Thursday, April 24, 2008
Joy vs. Happiness
There's a lot of talk on the blogs I typically read regarding happiness. As far as I'm concerned, happiness is merely life satisfaction. That can make happiness a problem, because if you're satisfied, you don't want to change anything. It also seems a poor replacement for joy, something which many people seem to try to avoid. The problem with joy is that it's overwhelming and hopeful and beautiful, while happiness seems closer to kitsch (Milan Kundera said kitsch portrays a world without shit; this is to be compared to postmodern art, which portrays the world as nothing but shit). Strict moralists want a world of kitschy happiness; postmodernists want a world of shit. Beauty is the recognition that the world is both simultaneously. When you can witness such beauty, that is what brings you joy.
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2 comments:
Perhaps you could define happiness as "joie de vivre".
I wonder whether French people still talk about that. The surveys I have looked at suggest that they are a fairly miserable lot. Perhaps most of them spend so much time worrying about the injustice of the world that they do not get to experience the joy of life.
I've also noticed that the less you have to complain about, the more unjust you think the world is. My experience is that the working poor have the most joie de vivre of anybody. Start to do well and you start to get all sullen. It seems that the only way to enjoy life is to have problems. If you don't have any problems, you create them -- you either imagine you have problems, or you imagine them for others.
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