The Age of Escapism

Philosopher [Aristotle], religious icons [St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas], past president of the United States [Thomas Jefferson], economist [Paul Ananad] and psychologist [Albert Maslow]are some that have written about happiness. Happiness has been referred to as a rational activity, employing ethical behavior, being an ultimate goal in life, found in self-actualization, and attainable in the life after. It has been positively correlated with GDP, GNP as useful measures of successful economic policy. Also, there is a positive association between happier nations and richer nations as well. It has been stated that good mental health and good interpersonal relationships contribute more than income to happiness. However, the German philosopher Nietzsche, on the other hand, criticized the notion of happiness as in his words,” it makes one contemptible.” He believed that attaining and achieving difficult goals were a higher ideal as opposed to pursuing mere self-serving happiness. Interestingly, it’s been found that happiness does not correlate highly with physical health. Perhaps one of the difficulties with this concept is the number of its many employable definitions. Some psychologists see happiness as an emotion, while others attempt to incorporate various associations with the happiness notion like Seligman. Seligman found the following factors correlated with happiness or well-being: 1. Pleasure 2. Engagement 3. Relationships 4 Meaning and 5. Accomplishments. I have no argument, if we’re talking about well-being. The above factors, no doubt, contributed to well-being. Psychologist Paul Ekman studied the relationship of facial expressions to emotional states. He identified five major emotions that included: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and enjoyment. Note that four of his emotional states are negative. Even if we include happiness within Ekman’s classification of enjoyment, the one positive emotion is outweighed by four negative emotional states. The preponderance of negative emotional states for human beings make sense as man is confronted with natural disasters, frailty of the mind and body during the lifelong process along with the development of civilization, society and culture. Within our society we have to deal with interpersonal drama, unions, losses, employment challenges, economic uncertainties, political shenanigans, along with the threat of war etc. Just recently, there was horrendous human suffering as a result of the season of hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Furthermore, the deadly fire in Santa Rosa, California devastated that community. These natural disasters caused havoc with individuals who experienced too much anger, fear, sadness and disgust. There was not a whole lot of happiness to be experienced. To Be Continued