Happy Anywhere

"I came to realize that the more informed we are, the less happy we become because of our tendency to get caught up in constant comparisons. Working on this principle, it seems that the more limited the access to electronic media, the more time people spend together as friends and family and the higher the happiness quotient seemed to be."
 
"No matter how high you set your goals, you may never actually get there. So, what is my definition of happiness? A good friend once said to me, “Happiness is not measured by the number of days you live but, rather, by the number of days you remember.”"

Thanks to Andrew for the link to Martin Lindstrom's "How to be Happy Anywhere."


Lindstrom reflects on people he has met and observed in several parts of the world from South America, to Africa, to China.  Although he acknowledges that some children in Columbia told him that happiness is a "Western thing," he also noticed that having more did not seem to result in greater happiness.  Indeed he posits that wanting more is the cause of UN-happiness.  However, in my reading, he is not suggesting that happiness is the same as contentment.  

Perhaps it is more a matter of appreciation for the pleasures of the moment.  Would that make happiness a judgment?  Or, perhaps an emotional response to a cognitive evaluation?  If so, then deciding to be happy would be a real possibility.

Ragtime: Tateh--Silhouettes--moving pictures: Josh RItter

The subject title traces out the connection from 201 in which we read Ragtime to this lovely video for Josh Ritter's recording “Love Is Making Its Way Back Home”.  The commentary on the site tells us that 12,000 pieces of paper were used.  One can only imagine how this might look to Tateh who cut out silhouettes and made flipbooks.  Enjoy!

LINK

Large Pleasure; Small Happiness

Studio 360 this morning included a interview with Hunt Slonem who "lives large and approaches his life as its own work of art. He revels in pleasure, in color, in excess of all kinds. As far as he’s concerned, “Shouldn’t that be what life is about?” 


Perhaps he is correct.  We did think about avoidance of pain and the experience of pleasure as related to the pursuit of happiness which might be conditioned upon the absence of pain and the presence of pleasure.  That is if pleasure rather than meaning is the basis of happiness.  Perhaps the excess, the living large, and the concern for pleasure are related.  That was my second thought.

And related to that second thought was our discussion on Friday of Mara Fink's MPR piece about the experiences her grandparents and their siblings had in the internment camps where Japanese Americans were placed by the USA government during WWII.  Her grandmother insisted that it was not so bad.  Her great-uncle recalled playing foot-ball.  While there was at least melancholy in both voices and some anger, these two witnesses also hinted that there might have been some small happinesses even within the confines of the barbed wire and lives restricted by government action and popular hysteria.  This is not to suggest that those small happinesses remove the injustice, but only to wonder if this extreme situation and others like it are a reminder that large and monumental is not a necessary precondition for glimpses of happiness.

I'm reminded of the oft asserted motto: Think globally, act locally.  Can it be modified?  Think globally about universal, big matters such as justice, but also notice and savor the small, fleeting joys that give us a taste of happiness that we long to share.

unique contribution to democracy: discuss . . .

There is a form of pseudo exam question that states something then commands: "Discuss."  This bit from Ansel Adams' essay "The Meaning of the National Parks" seems a good candidate for that treatment.

"James Bryce once said that the concept of the National Parks was America's unique contribution to the democratic idea."  Discuss.

notes toward the discussion

• What is the concept of the National Parks?  
• Is it actualized in the parks we have?
• What does it contribute to the democratic idea?
• Why idea and not to the practice of democracy?
• Is this really unique?  Does any other nation have something similar?  If so, is their derivative?
• Is this a restatement of the 19th century nationalist position that offered up our landscape in competition with European cultural artifacts?

