About happiness and mine

Human happiness; to what end? (A facebook thread question put forward by Lyman Paul Grover)

I would like to answer this question using education as means to this end. The end I am thinking of is being able decide if i should follow my wants or my needs first after having gained knowledge and knowhow to ensure my own personal happiness. In my opinion it is also a good idea to distinguish personal happiness and happiness as a result of sacrificing personal happiness for the greater good. As for what this greater good might be is debatable.

I think that autonomy, being not under any duress, constraints or having a perception of being in control of my life makes me more susceptible to the state of happiness.

I have read your posts and i think nearly all of them sort of lingered on the periphery of what makes us happy as individuals and as groups of people and doesn't really explain the dominant cornerstone of western civilization and that is...people ought to be happy. With the aid of education, I've learnt that happiness is manifested when the highest Maslows need (beyond physical comfort and survival) be fulfilled and met in a secular sense (poli-ethical & intellectual) and spiritual sense.

It doesn't matter if a person avoid pain and and actively only want pleasure in our daily toil to be happy. It also doesn't matter that a person has to know pain so that he can enjoy pleasure more deeply to be happy.

Fact is that human pain is unavoidable and human pleasure is fleeting in the greater scheme. As an example, I post here knowing full well that I will experience grief from abusive individuals who tends to dismiss my post because either they don't like me as a person, think what i say has no merit or all of the above. My momentary pleasure is enough i think to make me go beyond the fear of this guaranteed castigation to author this post now.

At the moment I am happy because I triumphed through that obstacle. I cannot say if I am still happy I posted this reply after these horrid and nasty people say my post was stupid, ramblings of an ignorant person or after having read that my post is of no importance or worse simply ignored by everyone. What i am saying is that I accept that there are going to be people who will disapprove of what I write simply because I am me. In this way, I can ensure my own personal happiness as well despite bearing the brunt of pain and displeasure, indirectly make others happy at my expense (those who hates me for me and what I stood for) and feel happiness because they think they are superior to me, feel happy when I feel bad because they are sick bastards or something. Maybe I am a masochist and this tendency attracts sadistic ones?

• Josephine Cutaran Gibbs

  replied to Alma's question,
  'Do I understand rightly?'.
  
  I do more or less and if i get a lot of what Abraham Maslow called 'peak experiences' then, it means that I must be on the right track of the elusive happiness, which disappears as soon as we look at this state of mind very closely.
  
  As I got this notification of your reply, i've been reading Ned Noddings Happiness and education. I agree with his idea that with education people will know how to be happy or how to ask question like, How do i live so that happiness is attainable? or How do i experience the world so that the peak experiences conducive to my happiness are not only within sight but also achievable. He says that much of desire for happiness is wishful thinking or a fantasy that may never really be actualised in reality. This is why knowing the theory and practical is important but in the same token, I also approved that he warns that most people think that through education they become better people in an intellectual snob kind of way, by valuing subjects that purely theoretical such as maths and physics, because these subjects require a high threshold of intelligence, well above the majority of people.
  
  I also noticed this in schools. Subjects that are practical are not as valued as those that are highly theoretical. Students have to learn algebra even if we don't need it while we look askance at subjects that teach parenting even though it might actually be important in people's lives.
  However i understand the rationale of using education to teach kids to appreciate such abstract knowledge and to value rationality because it makes us fulfilled as human beings in utilising the God-given ability to think. (if you are offended or might disagree with this specific sentence, my apologies) The ugly side to this is that we tend to venerate people who are very intelligent in this way but are basically useless in practical terms. People like us who teach are not as valued as those who spout theories, who mostly, probably do not even know how those theories are applied.
  
  What this has to do with happiness for me as a thinking being is to arrive at a balance in valuing the theory and practical equally.

  on Friday · Delete Post
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  Alma López-Tolman

  Josephine,
  
  It seems to me that you say that we can achieve happiness through education, and although I think it certainly helps, I do not believe that all educated people are necessarily happy..
  

  on Saturday · Report
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  Josephine Cutaran Gibbs

  True that there are no guarantees of happiness for people who are healthy and wealthy but we can try to know how we can be happy. Also true that happiness or wellbeing might not be what people want as end goals for education.

  on Saturday · Delete Post
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  Lyman Paul Grover

  Jo, it's good to have you posting again. I enjoy your insights and value them highly. I particularly like your bringing the recognized psychological concept of Maslow's hierarchy into this discussion. There has been so much flatulant posting on this forum lately, it is good to see reference to more accepted theories rather than defending personally held proclamations (Oops, I wrote 'flatulant'...did I mean 'petulant'?).
  
  In your statement, "I have read your posts and I think nearly all of them sort of lingered on the periphery of what makes us happy as individuals and as groups of people and doesn't really explain the dominant cornerstone of western civilization and that is...people ought to be happy." I think you have touched on the desire of us humans to be free to determine our own destinies, as much as possible. I would only change the last part of it, 'people ought to be happy', to 'people ought to be able to pursue happiness'.
  
  And then, of course, we need to define the different kinds or levels of happiness, as you have alluded to, and as I attempted to, several posts back.

  on Saturday · Report
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  Anna Baba

  Jo and Lyman,
  
  I would only change the last part of it, 'people ought to be happy', to 'people ought to be able to pursue happiness'
  
  By now you both probably know my view of how the phrase in the constitution is far too easy to misconstrue as a right to happiness.
  A right to work at finding happiness is so different.
  
  The latter, not a woolly idea of ought, or right. to be happy, is a good 'good', to be evenly distributed, I feel.

  
  

  My Conclusions about this thread

  I dont think happiness can be adequately defined or be concluded with enough satisfaction to please all or to reach consensus. Happiness can only be experienced. After reading what every one of my friends in Facebook 'Philosophy is sexy group' have to say on the subject of happiness, my idea that the more happiness is under scrutiny the more it slips away has not changed. I think we all want, sometimes we sacrifice it and forgo happiness and let someone else be happy but we can only enjoy it and think abut it after it happened but we could not lasso and make it concrete or solid in some way. Except of course if you mean children as the embodiment of the physical happiness of parents but then that's another thread perhaps?