The War Against Happiness
Be afraid. Very afraid. There is a great war raging out there against human happiness. It is persistent, it is heavily organised and it is effective!
Modern Christianity
There is perhaps no religion that seems to have inadvertently created more unhappiness that the religion of Christianity. All the various incarnations of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Reformed Protestantism and various denominations and movements have all but been successful at one thing: spreading unhappiness!
The entire idea of original sin is germane to this. According to Western Christianity, human beings are supposed to look at themselves with only a great sense of disgust and contempt.
In Eastern Orthodoxy, this takes a different turn. Humans are not necessarily sinful but have “fallen” from glory. While this may appear less “self-defacing” than original sin; it should not be mistaken for an antidote to human unhappiness. But it is still an improvement.
Modern Philosophy
There is perhaps nothing more destructive to human happiness than philosophy. Because many western philosophers over-leverage, in a sense, our ‘rational’ faculties (in place of our sensing ones), they essentially numb our nature to fully experience anything, including happiness.
Christianity at least provides ‘a channel’ through conversion, the Eucharist, baptism or church attendance. But Philosophy denies and suppresses any occurrence of ‘happy’ experiences.
Modern Education and Atheism
Modern education is a great ‘training ground’ for how to leave an unhappy life. Children are to taught to ‘sit still’, to ‘not laugh!’ (in class), even ‘not to make jokes’.
In the place of a life of happiness, children are taught ‘reason’, ‘facts’, ‘science’, ‘history’, ‘ethics’, and ‘hard work’ (which is the very essence of unhappiness!).
As for (modern) atheism, there is a tendency for atheists to think of people as ‘advanced’ chimps or ‘complex’ life forms. Which may be true, but also a deadly attack on the ability of humans to be happy! Chimps are chimps, they do ‘chimpery’ and that’s probably ‘what makes them happy’, the thinking goes… What this results in is a reductionist approach that ends up looking at sex, porn/nudity, food/cuisine, ‘traveling’, and ‘being at the top of the food chain’ as a way to understand happiness.
This ‘atheistic’ onslaught on happiness, is clearly the same thing as the modern education onslaught on happiness: ‘success’ determines happiness, but success is determined via the evolutionary process of ‘survival of the fittest’.
It is no wonder that people ‘still wonder’ if money makes people happy. Even if it might, the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other!
Modern Psychology
Since Freud, and with a bit of help from (western) theology, modern psychology seems obsessed with making people feel bad about their past, their disposition, or their upbringing.
Why?
Is it not a psychologist job to inspire happiness and the resulting action?
Is it not the point of psychology to make people feel happier? How else would one define a patient feeling better without the patient also feeling happier?
Why Happiness Matters
Happiness matters because it is main instrument for good or productive action.
Happiness matters because there is no morality without happiness. When humans are not happy they lose a sense of empathy when another human is not happy. Even worse, they become jealous and ‘murderous’ when another human is happy!
Happiness matters because it inspires human achievement and creativity. It fuels the best parts about ‘being human’.
Stay Close!
Stay close to yourself and your own sources of happiness.
The greatest mistake religion, philosophy, psychology, education and atheism have made is to ‘tell us’ that we need to, in a sense, run from ourselves!
Staying close, is ironically the very key to happiness. The problem is, because many prophets, priests, psychologists, authors, and educators have not themselves done this, they write, speak and advice everyone else to ‘look out’ for sources of identity and happiness.
It is good to ‘look out’ (not a bad thing at all!) but it is happiness that teaches ‘looking out’ with clear eyes. To ‘look out’ with an unhappy heart is not even ‘looking’, it is searching. One may very well ‘find things’ while they are searching, but will not find or understand their true value. Only happy people understand the value of things, especially the value of life itself.
Stay Happy
An unhappy life is a destructive life.
An unhappy life is an immoral life.
An unhappy life, is an EVIL life!
Stay happy!!! For your sake, and for the sake of our great green planet!
