The Pursuit of Happiness

This morning I was browsing through a listing of discounted e-books I don't need, when I noticed this review excerpt, quoted to tout B. F.'s Daughter by J. P. Marquand:

“No one can write more engagingly of their search for happiness. Or of their sulks when they discover—too late, alas—that happiness must be earned.” —The New York Times Book Review

Wait a minute, I thought, since when does happiness have to be earned?  For that matter, how do you earn it?

There's no agreement about what happiness is, but I think most people recognize that it's elusive.  You can be unhappy despite having all the conventional advantages -- wealth, comfort, a loving family, etc.  You can be happy despite the lack of such advantages.  People work hard, dutifully, all their lives hoping to achieve or earn happiness, either in livelihood or in personal relationships, and then find themselves wondering why it didn't work.

In English, at least, "happy" and "happiness" originally meant "good fortune" or luck.  But it also meant "a pleasant and contented mental state."  The first sense, which I often encountered in English literature from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, hadn't completely died out by the time B. F.'s Daughter was first published in 1946, but I suspect most Americans have forgotten it by now.  I suspect that the second sense, though, derives from the first: if you are content and feel pleasant, it's not something you've achieved, it's something that happened (same root) to you, by luck or good fortune. So the idea that happiness "must be earned" is, it seems to me, obviously ridiculous. Perhaps (same root) you can improve your chances by judicious action, but happiness is ultimately beyond your control: in the hands of the goddess Fortune, who like all gods will knock you over just to hear the splat.  (Read the book of Job sometime, if you haven't already: the malignant whimsicality of gods is not specifically a 'pagan' idea.  Nor is it limited to Job: doesn't Yahweh say somewhere else, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy"?  [Yep: Exodus 33:19, quoted by Paul in Romans 9:15.])  I'm almost tempted to find the original review to learn who wrote such a silly thing.  Maybe I will.

What makes that second sentence not merely silly but pernicious is the implication that if you aren't happy, it's your fault.  You didn't work hard enough. You were lazy.  You thought the world owes you a living.  Or Catch-22: You must have done something wrong, or you wouldn't be sad.  Or a theological version: You thought you could compel God to give you happiness through your own efforts, so you deserve to be miserable; the beatings will continue until your morale improves.  Stop whining or God will give you something to cry about!

I'm not blaming Marquand for the foolishness of his reviewer, mind you.  But I do wonder why this vendor, seventy-odd years after the book was published, chose to highlight this quotation to recommend it.

Cancel My Subscription, Sir or Madam!

Of course, this is nothing new. But for me the important part is that many people, not just on the wacko Right, believe that if you're rich it means you're smart. Whatever it means, it doesn't mean that, and I'm not talking about Donald Trump, who's an easy target. I mean also people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the Clintons, Barack Obama, the entire Bush Crime Family, Howard Schultz, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett. Among others. The rich aren't smart; it might even be that having all that money makes them dumber, because it insulates them from the consequences of their stupidity.

Read some of the replies in the thread, which point out that not only does Australia have universal healthcare, they have a 45% capital gains tax, a $19 minimum wage, etc. It's common to try to refute these little details by pointing out that Australia isn't all that rich or powerful compared to the US; but I'm not the person who hopes to escape Socialism in the US by emigrating to Australia, this billionaire is. Except that he's lying, like almost everybody who says they'll emigrate if Bush or Obama or Trump becomes President.

I Me Mine

I saw the above meme today, and was struck by how obviously false both versions of the platitude are.  Good things come to those who work their asses off and never give up?  Someone is not living in these United States.  This is Social Darwinism: if you don't get any good things, obviously you haven't worked hard enough.  Those who have lots of good things deserve them, because they worked hard for them.  If Mitt Romney is worth a thousand times as much as I am, it's because he worked a thousand times harder.

The person who shared this meme is also a devotee of Soka Gokkai Buddhism; in addition to generic motivational memes she posts daily inspirational quotations from Soka Gokkai International's schismatic leader, Ikeda Daisaku, which are at best noteworthy for their vacuousness.  At times, though, something like the above sentiments peeks through.  I don't know enough about Soka Gokkai to make any broad generalizations about the movement, but I have noticed that Westerners will often embrace teachings from Eastern religions that they would scorn from Western ones.

Which reminded me of something Vijay Prashad wrote in The Karma of Brown Folk (Minnesota, 2000).  Here's my inspirational quotation for the day.

In 1967, during the Summer of Love, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi gave a revealing press conference in New York City. "The hungry of India, China, anywhere," he noted, "are lazy because of their lack of self-knowledge. We will teach them to derive from within, and then they will find food." Four months before the World Food Conference in Rome in November 1974, the CIA noted that because of grain shortages induced by the shifting cultivation patterns due to the uneven terms of trade "Washington would acquire life and death power over the fate of the multitudes of the needy." These details did not enter the worldview of the guru, who was content with the imaginary freedom for sale to the disenchanted bourgeois. Some reporters found the Maharishi's statement to be unacceptable, and one asked, "Do we have to ignore the poor to achieve inner peace?" The Yogi answered, "Like a tree in the middle of a garden, should we be liberal and allow the water to flow to other trees, or should we drink ourselves and be green?" "But isn't this selfish?" "Be absolutely selfish. That is the only way to bring peace, to be selfish, and if one does not have peace, how is one to help others attain it?" [Deepak] Chopra is not very different. One might expect his Law of Giving to contain a call for charity, but his notion of a gift is more indulgent. "Wherever I go, and whoever I encounter, I will bring them a gift. The gift may be a compliment, a flower, or a prayer." These neither feed nor clothe anyone. Further, "I will make a commitment to keep wealth circulating in my life by giving and receiving life's most precious gifts: the gifts of caring, affection, appreciation and love." He will give important emotional gifts, but he will be ready to accept "all the gifts that life has to offer me." Of obligations, a classic liberal trope, we hear nothing. Of the poor, we get an idealized picture that rivals Mother Teresa for condescension.  "On his many travels to India, [Chopak's son] Gautama has witnessed the harsh reality of the street children who have no belongings other than their beautiful souls. In India, even amidst the immense poverty and destitute conditions, one finds in the children no trace of violence, no hostility, no rage, no anger. There is a simple, sweet innocence even among the extremely impoverished." The poor cease to be human with the capacity to struggle and to aspire; they appear as contented people willing to sacrifice their material well-being for the spiritual happiness the bourgeois tourist wants them to enjoy. If the poor are unhappy, it ruins the tour as well as the image of the spiritual East [60-62].