Good and Happy aren't Boring
Jan. 28th, 2009 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwI am tired of evil.
More precisely, I am tired of analyses of evil: how did it happen? why did it happen? what is its character?
And I am tired of analyses of sadness: what caused it? when will it end? how can I function despite it?
It's not that I think these questions are, per se, unworthy. Rather, I think we have a vast cultural failure to value questions about goodness and happiness. There was a rash of books about happiness a while back (if by rash, you mean 10 or so at most), but they float like foam on a sea of books about evil. True Crime. Histories of unspeakable atrocity, volumes 1-999999999. (I bought Jennifer Michael Hecht's The Happiness Myth, and love it, but it's kind of a lonely book, isn't it?)
Our culture has a narrative convention that happiness is boring. Doing good is uninteresting.
I think this comes from an unexamined faith that doing good and being happy are easy, natural states for humans - that, bar the intrusion of Incitement to Evil or Sad Doomful Influence, we all just float along being happy and doing nice stuff. That happiness is easy.
Pfah. Goodness and Happiness are interesting, difficult problems.
First, there is the difficult question of defining what it is to be good or happy. Are you taking on the definitions given you by parents? By a church? Are your definitions in line with those of the society around you? What about with those of your closest friends and lovers?
Second, there is the equally vexing question of collaboration. Most humans are not happy in a vacuum (it's hard to breathe there, for one, but I do mean a social vacuum, so bear with me and stop the physics digressions). Do you get to choose the people you spend your life with? Are their definitions of goodness and happiness compatible with yours? Are you willing to accept a definition of goodness or happiness that seems illogical to you, or unfulfilling, in order to preserve your relationships with those who have different definitions than your preferred definition?
Third, if you are of a scientific bent, there are biochemical questions to be addressed. Does your neurochemistry dispose you towards depression? Do you battle this with drugs? Exercise? If your neurochemical depression is mild enough to allow unaltered functioning, do you redefine happiness to include the general malaise of constant low grade depression? Do you believe you have a right to be happy if you are born with neurochemistry that predisposes you to unhappiness - especially if you were also born into a religion or family that had strong opinions on this question? What about agression? How do natural or voluntary variances in hormone level affect your behavior in social situations? Did you receive plenty of warm and loving (but not traumatizing and sexual) touch as a child? Do you process facial expressions easily and understand tone of voice?
Fourth, if you are of a religious bent that denies scientific conceptions of the body and the mind, there are equally serious religious questions to be adressed. Are you being attacked by a demonic being or agency? Are you being tested by [G/g]od[s/esses]? Is suffering morally necessary? Is it possible for humans to be good or happy in your cosmology? If not, are you willing to abandon that cosmology, or do you come to terms with some kind of compromise state?
Fifth, what scope does your financial and physical situation even allow for these questions? Many people just work all day and then fall into exhausted sleep, only to wake up after too little rest and repeat the process till some key body part gives out. Others struggle daily with debilitating physical conditions or actively malevolent political regimes. If you're tired and hungry and scared all the time, how does that affect your conceptions of goodness or happiness?
Sixth, your sense of co-identity with others has a huge effect. To what extent do you define goodness and happiness in individual, group, or community terms? Is it possible for you to be happy while members of your group/community are sad? Is an action that makes your individual world better but damages others of your group/community a good action?
And, really, this is just a quick scoop off the top. Utopias, real utopias, shouldn't be boring. They're only boring if they're lying dystopias - strange creations by people who figured that whatever made them happy and whatever they thought was good would be happy and good for everyone else too for all of time. Nonsense. Shallow poppycock. Trying to be good and happy in a diverse society of individuals who have varied experiences and varied commitments to others is one of the most fascinating challenges in existence.
Literature needs to stop treating it like something nonproblematic that happens after the story ends.
[edited for tragic homonym typo]
More precisely, I am tired of analyses of evil: how did it happen? why did it happen? what is its character?
And I am tired of analyses of sadness: what caused it? when will it end? how can I function despite it?
It's not that I think these questions are, per se, unworthy. Rather, I think we have a vast cultural failure to value questions about goodness and happiness. There was a rash of books about happiness a while back (if by rash, you mean 10 or so at most), but they float like foam on a sea of books about evil. True Crime. Histories of unspeakable atrocity, volumes 1-999999999. (I bought Jennifer Michael Hecht's The Happiness Myth, and love it, but it's kind of a lonely book, isn't it?)
Our culture has a narrative convention that happiness is boring. Doing good is uninteresting.
I think this comes from an unexamined faith that doing good and being happy are easy, natural states for humans - that, bar the intrusion of Incitement to Evil or Sad Doomful Influence, we all just float along being happy and doing nice stuff. That happiness is easy.
Pfah. Goodness and Happiness are interesting, difficult problems.
First, there is the difficult question of defining what it is to be good or happy. Are you taking on the definitions given you by parents? By a church? Are your definitions in line with those of the society around you? What about with those of your closest friends and lovers?
Second, there is the equally vexing question of collaboration. Most humans are not happy in a vacuum (it's hard to breathe there, for one, but I do mean a social vacuum, so bear with me and stop the physics digressions). Do you get to choose the people you spend your life with? Are their definitions of goodness and happiness compatible with yours? Are you willing to accept a definition of goodness or happiness that seems illogical to you, or unfulfilling, in order to preserve your relationships with those who have different definitions than your preferred definition?
Third, if you are of a scientific bent, there are biochemical questions to be addressed. Does your neurochemistry dispose you towards depression? Do you battle this with drugs? Exercise? If your neurochemical depression is mild enough to allow unaltered functioning, do you redefine happiness to include the general malaise of constant low grade depression? Do you believe you have a right to be happy if you are born with neurochemistry that predisposes you to unhappiness - especially if you were also born into a religion or family that had strong opinions on this question? What about agression? How do natural or voluntary variances in hormone level affect your behavior in social situations? Did you receive plenty of warm and loving (but not traumatizing and sexual) touch as a child? Do you process facial expressions easily and understand tone of voice?
Fourth, if you are of a religious bent that denies scientific conceptions of the body and the mind, there are equally serious religious questions to be adressed. Are you being attacked by a demonic being or agency? Are you being tested by [G/g]od[s/esses]? Is suffering morally necessary? Is it possible for humans to be good or happy in your cosmology? If not, are you willing to abandon that cosmology, or do you come to terms with some kind of compromise state?
Fifth, what scope does your financial and physical situation even allow for these questions? Many people just work all day and then fall into exhausted sleep, only to wake up after too little rest and repeat the process till some key body part gives out. Others struggle daily with debilitating physical conditions or actively malevolent political regimes. If you're tired and hungry and scared all the time, how does that affect your conceptions of goodness or happiness?
Sixth, your sense of co-identity with others has a huge effect. To what extent do you define goodness and happiness in individual, group, or community terms? Is it possible for you to be happy while members of your group/community are sad? Is an action that makes your individual world better but damages others of your group/community a good action?
And, really, this is just a quick scoop off the top. Utopias, real utopias, shouldn't be boring. They're only boring if they're lying dystopias - strange creations by people who figured that whatever made them happy and whatever they thought was good would be happy and good for everyone else too for all of time. Nonsense. Shallow poppycock. Trying to be good and happy in a diverse society of individuals who have varied experiences and varied commitments to others is one of the most fascinating challenges in existence.
Literature needs to stop treating it like something nonproblematic that happens after the story ends.
[edited for tragic homonym typo]
