Breakthrough Writer: Geography of Bliss Lessons

Part One. Why Is Britain Distrustful of Happiness

1. Reticence is part of the very fabric of the British culture. Reticence is part of being proper, respectful, self-contained. It’s part of a deeply-entrenched ethos or moral code.

2. Happiness is looked at as a disease, a volatile illness that can result in the loss of control.

3. Britain is a repressed nation. Showing emotion is considered uncouth and embarrassing.

4. Britain values stoicism, which is a sign of strength. Happiness is looked upon as juvenile giddiness (silly, infantile, confectionary) and therefore is a weakness in character.

5. Brits are more comfortable being grumpy, churlish and surly than they are being happy. For a Brit, ironically enough, grumpiness is happiness. See page 246.

6. Happiness is synonymous with air-headed superficial stupidity. “Only dumb people are happy.”

7. Happiness suggests emotional ups and downs. This is threatening to Brits who “don’t want to bother anyone.” See page 247.

8. Trying to be happy, reading self-help books, is looked upon as being a trashy American and is a sign of weakness. See page 248.

9. Brits reject Thomas Jefferson’s individual pursuit of happiness and replace that quest with utilitarianism, the practical guide to wellbeing: The pursuit of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This is also called “felicific calculus.” Happiness is only okay if it’s pursued as a math problem or a science.

10. We learn that for Brits and Eric Weiner that for some people grumpiness and sadness is a form of happiness.

Part Two. Why Are Self-Help Books and the Positive Psychology Movement Fraudulent, Bogus, and Harmful?

1. Happiness is a red herring. A red herring is a distraction from the real issue. (red herring link on Internet). If happiness is not the real issue, what is? Growth, human development, maturity, individuation. See Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving and Escape from Freedom. : It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting of the whole life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and expression of man's sensuous, emotional, and intellectual capacities. Life has an inner dynamism of its own; it tends to grow, to be expressed, to be lived. It seems that if this tendency is thwarted the energy directed toward life undergoes a process of decomposition and changes into energies directed toward destruction. In other words: the drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually independent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Those individual and social conditions that make for suppression of life produce the passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which the particular hostile tendencies--either against others or against oneself--are nourished.

2. Psychology is about using your shrink as a crutch to keep his pay checks going.

3. There is no empirical evidence that therapy, life coaches, motivational speakers, and their ilk do anything to help people getter better or to become happy, yet Americans spend billions of dollars on the therapy, self-help, and self-actualization movements every year. A digression: Americans spend billions on supplements that are proven NOT to help them.

4. Therapy encourages self-centeredness, narcissism, victimization, and discourages personal responsibility. The self-help culture has created a nation of malcontents, whiners, victims, narcissists, swindlers, mountebanks, gluttons, road-ragers, Kool-Aid drinkers, and neer-do-wells.

Part Three. America Ranks Low on the Happiness Index. Why?

1. America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world but ranks low on happiness index. (23^rd). Why? Some say we suffer from the “paradox of choice.” The more choices, the more we become anxious about making the “wrong choice." Also more choices results in inflated expectations.

2. Abundance leads to restlessness. Again, think of the hedonic treadmill.

3. While Americans have enjoyed more abundance in general, they also work longer hours and have longer commute times, which result in unhappiness.

4. “The More Factor” is in many ways a curse. As we read in McMahon’s blog the Breakthrough Writer, the hunger for more generates a delusional fallacy, what McMahon calls “Either/Or.”

5. The hunger for More is in many ways instinctual. But as Tim Kasser observes in “Mixed Messages,” these instincts can go haywire, become inflated and actually work against us.

6. According to Laurence Shames’ essay “The More Factor,” Americans are misguided by the “presumption that America would keep on booming—if not forever, then at least longer than it made sense to worry about.” But for all of our innovation and economic greatness, Laurence Shames laments that our materialistic excess has retarded our moral growth. As he writes. He opines that “Americans have been somewhat backward in adopting values, hopes, ambitions that have to do with things other than more.”

7. America encourages Darwinian competition, which results in isolation and paranoia. Our appetites for Darwinian competition are evidenced in the onslaught of “reality” TV shows like Survivor.

8. Darwinian competition has created a nation where pleasure has been reduced to schadenfreude, taking pleasure in other people’s failures.

9. The American Dream is living apart from the rest in a gated community, insulated with satellite TV, wireless Internet, techno-gadgets that keep us “connected” in the most unreal way. America is a good place to be lonely. People are not as lonely in other countries. Weiner points out that Latino cultures bring their family unity from other countries to America and that they rank higher than other Americans on the happiness index.

10. American consumerism is a religion that possessed most Americans and makes the shopping mall America’s Holy Temple. Of course, such worship traps consumers in the hedonic treadmill, leading to numbness and ennui.

Part Four. Class Activity

Get into groups and write mapping components for the following thesis:

Eric Weiner's Geography of Bliss takes us on a dazzling tour de force as we travel the world and rub shoulders with happy and miserable countries alike. As we become intimate with happiness and its opposite, we learn there are several fallacies about obtaining bliss. These fallacies include _____________, ____________, _____________, ____________, and __________________.

Posted at 05:40 PM in Geography of Bliss Lessons | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lesson #4: Unhappiness in Qatar and Moldova, and America (Third Revision)

Part One. Qatar

1. Weiner’s big question upon visiting Qatar, the richest per capita country in the world: What happens to your soul when you indulge in excess, craven luxury? See page 100. You might see the film A Simple Plan.

