilization" is absurd.
The author might like to read "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence" by David Benatar. It might widen his horizons a bit.
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@Jon Harrison When young people beat me at chess I decided that game wasn't for me. And it always gave me a headache.
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@n1789 ,
When my parent continued to play with young people and beat them, having long lost her memory, they would be quite furious and start clamoring for a rematch!
I appreciate this thoughtful commentary. There's a reason why it is the pursuit of happiness not the guarantee thereof. As in any journey and quest the experience of getting to the destination is part of the fulfillment.
Happiness is elusive. Happiness is not static.
My town is a paradoxically beautiful place filled with so many economically well off but utterly miserable people in status fabisina. How can that be? One conclusion: lack of purpose? Lack of interests outside of (former) career? I don't know. It's a personal choice.
So I choose to be happy therefore I AM happy.
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Fifty years ago, in high school, I played quite a lot of chess. The one friend I played regularly beat me every time we played. After graduating, I never played again as I found the game to be way too time consuming and requiring way too much thought. I turned to Backgammon, a game which has also been around for a long time and requires a lot less thought and can be played much faster.
If you want to engage in ersatz war, there's always pro football, that is another form of ritualized warfare but can be enjoyed passively, unlike chess.
@h king You can play a game of hyper-bullet chess in 30s. Altho I find 5min blitz games with 3s increments are as fast as I want to play...
@Richard Smith
Point taken but most people don't have the mental sharpness to play chess that fast.
Have to disagree. Most people wake up happy with an energy level and then get a taste of reality about ten minutes after waking. Similar to a chess opening but there has to be a mid game and closing game for the entire day.
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