So I'm gonna start by asking a really stupid question. This question is going to make me sound like a complete ass but it's a question I've been asking myself this evening because it might help me get to some sort of truth somewhere . . . or it could just be a bunch of bullshit. Anyway, down to it.
Is happiness an antiquated concept?
That's my question. Now, depending on who you talk to, a person can get all sorts of heated answers to a question like this but let's hone our emotions for a second and really think about the type of happiness I'm referring to. I suppose there are many layers to a word or emotion like happiness but lets begin by focussing on happiness in the Buddhist sense. By that I mean the idea that happiness is a way of living which denotes complete contentment and acceptance of life as it is and being happy just to ba alive . . . yadda, yadda.
My immediate and characteristically impulsive reaction to such a definition of happiness is "bollocks!". Now I should point out to those of you who don't know me personally, (assuming someone is reading this at all) that I'm somathing of a jaded and morose personality. My view of the world can be exceedingly dark most times and I pull no punches in when voicing my contempt for those who see the human world as a place full of bright, shiny promice and rainbow cupcakes.
That being said, I do feel conected to many aspects of Buddhist thought and philosophy, though it is an ancient way of thinking that can't completely work in the modern world. Let's imagine we are a peasant living in the distant past, somewhere in rural India or China. The known world around you would seem so vast and incomprehensible. Neighrouring powers might enter your small life at any time and completely fuck with everything you've wrought from the earth with your bare, aching hands. True, many, many people on this Earth today have that exact experience as their lives, but at this time the world has become comprehensibly small and tangeable. Her secrets now known to our scientists, her lands charted and conquerable with naught but a plane ticket. The point is this: now that bullied peasant can conceivably change the world if he possesses the will and the luck to do so.
I now raise the question: could anyone possess the strength of purpose to affect the change this world so dearly needs if they remained happy and content with the life they had been given? This may seem like a call to arms for all persecuted asian peasants but I'd prefer the western world to take note and ask if all the material possessions and implied freedoms are enough to rationalize the prevailing sense of happiness and contentness we all seem to think we're entitled to.
It's really ironic, (possibly too much so) that we are living in the one time in history where the most people have the destinct ability to grab hold of the world and shape it into something truly great, just, fair and good and we're all to busy clinging to our X-Boxes, BMWs, split-level homes and ancient happiness cults to realize that feeling content is exactly what's putting our planet in the shitter.
