Happiness?
19th June 2013
So.. Happiness.. It seems to be everywhere at the moment. Not actual happiness – but discussion about it. You can find Justin Whitaker (over on his blog) talking about there being good and bad types of it : http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2013/06/beyond-happiness-buddhism-and-human-flourishing.html
He argues that the good sorts can’t be found by uncovering some secret – but that important forms of happiness actually come from extended hard work – particularly hard work on rooting out ingrained negative ways of thinking and behaviour (that’d be meditation and ethics then).
Over at http://dispirited.org/2013/06/12/happiness-and-the-welfare-of-others/ you can find me (and only one cat picture this time) claiming that perhaps we should worry less about happiness and more abut virtue.
Either way – and I know it’s a topic that my colleague Professor Melissa Raphael will be discussing at our Open Day on Saturday – it seems to be a pre-occupation in Western society : but might we be tempted that, as people with enough food, clean water and no war in our daily lives, to perhaps think of it as a peculiarly “First World Problem”?