Happiness is not the reward for virtue, but is virtue itself.
— Baruch Spinoza
Here comes another unanswerable question: What makes us happy? And, as with many other such questions, the truth is simple. What makes it seem complicated is all the creative ways we invent to wiggle ourselves out of it, out of having to face that truth.
This is also why we tend to play down the importance of happiness, to see it as a luxury we can do without. We learn to give up on it or, rather, on thinking about it, coming up instead with all kinds of rationales of why it would be unachievable — like, it is not an end goal, it’s the very pursuit of it that makes us happy, etc.1 Which is a common pattern, by the way — staying forever busy to distract ourselves at least until we’re too old to care either way.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life. — Socrates
This persistent unhappiness has been with us for so long, many come to regard it as a part of human nature — the price we pay for intelligence,2 for the very ability to contemplate our finite existence.
And this could be true, at least to some extent — but what if there is another side to the story? In fact, what if it is the other way around — what if we dread not the end itself, but ending it too soon, before we had the chance to fulfill our lives? Before we found happiness?
Let’s cut to the chase maybe. There might be something fundamentally wrong about the way we live our lives. But it wasn’t always like that — and it does not need to stay this way.
In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one.
This struck them as strange. Colonial society was richer and more advanced. And yet people were voting with their feet the other way.
The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”
During the wars with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and held within Indian tribes. After a while, they had plenty of chances to escape and return, and yet they did not. In fact, when they were “rescued,” they fled and hid from their rescuers.
Sometimes the Indians tried to forcibly return the colonials in a prisoner swap, and still the colonials refused to go. In one case, the Shawanese Indians were compelled to tie up some European women in order to ship them back. After they were returned, the women escaped the colonial towns and ran back to the Indians.
Even as late as 1782, the pattern was still going strong. Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote, “Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European.”
I first read about this history several months ago in Sebastian Junger’s excellent book “Tribe.” It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.
— David Brooks, The Great Affluence Fallacy
Ubuntu is a Zulu word — and like the Ancient Greek logos, it does not have an equivalent in the modern languages.3 It’s literal translation — “I am as we are” — is a bit cryptic so, instead, it comes with a little story to illustrate its meaning — a story about a Western anthropologist who came to study an indigenous African tribe.
From day one he would find himself surrounded by children. When it was the time for him to leave, he decided to give them a treat — and make it into a game. He went to a nearby town, bought some sweets, and placed them in a basket under a solitary tree. He then gathered children some distance away and explained the rules: on his mark, the children are to run towards the tree as fast as they can. Whoever is the first to the basket is the winner and will have it to him- or herself.
He then asked the children to make a line, and… ready, set, go! The children took each other’s hands and ran together. They all arrived at the same time, divided up the candy, sat down and began to happily munch away.
When the puzzled archeologist caught up with the children, he asked them to explain what had just happened? When did they decide on running together and why? For some time the children could not understand his confusion — like, what part of it this grown-up didn’t get? Eventually, one of the younger girls explained — “Because ubuntu. How can one of us be happy when others are sad?”
This, perhaps, is one of the reasons we give up on happiness, the reason why it is seemingly impossible to achieve. We cannot be happy when others are sad — and while this is obviously true for one’s family, or one’s tribe, in our interconnected world this truth expands to cover humanity as a whole. The suffering that we must witness almost every day makes it impossible for anyone to be truly happy… unless, perhaps, they are doing something about it?
Each of us is personally responsible, before everyone else, for everyone and everything. — Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”
Living in 19th century, Dostoevsky never heard about the word itself, but ubuntu appears to be the underlying message of his novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Here is another quote from it, describing the central problem with the way we live our lives:
Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age -- it has not fully developed, it has not reached its peak yet.
Every one strives to keep his individuality, to attain the fullness of life for himself ... He heaps up riches and thinks, “How strong I am now and how secure,” and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self‐destructive helplessness. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the kindness of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself.
Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in the brotherhood of all, rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.
Isn’t it incredible how people from such different backgrounds keep coming to the same conclusion? Recently, a friend of mine remarked that, perhaps, the problem is that human life is too short. We don’t live long enough — otherwise, we all would discover — perhaps after trying every other get-rich-quick scheme, so to speak — the same truth about ourselves and our nature… about what makes us happy.
