Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

“I don’t think you’re happy enough kids. I’ll teach you to be happy-I’ll teach your grandmother to suck eggs!” -Ren (from Ren and Stimpy)

Now, for an important difference between Christians and Non-Christians. This is on the emotional and definition levels, but it is crucial to understanding everything about Christianity that deals with positive emotions. You’ve probably already guessed from the title of this entry, but we’re going to be dealing with the difference, from the Christian perspective, between joy and happiness. Let me break it down for you, and then briefly explain why the difference is important.

As I’ve kind of worked it out, happiness is a temporary condition based on temporal circumstances. People are happy or unhappy for a variety of reasons. For us today, many of our reasons for happiness (or lack thereof) come from two main areas: our possessions, our circumstances and our relationships. I dare you to think of a time you were happy that wasn’t inspired by at least one (or a combination of) the three things I’ve listed above. That’s what happiness is. However, as Robert Frost has said, “Happiness makes up for in height what it lacks in length.” Because happiness is based on temporal, impermanent, dynamic things, we also see that happiness, almost by definition, is short lived.

Based on that definition, we also see why certain people have different levels of happiness that they are prone to. People who have a bigger issues in needing possessions, relationships or pleasant circumstances are by definition, less likely to be happy. That explains a lot, if you think about it, and it also explains the simple wisdom expressed in an old Eastern European proverb (I think Romanian…) “The richest man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least.” We can clearly see the logic expressed in that proverb when we consider this definition of happiness. People who seek happiness, then, at least as I’ve defined it, run into a constant problem, namely this: life is too fluid to be happy all the time. Almost certainly, there are things that happen that will not improve our status in regards to the big three factors above. In addition, there are things which will continuously be working to undermine our happiness. That’s not pessimism, it’s just how life is. Death and tragedy, disease and pestilence, these are unfortunate realities of our world. Seeking endless happiness in this world then is a philosophy that, when taken to its logical conclusion, can only lead to unhappiness.

Just briefly, I want to consider the hedonistic, pragmatic and humanistic aspects of this approach side by side. This is going to be as philosophically basic as I can make it, as I’m not as expert in my philosophy as some that may read this. If I stray, please correct me. Hedonism is the idea of seeking pleasure (or, happiness, if you prefer) as the highest pursuit of the individual. There are different schools of hedonism, but the idea remains the same. The pleasure principle is the result of hedonistic philosophy: “maximize pleasure, minimize pain.” Pragmatism is a very distinctive philosophy commonly expressed by people in our times. Simply put, it is the philosophy of doing whatever works. Or, if you want me to wax intellectual, it would be the philosophy of choosing the most economical solution to a problem that will achieve the desired solution. Humanism is the idea that people should not look to themselves, but to the interests of society, or, on the larger scale, humanity. Many people hold a loose combination of all these views in their daily lives. (I think I do, too.) But if you look at this combination logically, you’ll see that it’s not necessarily compatible. Hedonism is essentially an individualistic philosophy, because there are some choices for which maximizing your pleasure is increasing someone else’s pain. That flies in the face of humanism, which states the greatest good for the greatest number, regardless of how it effects you. Also, in an effort to minimize pain, a good many pragmatic solutions to common problems would be eliminated almost by definition, because the simplest solution might be the one that would cause us more pain. In other words, there are moral debates caused by holding these views simultaneously that would not be caused if you were a diehard of one. Being an unabashed hedonist makes the issues in question much easier, as would being a pragmatist or a humanist. But being a combination of all these philosophies is a moral disaster, because every time a question is raised, you have to run the possibilities through the matrix of values you hold, and prioritize which philosophies you will appease first. We all know the self-sacrificing type. They obviously value humanism over hedonism. We all know the selfish type…the obviously value themselves over society. But there is a guilt structure created there that we must also be aware of very keenly. The audience to our choices is also of primary importance. We might feel less accepted socially in our times if we acknowledge our hedonism in a public setting, where the expectation might be that we would sacrifice our own desires for the good of the group.

(continued, next entry)