Eudaemonia vs. Hakuna Matata: Two Views on the Pursuit of Happiness

"It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence."--Erasmus

I am proposing that what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” is totally at odds with what it has come to mean today. To elaborate on how this came about is not my aim here. Instead I wish to compare two ideas about happiness and suggest that somehow we’ve now got it all wrong.

What I’m attempting to express here comes from notes I took in response to a lecture on Aristotle that our philosophy club discussed a number of years ago.

Aristotle, one of the most influential of the Greek philosophers, had been a student and teacher in Plato’s school before starting his own school, the Lyceum. One of Aristotle’s central themes had to do with how to live the right kind of life. Assuming that there is such a thing as what might be called a “right kind of life,” what are the various components of this “Right kind of life?”

In my Medium article Eudeamonia vs. Hakuna Matata, I compare Aristotle's teachings on happiness with the current attitudes about happiness. The reason this is important because I believe the Founding Fathers had Aristotle's ideas in mind when they wrote about life, liberty and "the pursuit of happiness."

Over time the meanings behind the words we use have changed. Words like freedom and happiness were very different concepts in the minds of Enlightenment thinkers of two and three centuries ago.

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Again, check out the rest of this story Here.

Friends Are the Sunshine of Life

Life is hard. That's why we shouldn't go it alone.

"A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway."
~Fr. Jerome Cummings

"Remember, the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in the hearts of true friends."

~Cindy Lew

Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure.

~Jewish Saying

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you."
~Elbert Hubbard

"Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure."
~Jewish saying

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

~Aristotle

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.

~Albert Camus

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Hold a true friend with both your hands."

~Nigerian Proverb

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same."

~Anonymous

"Friends are like melons; shall I tell you why?
To find one good you must one hundred try."

~Claude Mermet

"Friendship needs no words..."
~Dag Hammarskjold.

"Friends are the sunshine of life."
~John Hay (1871)

One of the most illuminating passages on friendship that I've ever read is the chapter on Philia from C.S. Lewis' volume The Four Loves. Here are a few gems. You may also visit this Goodreads page, which displays several more.

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”  (EdNote: This is how Keith Richards' friendship with Mick Jagger began.)

“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

“People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.”

Thank you, friends, for all your encouragement and kindnesses. Have a wonderful day. Friends are indeed the sunshine of life.

This is the Beginning

In the old days writers frequently kept notebooks where they jotted ideas, observations and snippets of conversations. These days much of this miscellany is stored in folders on our laptops, backup drives and in other virtual spaces.

As a columnist I often go through many false starts before I hit on a theme that I can carry all the way through. Many of these false starts are stored as seed for future articles.

This morning I found this bit of patter which found its initial impetus in a poem by Billy Collins titled Aristotle.

This is the Beginning

This is the beginning. Almost anything can happen. Except we’re writing for a ____ magazine, so it constrains our possibilities somewhat.

Being somewhat responsible the beginning has a purpose beyond merely hooking the reader. It is useful for telegraphing what’s to come, something akin to a billboard. It’s like an introduction at a party. You really don’t entirely know where it will lead, but you’re intrigued. You still want to go with it. And if it is a proper beginning it will not chew up too much of the real estate on this page because all the important parts need breathing room as they flow out from this, the beginning.

So, where are we going from here? That really is a question for so many aspects of life. When we try to see the future it’s a real problem because our only clues are the ones in our past. There’s a wall between today and tomorrow, and we don’t have a periscope to see over or around it.

The only thing we see with clarity is behind us. Even though we’re fond of saying “hindsight is 20/20” the reality is not really that way. All too often we filter events through a mental grid and misinterpret their significance. So it is that we have to become detectives and learn to recognize which clues are important, and when we connect the right dots a shape will begin to form.

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This is the end.

Ramble On

"I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious." ~ Albert Einstein

What was it that made men like Einstein and Newton and Copernicus and Aristotle stand out from the herd? Einstein puts his finger on the nub of it right there. They were inordinately curious. They asked questions. They wanted to understand how the world worked. They didn't just accept things as they were.

For some reason, when we're kids we're taught that "curiosity killed the cat." This is repeated ad nauseaum in our childhood so as to make curiosity something bad, like lying. In reality, curiosity is part of the fabric of who we are. And it is essential to learning.

Making art is a thrill for creative personalities because it employs curiosity in the process of creation. What will happen if I do this? What happens if I do that? There is a sense of being an audience to one's own creations.

By way of contrast, most artists I know hate the way our culture wants "products" which can be reproduced. There's nothing more boring for an artist than mass production. It stunts this natural desire to see what will happen if I color it this way or that. Business people may like mass production for its efficiencies and the revenues generated. But I don't know many artists who want to make 1,000 identical baskets of flowers, teddy bears and ribbons.