Note how Dostoevsky links individualism with insecurity. This is what thousands of years of “civilization”, of its multi-generational trauma did to us — it trained us to focus on survival at the cost of happiness. And, indeed, when our survival is at stake, it’s every man for himself — we run for the exits pushing everything and everyone out of our way. This panic response, essentially — with its laser-focus on the goal, paired with disregard for the well-being of others — is, apparently, the common denominator behind the so-called dark triad of the malevolent personality traits — machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
When it comes to happiness, however, the rules are literally the opposite — it’s all for one and one for all. Call it an enlightened self-interest if you will, but this is how this game is played. We will either all make it there, or none of us will.
This, by the way, is where I see the problem with Buddhism and many modern self-help approaches — specifically, their inward focus. Sure enough they offer many useful tools and, make no mistake — we must take care of ourselves first, before, that is, we turn into wreaks and in need of a rescue ourselves. That’s why Spinoza’s quote in the epigraph: Happiness is a virtue because, like misery, it cannot be given — it can only be shared. Seeing the world for what it is could be a shocker for sure. Eventually, however, it should not prevent us from learning, once again, to see and marvel at all the beauty in it.
Either way, self-care could only be a means to an end. One cannot be happy in isolation, and even focusing one’s efforts just on their family, or their community — or even their country — cannot be the end goal. Ultimately, no one can be truly happy as “the poor little me” in Alan Watts’ words. We cannot shy away from embracing the greatness of our true nature. From becoming what every human being was meant to be — in God’s image, that is. Personally responsible, before everyone else, for everyone and everything. Caring for everyone, “good”, “bad”, or “ugly”. Understanding that their happiness must come before our own.
And how exactly are we supposed to do that, you might be wondering? How could we learn to genuinely care for everyone, to love our enemies even? Well, we do it by learning to understand — everything (that’s the “in God’s image” part), but also, yes, our “enemies”.4 By learning to piece together the puzzle of them, we will finally see the whole person — beyond the superficial appearances, beyond the trauma, beyond all the wrong lessons and all the unhealthy coping skills that they had to learn.5 Inside that shell we will see a human being, just like ourselves. Someone who wants to be happy. Someone who wants to belong. Someone who wants to love — and to be loved.
Stay tuned as we continue to piece together this puzzle — the holistic worldview, the understanding of life, the Universe, and everything… for real!
Edward: Whoever said money can't buy happiness… Fuck you!
Hector: This is incredible. This is incredible. Just incredible, the whole thing. The meal, my room. Edward, I'm just... I'm curious, okay? Far be it from me, and forgive me for asking. And I don't mean to pry.
Edward: Time is money. Spit it out.
Hector: Right. Are you happy?
Edward: When you work as much as I do, you don't have time to ask yourself that question. That's why I'm thinking of quitting.
Hector: What, now?
Edward: God, no. In another $20 million. Mind you, I've been saying that for the last $100 million… Oh, you bust a gut, you earn enough money, you retire, you do something you like… Or nothing at all.
Hector: And then you're happy?
Edward: Yeah… Or addicted. Or divorced or dead… Oh, what the hell.
[takes a shot of tequila, cringes]
You pick a goal, you work towards it. Makes you feel better. Just keep moving, that's my motto. Maybe there's only one way to retire and be happy.
Hector: And what's that?
Edward: Don't retire.
It's time for some real China. Come on.
From Hector and the Search For Happiness, the movie.
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know,” an unnamed character casually remarks in Ernest Hemingway's novel.
It does appear to have its equivalent in other indigenous languages — like Javaneese guyub, for example.
When Jesus told us to love our enemies, he was, in a way, repeating a line that Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, wrote five hundred years before Christ in his book, The Art of War. Of course, Sun Tzu spelled it as know your enemy — but it’s the same because we cannot truly understand anyone without learning, on the way, to feel — at the very least — compassion for them. And for ourselves.
One can also recall a peculiar tendency to substitute “to love” with “to know” in some verses of the Old Testament… for the same reason, I suppose?
This process is necessarily reciprocal — we cannot understand others without understanding ourselves, and we can only understand ourselves through understanding of others.