Elks in Ballard (voluntary association)

Elks' Pledge or Plunge on New Years Day

 LINK  Back to a topic from a previous semester: that oh-so-American phenomenon, the voluntary association.  In Seattle the Elks are gaining younger members!  Status up-dates from an alum who lives in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard allude now and then to his presence at the Elks Club.  Now I learn that he is part of a trend.  Why are these people joining?  A clubhouse with a great view helps, but this article suggests that there is also some desire to be part of a group that does something worthwhile for the community.  So, in the context of this semester, we might wonder about the blending of the desire for the personal pleasures associated with the view and the public good (or social capital) being generated by participation in both social events and community projects.

some notes about 202 so far

A bit more than two weeks in, I stop to collect some notes about the pieces and how those might fit together.  

Americans are entitled to purse happiness.  This is stated in our founding documents.

Positive Psychology.  Happiness is to be obtained, among other ways, by cultivating family relationships.  Leisure also promotes happiness, so does encounter with (or in) natural settings.

Economics. 

·        Increased income and leisure allows more options.  What is the better use of these resources?  What promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of Americans?

·        At what point does a vacation become conspicuous consumption or conspicuous leisure?

·        Band wagon, snob (or hipster), or Veblen effect: how do Lebenstein’s ideas about un-use value help us understand family vacations in the mid-20^th century or the development of that national park system or its use today?

·        How does the economic notion of “existence value” help our analysis of the movements to conserve and/or preserve national parks?

Post WWII more Americans had access to the private resources (leisure time, money, automobiles) to pursue happiness by cultivating their family relationships on vacations that exploited public resources (roads, restaurants, camping grounds, and national parks).

This national rush to nature shows a significant shift in attitudes toward nature, esp. wilderness, since the colonial, pioneer area (now more romantic and nationalistic) and was made possible by more than a half-century of citizen activism and government policies intended to at least conserve and perhaps even preserve the wilderness.

Then we were on to our discussion of the NPR story about Christo's proposal for "Over the River," a six mile ribbon over a river in Colorado.   Our conversations did echo these themes.  

Some students were more inclined to the notion that a wilderness river, one we presume runs through land administered by the BLM, should be preserved in its natural state unless there are very, very compelling reasons not.  They were not persuaded either by the promise of minimum ecological impact or the promise of some (perhaps fleeting) economic benefit.  Moreover, there was some skepticism about the objectivity of the BLM's analysis.

Others were more willing to consider that the economic benefits might be worth the ecological and other costs though we did not say much about the inconveniences to residents during the construction period.  But some regarded the economic benefits as too small or too fleeting, particularly since the presumed purpose of the project is not directed primarily to those ends.  These might have been willing to consider a project of longer duration whose purpose was to serve the residents rather than one that appeals to those outside the local community.

No one took the view that wilderness is primarily to be exploited to human ends, to be tamed and made civilized.   Most agreed that if the project went forward they would be interested in seeing it.

novelty or comfort?

From Ira Glass's Act One, of This American Life on Vacations:

"My parents brought their favorite breakfast cereals with them, 10,000 miles to Hawaii.  They like the familiar comforts of home." 

If family vacations and travel are, at least in part, an effort to maximize our happiness, then what does this observation suggest about the allure?  I'm reminded of my college professor who took students to Asia and housed us in Western style hotels.  He told us that if we had culture shock at night, we would not be able to pay attention during the day.  Is this yet another, it depends, one needs to find the proper balance situations?

Are we looking for enough novelty to give us a new perspective mixed with enough of the familiar to allow us to appreciate the novel or challenging?    And that leads me to wonder about something we heard from Prof. Becker about diminishing cost even as we want more.  I need to think about this a little longer.  But it might be that having one's favorite breakfast is necessary in order to meet, or accept, or receive and relish, the novelty or risk of something unfamiliar whether that is simply a new food for lunch or a first try at surfing.  The breakfast provides capital to be spent on the surfing? 

What sort of thing is happiness?

In response to Donna McMillian's very instructive presentation to us on the topic of positive psychology or subjective well-being.  I was particularly struck by the persistence of this issue: we're not entirely sure what happiness is (though it might be a mood or some combination of emotion and cognition), nonetheless there seem to be measurable markers of its presence in our bodies and behaviors that are not only characteristic of those who are happy but also productive of that mood, emotion, or state of being.  Given these observations I begin to wonder if happiness isn't more an attitude or perspective than it is the result (or side-effect) of something else.  Is it the case that we are not so much made happy by what we have or by what we are doing as that we experience those possessions or activities from a happy perspective?  Of course some circumstances may promote or inhibit such a perspective, but can they really produce it?

