On Medium: Godless Honour and the Pursuit of Pleasure
Here's another article in my series that critiques some major values of secular humanism. If happiness is selfish and sex is foolish, is comedy the most worthy pleasure?
I try to explain it in the article and in the one I link to ("Happiness is for Sheep"). In an imperfect world we can be happy in the sense of being content with our situation, only if we don't think much about the welfare of strangers, since the more empathy we have, the more we suffer when they suffer (because we feel badly for them), so we'd no longer be happy (comfortable in life).
Moreover, we can stop ourselves from suffering only by focusing our attention on us, which means beating others in a competition for limited resources (for jobs, money, shelter, life partners, etc). If everyone were to compete out of self-interest for their private happiness, most people would lose out in that struggle, guaranteeing mass disappointment. We can be happy only at other people's expense and only by deceiving ourselves and ignoring the many problems in the world.
The alternative is to work towards fixing those problems, which requires that we value duty more than happiness.
Thank you for summarizing but i will read or try to read all article.
Based on what you said here i agree very like. It's not happiness, essentially speaking, but egotism. The only thing i can problematize here is that with internet we became massively targeted by bad news and realities not only in the places we live but also from entire world. I like to say be misantrope is one paradoxical way to really love humanity and wish its best without idealizing it as humanists always do.
Why do you think hapiness is Always selfish and pleasure is foolish??
ReplyDeleteI try to explain it in the article and in the one I link to ("Happiness is for Sheep"). In an imperfect world we can be happy in the sense of being content with our situation, only if we don't think much about the welfare of strangers, since the more empathy we have, the more we suffer when they suffer (because we feel badly for them), so we'd no longer be happy (comfortable in life).
DeleteMoreover, we can stop ourselves from suffering only by focusing our attention on us, which means beating others in a competition for limited resources (for jobs, money, shelter, life partners, etc). If everyone were to compete out of self-interest for their private happiness, most people would lose out in that struggle, guaranteeing mass disappointment. We can be happy only at other people's expense and only by deceiving ourselves and ignoring the many problems in the world.
The alternative is to work towards fixing those problems, which requires that we value duty more than happiness.
That's the relevant argument from the articles.
Thank you for summarizing but i will read or try to read all article.
DeleteBased on what you said here i agree very like. It's not happiness, essentially speaking, but egotism. The only thing i can problematize here is that with internet we became massively targeted by bad news and realities not only in the places we live but also from entire world. I like to say be misantrope is one paradoxical way to really love humanity and wish its best without idealizing it as humanists always do.