I understand that happiness is a state of being technically able to be attained by any means. But I am not interested in attaining happiness, I wish to sustain it.
The 'pursuit of happiness' as an adventure in tracking and capturing happiness is seemingly no longer possible as there are blazed trails in which we are told will lead to happiness. We all follow these trails, consciously or not, only to find they are dead ends. Therefore, happiness is no longer achievable through the adventure of pursuit but, instead you must battle, battle hegemonic ideology, battle corruption, battle nonsensical logic.
A forty hour work week is the western standard for a full time employment when this is held up against the one hundred and sixty eight hour week it may not seem too intrusive however if we also subtract the seven hour a night sleep that leaves you with a mere eighty hours to pursue happiness. Remember this does not include the commute to and from work or any other misused time. There is something fundamentally wrong when we devote considerably less then half, in actuality a mere fraction of our time on this earth towards the agreed upon ultimate goal of life; happiness. The obvious argument would be that I have made the assumption that work and other uses of time to be in some way counter to happiness. I would refer to the subjectivity of happiness and how eating shit I suppose could lead to happiness for some but I find it hard to believe that the majority of the western culture is not only content but happy with being enslaved and stripped of their time, essentially eating shit. I will now take a moment to tip my hat to Bertrand Russel for his work In Praise of Idleness. Western culture in its entirety has condemned idleness and praised hard work, from the church to the state, idleness has been accompanied by Satan and mischief not happiness which is why the battle ahead is an uphill one, but one worth fighting.
In the below conversation we discuss the relationship between working and consuming and the affects that has on happiness.
Frank [1:35 PM]: I have been listening to this book, Walden. By Henry David Thoreau. Same guy that wrote on the duty of civil disobiedience. Pretty awesome so far. Just talking about how we are slaves to things. How we toil away so hard for little return. Peter [1:38 PM]: ya i think that can be boiled down to our need to belong we throw away logic just to have an ipod when there are other things better Frank [1:42 PM]: very good point interesting take I agree Frank [1:44 PM]: Actually he starts to get into that a bit. About clothing how close it is to us as creatures although not always necessary. But how we throw stuff away rather than patch it. How the more worn clothing is the more part of us it becomes. It is pretty deep, I have to listen to it again to pull out the implications. But you added a new angle I like. Peter [1:47 PM]: it is very interesting our obsession with new Frank [1:48 PM]: it is. Trying to peel back the reason is interesting. Status? Cohesion? Peter [1:51 PM]: ya most definitely not just one underlying motivation but definitely interesting boiling it down to the root causes Frank [1:54 PM]: You are right, it's a multitude of things. What would be really interesting is to take into
consideration how important new things are to those root causes. Maybe even doing an experiment.Peter [1:57 PM]: ya the concept of new would be hard to tackle Because it covers absolutely everything Frank [1:59 PM]: I guess I am more interested in the obsession with accumulating, and often discarding, large numbers of material things. To sell ones very life in order to obtain these things is to me insane. But I guess here I am right. Peter [2:00 PM]: ya it makes no sense to work for so long and so hard to constantly refresh everything its like companies grow and need new things fine but im sure a buttload of them are refreshing for the sake of it we refresh for the sake of it in many aspects of our lives which really keeps us stagnant Frank [2:01 PM]: well put. It is a facade of fresh Peter [2:01 PM]: ya its weird i caught myself buying a book from chapters being like did i just spend 20 bucks on this when i know its 1 dollar used in some awesome mom and pop book store the value of fresh is the majority of the value we pay for That's why if you stay one step behind technology you dont pay a 1000 for a ps3 when it launches but instead 200 bucks now Frank [2:03 PM]: and really, what did you miss? Its funny how conditioned we are to avoid stuff thats used. Like it is dirty in some unholy harmful way. Peter [2:05 PM]: ahahah ya Frank [2:16 PM]: But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. Peter [2:17 PM]: ya once they catch that carrot thats always been infront of there face they realize it was just a carrot or worse never even catch the carrot and just realize they chased nothing Frank [2:22 PM]: It is disturbing. But like most cults, knowing its a cult is not always enough to resist. I am going to throw you another quote from the book: Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.
Working and consuming seem to be activities we spend a great deal of time doing. Evidently, the two are interrelated. If you are buying all the latest gadgets and have an obsession with the new and novel, you quickly require better paying work in order to fuel this process. I suppose the big question here is why? Why do we engage in this process? Why do we believe it is the only way to live and more importantly to be happy?I think if any one of us took a couple minutes to meditate deeply on our day to day actions, we will find a great deal of what we do is automatic and in actuality detrimental to our true happiness. Too often, as the cliché goes, we are our own worst enemy.
As aforementioned sometimes knowing you are in a cult is not always enough to get out. If being aware is not enough then what is the next step in bettering yourself and moving towards sustaining happiness? In my relatively short lived journey I am beginning to understand it's about breaking habits that I have reinforced with the help of external forces. These habits include the obsession with new and the demonizing of old or used. If I am to break free from this stagnant constant refresh of new and move towards something better, habits will need to be broken. This task is not a flip of the switch. Action against our norm, not to mention societies', is not an easy task. Which is why I am taking small steps in the right direction. I challenge any and all to refrain from buying something new and instead see the value in something old. Specifically, borrow the next book you read. Reach out to a friend for a recommendation and note the value in this human interaction opposed to a store clerk exchanging currency. Reduce your material consumption. Start taking the wall of detrimental habits down brick by brick.