Can Economists Help Us Understand Happiness?

After Tony Becker's visit to our class yesterday Enich seems unconvinced and Petra is also still skeptical.

Enich's Amcon Thoughts: I'll have to admit, going into lecture yesterday I was skeptical about how economics and happiness could correlate. When we were discussing,...

My response:  What if utility = happiness? That is, what if everything in life is directed toward, at a minimum, avoiding pain and in the best case, securing the opposite which is pleasure understood as the basis of happiness? Then economists might help us to understand the factors that contribute to this goal, not only by their analysis of actual, tangible goods (e.g. cars, clothing, and cake) but also by the application of their analysis to intangible goods (e.g. justice, love, security, and the like). In some instances these intangible goods require financial transactions, but even when that is not so, there are costs of some sort which might be time or willingness to forfeit a certain amount of status.


Disclaimer:  This chart was NOT part of our discussion or of Becker's comments.  But it does represent an effort to consider the relationship between something financial and happiness on a macro-scale.

what do we enjoy?

From Rugh's Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations

"The tensions between preservation, profit, and polarity meant that family vacationers experienced the national wilderness with all its hazards, including boiling thermal features, steep canyons, swift-moving rivers, and hungry bears."  p. 138

Writing about the mid-20th century she describes something that may no longer be the case.  Certainly concerns about safety and liability have combined to reconstruct some aspects of the wilderness and make it less hazardous.  Each time I have traveled with students to other parts of the world we notice that natural and historic sites have more hazards, or perhaps better fewer safety features, than we are accustom to and expect in the USA. 

What does this tell us?  Are Americans more concerned about safety than other people?  Is danger and risk less important to our sense of enjoyment and fun?  Do we only enjoy the wilderness when it has been domesticated?  Obviously there are many, many Americans who engage in risky, dangerous adventures in the wilderness; what I'm asking about here is the experience and expectation of the masses who drive into national parks, eat in the restaurants run by concessionaires, and stay in the lodging provided there.  How are their expectations best described and what more general observations can be based on them?

happiness is . . .

Having advised students to return to commonplace book mode, I will try to do so my self and use this blog in part to record quotations and their sources.  I'm sorry to start this with a quotation missing its source.  I scrawled the partial sentence down but neglected to included where it is from. 

Happiness is " . . . not ephemeral euphoria, but a deep and abiding sense that, despite the day's woes, all is, or will be, well.  Even when the surface waters churn, the deep currents run sure."

Why read?

This from NPR's books news feed:

  "You should never read just for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool!” 

~ John Waters in Role Models

Yes!  Good advise that I endorse and try to follow, at least I try to follow the positive advise.  I admit that I also read for enjoyment, so perhaps the key word is JUST.  Don't read only for that reason.  Pick books that offer enjoyment AND make you smarter or less judgmental or more wise about what is true.

Group Project wisdom

from Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers by Mark Klett, Rebecca Solnit, Byron Wolfe (Trinity University Press, 2005)

In the introduction Solnit quotes an e-mail from Klett: "... discussion about the nature of collaboration while driving through the park.  It had to do with accepting uncertainty, with letting the process guide discovery.  This is pretty standard stuff.  But from an interpersonal perspective it was important because we had to establish the premise that we could accept personal vulnerabilities--the right to be wrong, to have ideas that wouldn't work or weren't good, to speculate without the fear of feeling foolish.  We had to agree to work in an environment of mutual support, of mutual success, and to share the responsibility for failure." 

Klett's comments offer wisdom about working with others toward many sorts of goals, in many types of projects.  I think that he was referring directly to the work the three of them undertook, but his comments might also be extended to include the photographers whose work they were remaking as they searched out the locations and timing to re-photograph and then made composite images such as the one below.

