Happiness

Please remember this for me: If you don’t
have happiness in the present moment, there
is no way to have happiness in the future.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

A friend of mine posted this quote (with a picture of jumping happy people!), but instead of appreciating the sentiment and moving on, I am taking this opportunity to delve into the meaning of happiness. 

What is the sound of one hand being happy?

As most people would agree, "happiness" is a pleasant emotional state. I bring this up because below, I will suggest that there are better interpretations, or perhaps better words, in this context. For now, though, using the definition that 99% of readers will use, then on the surface, this seems like a pretty standard inspirational quote from a Zen master. Be happy now. Stop trying to be happy in the future. Take this opportunity to enjoy the life you are living. That's one way to interpret it... go jump around and be happy!

But because it is Zen inspiration, there is far more to it than appears on the surface. "If you aren't happy in the present, you will not be happy in the future"... well, that actually sounds pretty grim! The burden of happiness is laid heavy, and there is an implication of immense pressure: this is it, be happy now! If you aren't happy it's you're own fault and you will never be happy. Literally, that is what the quote is saying. But luckily that's just another way to interpret it, and literal interpretations are lame and boring and very un-Zen-like.

I would say that both of those are wrong, or at least only partly right. The first interpretation, positive and light, is correct in that happiness happens in the present moment. The second, with its Zen disregard for making sense, is correct in that happiness never happens in the future. You could substitute "happiness" with anything else and these would still be true. When things happen, they are in the present, and never the future. The future doesn't exist, and neither does the past, so how could you expect to be happy in the future? There is only now.

Therefore, if you aren't happy now, you will never be happy. The Zen thing to realize is that now is a constantly changing moment that each individual experiences in different ways as the Universe moves through time. Now is always. Then is merely what you remember, or what you anticipate or worry about. Basically, the quote is saying, "don't worry, be happy." (Now you have that song in your head. You're welcome.)

Be happy, or else.

The problem is this: I fully get behind the "don't worry" aspect of the quote, but not the "be happy" part; I reject the presumption that happiness is somehow the goal in life. Most people take this happiness goal as given. Various forms of "wisdom", whether religious, philosophical, or colloquial, are interpreted as ways of living that maximize happiness. And, if you are not happy, then something is wrong either with you or with your life situation, so one of those should change until you are happy all the time. Be happy now sounds nice, but it is a meaningless burdensome thing to say to a sad person.

Perhaps Thich Nhat Hanh only said "happiness" to be generally understood, because I think there is a deeper wisdom to be learned that the idea of happiness clouds. Happiness is just the other side of sadness, and vice versa, each meaningless without the other. Striving for happiness invariably strives against sadness, puts this ahead of that, whereas the experience of being human involves both. Fighting sadness thus fights the full expression of who you are in the moment. Here, too, the trick is not wallowing in past sadness or imagining future sadness. The trick, in my opinion, is not to be happy now, but to be here now.

When we get down to it perhaps we don't want to be happy. Perhaps what we want is meaning. Some substance to our lives that stitches it in with the rest of Life so that we feel alive. No one wants to be sad, but if we were happy all the time how would we grow? Why would we ever change anything? What would be the point? (Though, maybe realizing this would instantly trigger sadness, proving that it is not possible to be happy all the time, thereby solving the momentary existential crisis and restoring a feeling of well-being.... paradox averted!)

I might even go so far as to say that society's preoccupation with happiness is damaging, in the long run - that trying to be happy now will actually reduce future happiness. For example, it has been conclusively shown with sarcasm that listening to NPR makes people sad:

NPR is committed to delivering the news, and the news is not good. Whether they're reporting on corporate greed, school shootings, religious extremists, or a grossly over-entitled populace, it's hard to listen to public radio and not come to the conclusion that we're all just completely and totally screwed.

I believe that it is vitally important to pay attention to what's going on in the world, and that if we as a society continue to ignore things that we don't want to hear, we are lost. But that doesn't mean we should listen to the news and be sad. We should listen to the news and do what we can to make things better, and not worry about not being able to fix everything all at once. Don't worry, and listen to the news. But that somehow doesn't sound inspirational.

Be in the moment, or else.

 "We're often happiest when we're lost in the moment" seems obvious to me, but it was "among the surprising results" of this TED talk. Another talk says "flow" is the secret to happiness, when the "sense of time disappears" and you "forget yourself," which to me is the same as being lost in the moment. And yet these discussions are still framed in terms of how to achieve happiness. Being lost in the moment, forgetting yourself... how can you be happy if there is no you?

I don't think the experiences those talks describe actually amount to happiness, but that we lack a better word. I like to think of it as the intense experience, with full awareness, of the present moment... but that is tedious. Joe Campbell might call it "the rapture of being alive" and that is good too, but it sounds like an even more pleasurable state of happiness. (Happiness +1.) Being in the moment is beyond happiness or sadness, but even describing it that way is just moving the target. (If you are not beyond happiness and sadness now, you will never be...)

Despite all my above words, I don't have anything against happiness. My issue here is with happiness as a goal, because my issue is with any goal at all. Goals are things to be had in the future, and I think the real wisdom in the quote that started all this is the insight into the nature of time: now is all there is. Or put another way, from the pages of Dune and one of my own personal mantras:

Eternity is now.

