I read a really fabulous article by Jean Kazez on Philosophy Now. It’s a review of three books about Happiness. I was SO impressed with her discussion that I popped over to Amazon and bought all three (while I was there I put her own book into the basket too). I’m almost finished the first one now “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I’ll post more about later but for now let me say he writes very well, and with a nice sense of humour. He considers what Buddhist and Greek thinkers have said about happiness and sets them against modern, scientific insights from neurology, evolutionary biology and psychology. He’s keen on positive psychology and that’s another point of agreement for me. I can’t remember right now how I stumbled upon positive psychology but when I was teaching in Japan a few years back one of the doctors there asked me if I’d heard of “Solution Focussed Approach”. I hadn’t, but when I read the textbooks they immediately made sense. See, one of my bugbears about health care is that it isn’t focussed on health at all – it’s focussed on disease, so to read about a therapeutic approach which explicitly focussed on how an individual might become well again was very appealing. It wasn’t long after that when I came across the writings of Martin Seligman. I was VERY impressed. So, reading Jonathon Haidt’s summary of Martin Seligman’s “Happiness Formula”, and his linking of the old idea of virtues to the new ideas of positive psychology sent me off again to the Authentic Happiness site where there are loads of interesting questionnaires which will help you understand what your own greatest strengths are. Go check it out if you haven’t done so already. I really recommend it!
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Heroes Not Zombies 
Here in the US of A we’ve been persuin’ happiness for a coupla centuries now, and that critter seems to have got the better of us. We caught site of it in the 1960’s but it darn well disappeared. Well, that’s what me and the rest of boys here on the ranch thought.
Now lemme tell ya about one of the fella’s here. Now then, what’s his name, er, Slim, Sam, Nope. Dirk, Dan. That’s it. Daniel Gilbert wrote that book Stumbling on Happiness”. It sure is good.
The thing I remember is that happiness is a kind of by product of something else. You just sorta trip over it. But if ya go a lookin’ fer it, why disappears as fast as the paycheck at Molly’s place at the end of the month.
Come to think of it, this stumbling idea seems show up a flaw in our constitution. If happiness as elusive as a steer covered in lard, then we shoulda been in pursuit of somethin’ else all along. Just maybe we should be in pursuit of money?
Correction:If happiness is as elusive as a steer covered in lard…
hmm…not many steers here in Scotland…..and lard?? OK, I get the idea…..that’s a familiar sight in the US? Steers in lard?! Thank you for that image Christopher!
You’re absolutely right though – if you go pursuing happiness it’ll escape you. Health’s a bit like that too strangely. It can’t be aimed at or captured either – I think because it’s not an “it”! There’s something about living the way you want to live – slowly maybe? 🙂 and then when you do that you find that happiness, health, love and all those slippery things, seem to just “emerge”!
I’m looking forward to reading the Stumbling book next.
Ah, the pursuit of money…..have you come across Steve Pavlina’s Million Dollar Intention Experiment?
http://www.stevepavlina.com/million-dollar-experiment.htm
What do you think of that, Christopher?
Thanks for you comment by the way. It got me laughing at the very start of my day. And what better way to start the day than by laughing? (slowly!)
Bob,
I’m glad my post made you laugh. However, I’ll take my cowboy hat off now.
Your post made me pick up the book again. The main point isn’t so much the elusiveness as I had at first remembered. It is that we are very bad about predicting how we will feel in the future. This line of thinking is well worth slowly ruminating about.
I want to try to understand more about nothingness and Nishida Kitaro and the Kyoto School without too much self-inflicted intellectual flagellation. My local library does not have any of Nishida’s major works, or any come to that. But I did find an essay on his work by in a book edited by Frederick Franck, The Buddha Eye: an anthology of the Kyoto School. I liked it so much I just ordered it from a bunch of tall women who sell books.
I’ve been thinking about the artistic method as process for some time. The essay by Takeuchi Yoshinori gets excitingly close when bringing clarity to Nishida’s notion of Action-Intuition. This process turns our Western educational model, or business-planning model, on its head. Instead of coming up with a goal and trying to beat a path to it, each action is slowed down (I just love that) and then it is considered. What emerges gives insight into the next action needed.
Takeuchi’s example is the sculptor who attacks the stone with his chisel. He looks at what he has done and then, and only then, can he see what to do next. Each action reveals a new vantage point. This process is so different to barreling down a path to some future imagined event. The main problem with the Western model is that it assumes a static future.
I look forward to reading more of your blog, but now it’s bed time. As my grandfather used to say, I am away to the woods.
Oh my goodness Christopher! Nishida! So what happens now? I go off and google Nishida and it is SO interesting! Cripes! You’ve opened up a whole new area for me to explore.
Thank you.
Oh, and by the way, love your reference to the tall women who sell books!
[…] Weight of Things’ by Jean Kazez (ISBN 978-1-4051-6078-0). I bought this after reading an excellent article written by her, where she reviewed and compared three books on happiness. I was impressed with […]
The Happiness Formula, you say? http://www.FoolQuest.com
[…] know about you, but that analysis doesn’t work for me. Happiness, as Jean Kazez explains in her review of three interesting books about the subject, has not only been studied by a wide range of thinkers over the years, but there […]
[…] as we can see. It also reminds me of Seligman’s work on positive psychology, and some of the happiness research. It does seem that we’ve paid most attention to what is negative or problematic and maybe we […]