Here is one visual outcome of the collaboration, a project of re-photographing in Yosemite.  More can be seen in the book and at this site.

Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe, 2002. Four views from “Panorama Rock,” an obscure outcrop off the Panorama Cliff Trail: two rephotographs, a speculation on Muybridge’s missing plate No. 39, and another photograph added to the left.  

happy face, sad face

Here is one tool researchers use in their effort to identify subjects degree of happiness.    Which face comes closest to expressing your current state?  Yes, it is self-reporting.  And there is no doubt in my mind that some of us are just unlikely ever to self-report the extremes.  However, based on Donna McMillian's account of her own research in our class today, I wonder if I say this because I'm more of an introvert than an extravert.

More on this available at this web-site from the Stanford School of Business 

20th century dreamin'

American Radio Works provides an instructive look at the American Dream of a Better Life in the 20th century.  While the program does not directly address the matter of happiness, it is an exploration of the ways in which large social (and economic) trends influence individuals' expectations and the likelihood of their achieving those expectations.  Of course we are reminded of the role media (including movies and television as well as advertizing) play in encouraging viewers (and listeners) to want various consumer goods from phonograph records to cars to houses.  Importantly the program also helps us to recognize that one of the major developments of the 20th century was the increasing proportion of Americans who had a reasonable chance of fulfilling their expectations through self-initiative, with the help of government policies including GI Bill funding for education and mortgages, or by charging it to be paid for latter. 

With regard to material possessions as part of the dream four words leap out at me: practical, luxury, comfort, and security.  The program allows us to follow the shift in popular expectations from one standard to another as well as the interweaving of these.  The luxurious ideals of the 1920s gave way to desire for practical things things during the Depression of the next decade. The program also contrasts Jimmy Carter's efforts to promote restraint with Reagan's example of a glamorous life in the White House.  This leads me to wonder about a study of the public face of the presidential household as a window on American expectations

Our large portrayals of these big topics need to attentive to these sorts of changes and to the best explanations we can give for them.

without the word but . . .

Not only is she wise, she made this "cool" wreath.

. . . nonetheless reflecting on issues touching on happiness as a present or anticipatory state: THIS from Monte, now in Ohio rather than Hong Kong.  I recommend her wise reflections that help us receive the joys of the day without plunging into a presentist fallacy in which all that matters is the moment.

happiness: public sightings, # 1-3

I should have used the camera in my phone to capture these three sightings of happiness, the word, in my travel to and from Chicago yesterday.  Maybe I'll start doing that in the days to come.  For now, a list.

1) Some sort of sign at Caribou Coffee at the top of the G terminal.  It seemed to link happiness to coffee.  If I'm honest I had a fleeting experience of happiness when I realized that I did have time to get a latte and make it to my 6:50 a.m. flight.  Thanks to light traffic and the "expert traveler" line at security I made it from my driveway to my seat on the plane, latte in hand, in 65 minutes!

2) The woman next to me on the plane was reading the Harvard Business Review.  The cover story was titled "The Value of Happiness."  She was a pleasant women who was a bit nervous that I might spill my coffee on her.  That did not happen and we were both happy that it did not.

3) In the gate, waiting for my flight home I noticed a woman with a huge tote bag, printed with lots of words in a sort of patchwork arrangement.  Among them, "The Pursuit of Happiness."

But, if I'd taken a picture of what gave me happiness in the day I think it would not have been the darling shoes I got for a bargain, the pretty good Indian food I had for lunch, the convenience of taking the El from Midway to the Loop.  All those are good things.  So was the work we did at the ACM office.  Nonetheless, my photo of happiness yesterday would be of my friend Ingrid who picked me up in the midst of a snow fall so that we could squeeze in 90 minutes of conversation between the end of my meeting and my flight. 

