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Find the path to happiness
As long as the animals are not sick and have enough food, they are happy. We think human beings should do the same, but not in modern societies, at least in most cases. If you yourself are unhappy, you will probably admit that you are not an exception. If you are happy, then ask how many of your friends are like you. When you review your friends, you can learn the art of waiting and seeing; you may wish to taste the state of mind of the people you meet on a normal day.
Although the types of unhappiness are different, you always meet it everywhere.
Let's say you're in New York, which is the most modern one in a metropolis. Suppose you stand on a lively street during office hours, or on the main street on weekends, or at a night dance; try to throw your "self" out of your head and let the strangers around you occupy your mind one by one, and you will find that each different group of people has different troubles. In the masses who are working hours, you can see anxiety, excessive concentration, indigestion, lack of fun in anything but struggle, no heart to play, and no feeling that their compatriots exist. On the main road on the weekend, you can see men and women, all in good condition, some of them rich, single-mindedly chasing entertainment. Everyone chases at the same speed, that is, they ride in a car that is too slow to be slow; it is impossible for the person in the car to see the road or scenery in front of them, because a slight glance will lead to trouble; all the passengers in all the cars, the only desire is to pass by the vehicles of others, and this is not possible because of the crowding; if the person who has the opportunity not to drive himself moves his mind elsewhere, then immediately there is an unspeakable annoyance that catches them, and a slight expression of chagrin is printed on his face. When a car of blacks dared to show true happiness, their absurd behavior would arouse the indignation of others, and finally fall into the hands of the police because of the disorder of the vehicle: the pleasure of the holiday was illegal.
Otherwise, look at the crowd at the happy night party. Everyone came with a decision to have fun, as if clenching their teeth and deciding not to make a fuss at the dentist. Drinks and foxes are recognized as the door to joy, so people drink them quickly and try not to notice how disgusting their companions are. When the drink was drunk, the men began to cry, lamenting how they were not worthy of their mother's love in character. The effect of alcohol on them is to provoke a criminal consciousness for them, which is suppressed by reason at a sound time.
These different kinds of unhappiness are partly due to social systems and partly to individual psychology— which, of course, is also largely a product of social institutions. Education on the abolition of war, the abolition of economic exploitation, the abolition of cruelty and terror, and so on, is not what I am trying to talk about here. To see a system that avoids war is indeed a matter of life and death for our culture; but such a system has no hope of success, because people today are so bored that they even find mutual destruction not as terrible as the endless prolongation of time. If the benefits of machine production can be of some benefit to those who need it most, then of course the continuation of poverty should be prevented; but if the rich man himself is suffering, what is the use of teaching everyone to be rich? It is not good to cultivate education in cruelty and terror, but what kind of education can be given to those who have become slaves to cruelty and terror themselves?
These considerations lead us to personal questions: What can men and women in the here and now, in our homesick society, do to achieve happiness for them or for themselves? In discussing this issue, I will focus on people who are generally not suffering from the outside world.
I will assume that they have sufficient income, can eat and live without worry, and have sufficient health to do ordinary physical activity. Great scourges, public stigma, etc., I will not consider. Of course, there is much to say about these topics, and they are quite important, but what I am going to discuss here fall into two categories. My purpose is to propose a cure for daily boredom, which is painful for most people in civilized countries, and because there is no obvious external cause, it is even more inescapable and intolerable.
I believe that much of this unhappiness is due to a wrong worldview, a wrong ethics, a wrong habit of life, and finally ruins the natural interest and appetite for the "things" that are generally possible, and that all happiness, whether human or beastly, is based on these things. Ideas and habits, and so on, are within the limits of individual power, so I would like to propose a number of reforms, and by virtue of them, as long as you are moderately lucky, there is a possibility of happiness.
Don't get caught up in "self-indulgence."
A few simple self-introductions may be the best wedges for the philosophy I want to defend. I wasn't born happy. As a child, my favorite hymn was "The World Is Disgusting, Carrying My Deep Sins." At the age of 5, I thought that if I had to live to be 70 years old, then I would have only survived 1/14 of my whole career so far, so I felt that the boredom that unfolded in front of me for a long time was almost unbearable. When I was a teenager, I hated life and was always on the verge of suicide, but the idea of learning more math stopped me. Now, on the contrary, I feel the joy of life; I can say that I live one more year and enjoy more. Part of that is because I discovered what my most pressing desires were, and slowly realized a lot.
Partly because I have finally smoothly expelled certain desires—for example, to gain precise knowledge of this and that—as if they were simply not sought. But most of it must be attributed to the lack of care for oneself day by day. Like the Puritan-educated people around me, I used to meditate on my sins, my foolishness, and my failures. I felt like I was— exactly— a poor specimen, of course. Slowly, I learned to stop dwelling on my own shortcomings and my own shortcomings, and to concentrate my attention day by day on things in the outside world: the state of the world, the various departments of knowledge, and the individuals I had a good opinion of.
Yes, concerns about the outside world will also bring you different troubles: the world may fall into war, some kind of knowledge may be difficult to reach, and friends may die. But this type of suffering, unlike the suffering that occurs out of hatred of oneself, destroys the main qualities of life. Moreover, for every external interest, there are as many activities as there are assigned to you; and as long as the interest is active, this activity can suppress the bitterness for as long as possible. On the contrary, concern for oneself must not lead you to any enterprising activity. It can encourage you to keep a journal, psychoanalyze yourself, or become a monk. But a monk must be happy when his homework in the monastery makes him forget his soul. He thought that the happiness he had attained through religion could actually be attained by the profession of scavenger, as long as he really became a scavenger. There are ordinary people who are hopelessly trapped in "self-indulgence", and for them, external discipline is indeed a path to happiness.