According to our friend Merriam-Webster, the word ramble is an intransitive verb of 15th century Middle English origin which means to move aimlessly from place to place or to explore idly. I like the second part of that first definition: "To explore idly."

When we allow our minds to ramble and roam, amazing things happen. We discover gems. We find connections between new ideas and past experiences. There's a therapeutic aspect to it as well.

Every once in a while it's OK for our minds to drift, our thoughts to ramble. I don't know if it's healthy to keep our thoughts tightly coiled all the time. This might be a facet of music's wonder in that as we lose ourselves in the rhythms and harmonies and contours of sounds, whether sweet or discordant, we find a measure of freedom from our inward tyrannies.

Rambling as a lifestyle is also energizing for some. I know a few writers who travel the world, writing articles about what they see here, there and everywhere. I'm sure it's fascinating to meet so many interesting people, become engaged in so many cultures, to see so many scenic wonders.

But books can do a lot for us, too. And surfing the net, idly rambling across an uncharted sea of URLs... There really are marvels out there.

Relax. Enjoy the view. Ramble on.

NOTE: ALL ART AND IMAGES ON THIS BLOG ARE MY OWN CREATIONS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. FEEL FREE TO BORROW WHAT YOU SEE HERE SO LONG AS ATTRIBUTION IS GIVEN. COPYRIGHT ED NEWMAN

Five People, Five Questions (Round Two)

CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY

The question again: If it were possible to have discussions with five people from history (past or present) … who would you want to talk to and what question would you like to ask them?

R.M. from Oregon
Selecting only 5 people is more difficult that it first appears, but here goes (an obvious disclaimer--Jesus is first on my list even though He is not listed below; my general sense is that when I am actually physically in His presence I will be soaking up everything without saying too much):

Adam, the first man: Why didn't you immediately seek God and ask his forgiveness after sinning instead of hiding and lying? How much different are you and I really?

Winfield Scott McGregor (my grandfather who was dead before my parents married): No specific questions, I just want to know him.

Saint Patrick: How/Why did you decide to return to Ireland to evangelize the people who once held you as a slave?

Isaac Newton: Why did you waste so much time on science and mathematics when you could have spent more of your time studying scripture and writing biblical commentaries?

St. Paul: Can you make me understand Romans? Is Romans 7 autobiographical after you were saved? Did you write Hebrews?

One thing smacks me in the face as I selected the people and the questions--we all have life, the human situation, in common with everyone who ever lived regardless of when we live. The questions we must ask ourselves are: What would we do in their shoes in their times? Would we avoid their failures? Would we have the courage and perseverance to do the right thing when they acted righteously? Do we hold them to a higher standard of accountability than we do for ourselves?

B.L from Duluth area

That is a very interesting thought - five people. Right away I think of Martha (from Mary and Martha) She was a servant - and I want to be one too. I read a quote awhile ago that stuck "Lord, give me the balance between Mary's heart and Martha's hands"

M.P. from Duluth

I'm not sure if I'll be able to come up with 5 questions of 5 people but I do have two now:

1. I would like to ask Dwight Eisenhower why they didn't put machine guns, grenade launchers and flamethrowers on the amphibious landing craft used at Normandy on D-Day and use them on the Germans before they dropped the ramps and exposed our soldiers to enemy machine gun fire.

2. On a more trivial note, I would like to ask Lee Harvey Oswald if he acted alone and if not, who else does he believe is responsible for the assassination of JFK.

J.P., a writer from Minneapolis

Gandhi
To what do you attribute your courage to stand up as one man to an oppressive régime?

Lincoln
As someone who suffered from depression, what kept you determined in your depressed moments (and doubts?) to do right for the most good?

Aristotle
How would you instruct or encourage a person with good (not great) intelligence to understand and gain your genius for insight and analysis?

JK Rowling
As the best-selling author in history, how would you describe the creative process (and luck? good fortune? God-given gift?) of inventing Harry Potter and the fantasy world of other characters he inhabited?

Hitler / Stalin
Looking back on your legacy, was it all worth it? Would you do the same all over again? With the same zeal, could you and would you have made the world better rather than worse?

Pauline Reage / Anne Rice
Was your novel Story of O based on personal experience (autobiographical) or dreamed up (imaginative erotic fantasy)? Both?

The same or similar for Anne Rice who wrote Exit to Eden and the Sleeping Beauty trilogy. While these works are clearly imaginative erotic fantasies, where within yourself did you find such devilish ideas and take them so far? And did you ever worry about what judgments readers would have of you as a person vs. as a novelist?

And maybe we'll leave the rest for another day. Till then...