No one happy in that play: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Last night we saw the Guthrie Theater's production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  It is an admirable production with a fine set, period costumes, excellent acting.  Having come from class discussion of notions of happiness I watched wondering what I might learn about happiness from Williams' portrayal of the evening of "Big Daddy's" 65th birthday, a story of a family in the American south in the 1950s. 

The most obvious thing I noticed: no one was happy in this play.  That is not to say that some characters did not attempt to appear to be happy: Big Mama and Mae might fit this role.  Everyone else in the family displayed their misery nearly without wavering.  Maybe Maggie played a bit at false happiness, but like her sister-in-law, she did it in anticipation of winning the inheritance that promised prosperity.  However, a simple equation of happiness with prosperity is undercut by the obvious fact that the man from whom they hope to win an inheritance, their father-in-law, may be the owner of the property with adequate resources for a European vacation, but he is not happy.  Neither has he been happy in the past.

He is the one who names the odor that prevents happiness: mendacity.  That is: lies, pretense, hypocrisy,  pretending to be what one is not.  Ah, the viewer thinks, here is a new insight.  Happiness depends upon honesty and truth.  That might be the case except that Brink's devotion to "Echo Park" whiskey is in some complex way the result of his either facing the truth about his friendship with Skipper or refusing to face it.  Then Big Mama's illusion that she has been happy in the past is shattered by Big Daddy speaking the truth to her perkiness.  Perhaps Big Daddy's rejection of mendacity it is merely another way of suggesting that the key to being happy is to accept one's circumstances and be content with the blessings of the day.   He has a round of this when, believing the lies he has been told, he thinks that he is not dying and prepares to embrace the pleasures of the day.  But that doesn't quite work either, since this seems less like contentment than frantic pursuit of unrestrained pleasure.  And then the charge of mendacity is repeated with reference to his being told lies about how sick he is.  Certainly Williams was not suggesting that the key to happiness is being willing to die?

I suppose that Williams did not sit down to write a play about happiness in the mid-20th century American south or even about the unhappiness of this family.  Nonetheless, questions about happiness and its absence or its opposite help me hear something more than screaming.

when the answer is the next question

The notion of happiness and its pursuit in American culture is filled with tensions: between personal happiness for me and happiness for the community, between private pleasure and civic virtue, between the satisfaction of achievement and the exhilaration of pursuit, between peaceful contentment and dis-satisfaction that generates progress.  No doubt there are more.  No doubt, as we read in McMahon's chapter these tensions have been noticed and discussed before by the likes of Franklin, Jefferson, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Max Weber.

I agree with Zoe that usually we (Americans today, those of us in the room for this discussion) reject the extremes in these tensions.  We strive for balance that exploits that energy the tension creates rather than collapsing it.

If the answer is that happiness is generated by the proper balance between private pleasure and civic virtue, etc. the next question is this one.  What is the proper balance?  And how is it achieved?  Is there a standard applicable across chronological eras and life stages or must this be re calibrated in new circumstances, such as when I get more money, or less mobility, or am offered more forms of media?  Based on my experience with walking, I assert that balance is not easy to achieve so perhaps the answer is the beginning of the next question about happiness.

a culture in pursuit

"The novelty of America, in other words, lay not in the perennially restless pursuit of happiness, but in the extension of that pursuit to an entire culture on a scale hitherto unknown."  Darrin McMahon

Reading McMahon after Cullen on both the "Dream of Home ownership" and the "Dream of the Coast" provides the proposal above with very specific images of Americans on the move.  I think, of course, of the promise of happiness that drew and draws many immigrants to the USA.  That promise is certainly of happiness built upon a minimum combination of liberty and prosperity whether the prosperity is built upon a Midwestern homestead or public education or a job.  It is also the case that generation after generation of Americans continue to rush toward an open future in the expectation that happiness is to be found in the West, on a gold claim, or by moving into one's own house.  Whatever the goal (happiness or status or possessions), or the means of reaching it, rushing toward is the vivid image of Americans that I take from Cullen and this sentence from McMahon.