There are many kinds of "self-indulgence". We can pick out the three most common models of "sin-fearing mania", "self-drowning mania" and "megalomania".
When I say "sin-fearing mania," I don't mean that those people really sinned: sin is committed by everyone, or it can be said that no one commits it, depending on what we say about the boundaries of society. I'm talking about people who are addicted to criminal consciousness. He will always provoke his own disgust, and if he were religious, he would recognize this self-hatred as the hatred of God. This ideal picture of how he thinks he should be, but the actual him as he knows it, is constantly in conflict. Even though in his lucid mind he had long forgotten the aphorisms he had learned from his mother's knees, his sense of guilt might be buried deep in his subconscious, only when he was drunk or asleep. But everything can cause this smell. He still confessed his childhood precepts in his heart. Gambling is evil; drinking is evil; cunning in ordinary business is evil; in particular, sexual behavior is evil.
Of course he would not cut off the entertainment, but it was all poisoned for him, and there was no pleasure to speak of, because he felt that he had fallen for them. One of the pleasures that his whole soul desired was the care of his mother's tolerance, for him to remember what he had experienced in childhood. Since this pleasure could not be regained, he felt that everything was boring; since he had to sin, he was determined to sin with pleasure. When he fell in love, he was looking for motherly tenderness, but he could not accept it, because, with the image of his mother in his heart, he felt no respect for any woman with whom he had sex. Disappointed, he became cruel, and then repented of his cruelty, and set out again to carry the circle of fantasy sins and real regret and misery. How many prodigal sons who appear to be ruthless on the surface are in such a state of mind. What lured them into disorientation was the worship of an unattainable object (the mother or its substitute), coupled with the ridiculous ethical lessons of the early years. Liberation from early faith and early love is the first step towards happiness for this group of "admiring" virtue victims.
"Self-indulgence" is in a sense the opposite of ordinary criminal consciousness; it is characterized by a habit of self-praise and the desire to be admired. To a certain extent, this sentiment is undoubtedly normal and has no use for regret; it becomes a serious scourge only when it is excessive. There are many women, especially in wealthy societies, whose sensual power of love has completely disappeared and is replaced by a strong desire to love all men. When such a woman knows that a man loves her, she will not need him. The same situation is also found in men' cases, but it is relatively rare. When vanity reaches this height, there is no interest in anyone but oneself, so there is no real satisfaction in love. But the fun of the side, the failure is even more tragic. For example, a self-indulgent man, encouraged by the admiration of the great painter, will become an art student; but since painting is only a means to a goal for him, skill never interests him, and he is not shown any subject other than his own. The result is failure and disappointment, expectation is a compliment, and what is in hand is a sneer. There are also novelists who always present themselves as heroes in books, and they have done the same wrong. All real success at work depends on your genuine interest in work-related material. Successful politicians, one by one, what is the reason for this tragedy? Because he replaced his concern for society with self-indulgence, replaced the strategy he had always supported. The person who only cares for himself is not praiseworthy, and people do not think that he is praiseworthy. Therefore, when a person only wants society to admire him and has no interest in society itself, he may not be able to achieve his goal. Even if he could, he could not be completely happy, because human instinct could never be completely self-centered. The self-indulgent man reluctantly limits himself, just as the sin-fearing maniac forces himself to give control to the criminal consciousness. Primitive people may be proud to be a good hunter, but at the same time they feel the joy of hunting. Vanity is overdone and destroys the fun of each activity itself, leaving you inevitably listless and bored. The reason is often a lack of self-confidence, and the symptomatic medicine is to cultivate self-esteem. But the first thing is to do aggressive activities with objective interest, and then you can gain self-esteem.
The difference between "megalomania" and self-indulgence is that he wants power rather than affection, and he strives to be feared rather than admired. Many madmen, and most of the great men of history, fall into this category. The love of power, like vanity, is a powerful element of normal human nature, and we should accommodate it as long as it does not fall within the scope of human nature; it is sad when it becomes excessive and joins with an inadequate sense of reality.
In such cases, a person is either depressed, or mad, or both. A madman who thinks he wears a crown may be happy in a sense, but his happiness is by no means the envy of any able-bodied person. Alexander the Great, psychologically the same type as the madman, although he was endowed with great talent and ability to complete the dream of the madman. Yet he still could not fulfill his own dream, because the more successful he was, the more his dream expanded. When he saw himself as the greatest sign, he decided to say that he was God. But is he a happy man? His drunkenness, his rage, his indifference to women, and his desire to be a god made one guess that he was not happy. There is no ultimate consolation to cultivate a molecule at the expense of all the molecules of human nature, or to see the whole world as eminent fodder for the construction of one's self. Megalomaniacs, whether morbid or nominally sound, are usually the product of extreme humiliation.
Napoleon felt ashamed and distressed in school, in front of the average wealthy aristocratic classmate, for he was a coarse hard-read student. When the outlaw was later allowed to return home, he was satisfied as he watched his classmates bow to him. How happy! It was still this humiliation of his early years that encouraged him to seek the same satisfaction in the Tsar, and this satisfaction sent him to St. Helena. Since no one is omnipotent, a life completely controlled by the love of power will sooner or later encounter insurmountable difficulties. To be unaware of this oneself can only be done by pretending to contribute to some form of madness, although one, with sufficient authority, can imprison or punish those who dare to point out such a situation, or to death. The so-called political and psychoanalytic repression is thus passed down from generation to generation. There is no true happiness if there is any form of "inhibition" (psychoanalytic inhibition). Power constrained within the proper limits can greatly increase happiness, but when it is regarded as the only goal of life, it is in trouble, either on the outside or inside.