Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine

There is another subtle but hugely important point here. According to Mill, happiness should not be our goal per se, and to chase it directly is a mistake. Instead, we should see it as a by-product, something achieved indirectly through the process of individual liberation from the levelling demands of society. Rather than directly seeking tranquil

As I am not an adherent to any particular philosophy but have come, through reading and experience, to find the thoughts of certain schools and thinkers very helpful, I will not be offering a complete one-stop package here. I don’t think it’s ultimately helpful to adopt single labels as some kind of identity.

Marx’s thought was in many ways rooted in that of one Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel, the German late-Enlightenment philosopher with a teleological view of history, whom Schopenhauer hated and lost his students to. To Hegel, the chapters of humanity’s story are connected by violence and revolution. These charges are brought about by visionary revol

This emotional reappraisal is central to improving our happiness. If we are to live more felicitous lives, we should not bother greatly with the common approach, namely gathering for ourselves the popular trappings of success. Such an aim is difficult to put into practice and impossible to entirely fulfil. Instead, we should train ourselves – as an

Moving on to the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill, the English Utilitarian, lost faith in the idea of happiness as our ultimate human goal. What should replace it? What could be more valuable than happiness? His preference was for liberty, which might even come at the expense of our felicity. Instead of adhering to the pious, demanding Calvinis

Perhaps death was not quite the annihilation she had thought. Perhaps it was not so essential that her person or even memories of her person survived. Perhaps the important thing was that her ripples persist, ripples of some act or idea that would help others attain joy and virtue in life, ripples that would fill her with pride and act to counter t

The pictures or voice might refer to the past (if we’re feeling bad about something that has happened, even a split second ago), or the future (if we’re frightened of something that might happen, like a conversation or meeting we’re dreading). These intermediary thoughts step in and interpret external events as a good reason to feel bad, mad or sca

The first thought that might occur to you – as it always does to me – is something along the lines of, ‘Okay, it’s not death per se that bothers me, it’s the process of dying. And that certainly can be a very unpleasant experience.’ That’s a sensible response. But if we pause there, does such an objection entirely do away with Epicurus’s point? Aft

To remind us (lest we become too fixated on living in the present), the intended result is a balancing act of the now and the yet-to-come. It is only awareness of the present moment that opens up a truly compelling experience outside of our daydreams and fantasies. Yet on the other hand, the temporally limited future permits us a framework and cont

The point of this is not to blame ourselves. It is to begin to dissolve unwanted frustrations and anxieties in our lives. Once we stop blaming the world for our problems, we can achieve some control.