Americans are on the move, going fast, even if we're only going around a track in a car.  (See my previous post.)  Is this is our characteristic, national being?  Is the basic sentence to be written about us: see Americans run?  If so, perhaps that is why Weber (quoted on p. 358 in McMahon) wrote: "in the field of [capitalism's] highest development, the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport."

some questions about cars

NPR: one of the things I missed while abroad.  I like hearing some news and some features in the morning so I noticed that my hotel room was quiet.  (The mornings were too cold to open the window and listen to the call to prayer.)  I wondered a bit about the value of bringing along a devise that would allow me to stream news from home and concluded that not hearing NPR contributed to my preparation for the day's activity in Greece or Turkey more than hearing it would.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to get my morning dose again. Today I heard to two stories about cars: one about stock car racing and another about a car museum.  Both provoke me to think once again about the messages Americans' cars give use about our collective values and how those shift over time.

Is stock-car racing a sport?  It was portrayed and referred to in this story as a sport.  In any case it is an activity that celebrates speed and risk.  How characteristic of Americans is this desire to go fast, even around an oval?  How willing are we to risk our lives in pursuit of going around and around as fast as we can?

The other story was more predictable and thus less thought provoking.  It ended by drawing our attention to a Dodge Ram and a Prius and suggesting that our relationship to our cars can go to either extreme.  The story left unexplored the ways in which our values are expressed both practically and symbolically by the cars we chose and how we use them.  In view of our 202 theme, I also wonder how often we are happy in or about our cars.  

Two others stories were about the economic situation in Greece.  Here's a tidbit about cars there.  In January gas in Athens cost over $8.00 a gallon.

Happiness is

the theme of AmCon 202.  Or at least the pursuit of happiness is the theme and anticipating our investigation and exploration of the theme makes me happy!

Where have I been?

I spent the last month, more-or-less, traveling with St. Olaf students in Greece and Turkey.  We were studying "sacred place," which is a great theme for these countries.  We began with the acropolis of Athens and ended being allowed to sit in the gallery during noon prayers at Rustem Pascha mosque in Istanbul and then talk with the imam.  In between: lots of ruins, sunrises, museums, icons, monasteries, temples, cats and dogs and goats and even a caged peacock at a truck stop.

We witnessed epiphany and the blessing of the water at the main harbor of Athens.  When the bells of the church rang, a flock of birds rose into the air.  A military guard and brass band were part of the procession from the church to the water.  As the guards made way for a diplomatic party to get through the gates for a good view of the cross being thrown into and retrieved from the sea, one woman was heard to ask: "Aren't I a Christian?  Why can't I go in."  Along the street union protesters making their views on the economy known.  (A strike by museum employees caused us to make some adjustments in our schedule.)  All this in the city we might regard as one of the birth places of democracy.

As you might expect I did think about American topics now and then.  An AmCon student from a previous cohort used the wild-card spaces on her bus bingo game to take note of "American things I did not expect to see."  Next time I might add "motor-bike delivery for an American fast food franchise" to the general list of things to look for as we travel.  Imagine ordering your McTurco for delivery!

I admit that after a long bus day, in a huge shopping mall in Ankara, where we were using the few hours until our train departure investigating the globalized consumer culture, I collapsed in Starbucks simply because it was sort of quiet in comparison to the food court.  In my defense: I had an Americano coffee and a borek Turkish pastry filled with something rather spicy.  I ate something made with egg-plant almost everyday for the whole month as well as Greek yogurt for breakfast with thick honey.  yum.  I came home with a lovely pair of red shoes purchased in Athens.

Every student picked a day to NOT take any photos.  Their reflections on that experience were wise and insightful noting, among other things, the way all their sense went to work when their eye was not framing photos and the differences between their own photos and those available on postcards.

We landed in JFK airport where one notices how much more difficult it is for visitors to enter the USA than it was for us to enter the EU or Turkey.  I'm glad to say that I also noticed how cheerful and helpful all the government workers were as we dashed through the various thresholds to catch our last flight back to MSP.