Open Spaces

THE ROCK

Burger King sat on top
of the sky
today.

A fugitive rock tried to speak
to the asphalt,
but the asphalt like a traumatized child
said nothing
and the rock died.

We were really stressed out
until we heard the rock speak.
The pine trees had a few things to say
that also quieted our nervous hearts.

They said, "Listen, be still."
And the rock answered,
"You're telling me."

But the hummingbirds and the crows
were living on top of Burger King,
singing a song of sadness.

~ Albert Markovski, fictional poet and community organizer

Today I am really glad that my favorite DVD was recovered from the clutches of HM Revenue and Customs. To celebrate I am sharing some poems! Here is another:

Nobody sits like this rock sits.

You rock, rock.

The rock just sits and is.

You show us how to just sit here
and that's what we need.

~ Albert Markovski of the Open Spaces Coalition

I could say something serious about the actual loss of our open spaces all over the world, but that would be a drag. Plus there are worse things to be bummed about.

Like a dialysis machine to keep us alive in this horrible hell we call earth that we seem to be so proud has evolved from the dinosaurs to our "higher" species when in fact, as with the dinosaurs, it has always been a wretched carnival of violence, consumption, suffering, and survival. Shall we talk about war? Children losing limbs or eyes? Don't feel like it? I didn't think so. Why would you? It is an unbearable drag, all of it. How about your boring job?

~ Caterine Vauban, fictional philosopher, French

Somethingness.... Nothingness.... I guess if I want to talk about actual nothingness I could get back to studying the distribution of voids in the large-scale structure of the universe. Open Spaces indeed! To end on a more positive note, here is another quote from my favorite DVD booklet:

There is no remainder in the mathematics of infinity.

~ Bernard Jaffe, existential detective

Epistemology and the Media

A while ago I saw the documentary "Manufacturing Consent" about Noam Chomsky and recorded some thoughts as it was playing. Watch it yourself if you can, though it is rather long and rather old, or you can trust that my interpretation is a faithful representation of its main ideas - but be aware that these are not epistemically equal!

One of Chomsky's main tenets is that the media deceives and indoctrinates the public (though individuals in the media aren't consciously deceptive, and I think this is a misconception by critics). Anyway, soon in the documentary I realize that why I'm drawn to this subject and why I think it's so important is because I'm fascinated by epistemology, which is the study (or philosophy) of how we obtain knowledge. The dissemination of (mis)information through the media is another example of a process by which people learn about the world and how that information becomes biased, and how they come to believe things that aren't true. This is a lot of what fascinates me about politics, sociology, and religion, and as a scientist this is also what I'm interested in - not discovering the next big weird thing about the universe, but aiding the process by which that discovery can be made.

Process is important. Learning isn't about collecting facts, as if they're shells on the beach waiting to be picked up. The process by which one obtains information says everything about the quality, and even veracity, of that information. It is also important to be aware that you will never know all the facts about a situation. Most are buried beneath the sea, and the ones in view depend on where you are along the beach.

What follows is disjointed snippets of commentary, but hopefully not incredibly confusing to follow.

--

I like that Chomsky is a linguist. Tolkien was a linguist. I love languages and grammar but have never put in the effort to learn another language. (No, not even Elvish.)

... and then he said anarcho-syndicalism was the optimal way to structure societies and for some reason that is associated with Monty Python... yup, found it. Enjoy.

--

Is the "sinister view" of the media's control of information insulting the intelligence of those who consume the news? No. I think it's merely a description of how people think and judge and collect information, which is more often than not in a quick and inherently biased way. This is why understanding unconscious bias is so important to understanding discrimination - because people are often not meaning to discriminate, but merely making judgements they way they usually do when faced with little information, which is to resort to stereotypes and untested assumptions...

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"More terrifying than the occasional Hitler..." is the "equanimity and the detachment" of observers...

This is quite a statement, but I think I might have to agree. Think about it in terms of the Sandy Hook school shooting (which happened after I saw this documentary, btw). How much more horrible would that have been if people had not been shocked by it, had not been deeply affected? As horrible as the daily atrocities which we ignore. As of this writing, there have been 489 gun deaths in the U.S. since the school shooting. The occasional tragedy shocks us and may start a dialog about aspects of our society, but if we remain detached we will continue to allow tragedies to happen. Why doesn't the nightly news say, "There were 15 gun deaths on January 3rd, 15 on the 2nd, and 39 on the 1st day of the year." Why don't we demand it to?

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Media presentation of gulf war: "This is the people's war," so you need to know everything you can about it... i.e. we are going to war, there's no discussion to the contrary, we will help you deal with it. I remember MSNBC playing in the common area of my college residence hall with the title "Countdown to Iraq" on the bottom... the media just getting people used to the fact that we will go to war, neglecting their duty to inform people of the consequences, to question critically the politician's agenda, the evidence for WMD, etc...

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This documentary is pretty old (1992) so it's talking about alternative media in terms of magazines, publishers, and radio instead of THE INTERNET i.e. blogs. But even back then, and more so now, it seems there is soooo much information out there - how does one take seriously the job of self-education and learning about the world when there is so much out there and hey I've been thinking all day I'd much rather watch TV ??

I wish I had an answer for that question.