2. Can all their wealth lead to the good life and happiness and Weiner, relying Betrand Russell, defines it on page 110 as connecting with something larger than yourself? The answer is no because self-indulgence disconnects you from the outside. Self-indulgence results in solipsism, which is the opposite of connected happiness.

3. Qataris are the nouveau riche and as such they possess arrogance and insecurity. See page 102.

4. Wealth makes us unhappy because we instinctively use wealth to isolate and insulate ourselves from the outside world. Happiness is connection with others. Wealthy people tend to be unconnected. See page 114. I’m reminded of Citizen Kane.

5. Qataris have no taxation or representation so they feel disconnected from their own society. See pages 118 and 119.

6. Weiner equates Qataris’ sudden wealth to winning the lottery. Winning the lottery historically is connected with unhappiness and ruin. See pages 122-125: We adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure and then we have adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure again. It’s like a cycle of addiction with nihilism, emptiness, and ruin being our final destination. I see this with my love of cars. We call this the “hedonic treadmill.”

7. We learn on pages 126 and 127 that there’s a gap between our rational intellect and our brain’s hard-wiring or “software.” Sadly, we’re programmed to chase after chimeras (BMWs, wealth, etc.) that don’t make us happy and we can’t even learn from our disappointment but continue to chase chimeras anyway.

8. Some of us are addicted to sadness as it is suggest to Eric Weiner on page 127.

9. Qataris rely on foreign labor so they feel disconnected from their country. They are dependent on cheap foreign labor and are in a way helpless. Rich but helpless. No rules, no laws, no taxes, no work. Just unhappiness. A life with no boundaries always leads to despair and self-destruction. Ironically, a life with no boundaries is many Americans' definition of freedom. This is a perverted definition. Real freedom is based on boundaries. As a 13-year-old kid, I learned the joy of having a clean room. Life became easier and full of well-being.

10. We know nothing. We think we’ll be happy from achievements and wealth (Hindu word is maya, which means illusion) and we feel pained by setbacks (Hindu word is mushkala, which means illusory loss). See page 139.

Part Two. What We Learn from Qatar: Excessive Wealth Makes Even Decent, Well-Intentioned People Become Unhappy

1. When we become wealthy, we understandably become distrustful of others who may feel tempted to take advantage of us, to use us for their gain. As a result, we close our circle and we become more and more disconnected from the world. Think of the film Citizen Kane.

2. This disconnectedness from the world and constant protectiveness makes us feel embattled, which in turn creates a permanent mask of skepticism. Without checks and balances, this skepticism of others’ motives can easily turn to paranoia, an obvious condition of unhappiness.

3. When we’re filthy rich, people no longer relate to us as people. They relate to us as sycophants. Other people’s compulsion to lavish us with praise and be generally obsequious gives us a false sense of grandiosity. We begin to believe we’re as great as people treat us resulting in an obnoxious, undeserved sense of entitlement.

4. When we’re filthy rich, it’s tempting to use our money and power to clean up our messes. We become more reckless in our behavior since we know our money can take care of our errant ways. Think of the recklessness and misery of Bill Murray playing Phil Connors in the classic film Groundhog Day.

5. When we’re filthy rich, we’re compelled by normal human nature to experience “the best” and what we find is that our brains adapt to pleasure and excitement requiring more and more stimulation. The researchers calls this constant adaptation the “hedonic treadmill.” We constantly have to spike our pleasure before we adapt to it and then spike it forever and ever in a an endless cycle with us always losing the pleasure game, resulting in disappointment and frustration. And yes, unhappiness.

6. Like it or not, wealth is a drug both for the wealthy person and others who are intoxicated by the wealthy person’s aura of living on a superior, elevated plane. People who are infatuated by the This mutual wealthy and kiss their butt are called sycophants or toadies. Intoxication between the wealthy person and his or her admirers creates a sick symbiotic relationship based on fantasy, greed, and envy, components for miserable relationships.

7. It is human nature when we are rich to hire others to do everything for us. Over time we become helpless cripples dependent on our “help.” This, alas, is yet another cause of our unhappiness.

8. As human beings, we have a rational brain that knows wealth is dangerous and most often results in unhappiness but we also are hard-wired to pursue wealth no matter what our rational brain tells us. Understanding this conflict in ourselves and seeing our rational intellect being helpless to curb our irrational appetites, again, is another cause of our unhappiness.

Part Three. Unhappiness in Moldova

1. Envy: To resent others for having a better situation than yours. The unhappy cannot bear the sight of the happy.

2. The human condition is one of contrast: Hot means nothing without cold. Mozart is enhanced by Barry Manilow. Happy places are more interesting because of unhappy ones. The darkest part of the planet is Moldovia. It is the least happy nation on the planet.

3. The body language is sour and bitter and this in turn makes people feel sour and bitter.

4. Natasha says “We have no money for life.” That is her reason, but Weiner doesn’t buy it because he’s visited other countries who in poverty don’t hold that attitude.

5. The male citizens are skinny; the male cops are fat and thuggish, a bad sign.

6. They’ve been beaten down into learned helplessness (see other lectures on this topic) The Moldovans say, “This is Moldova.” Or “What can I do?”

7. Moldovans compare themselves to the richer countries, not the poorer ones. So of course the glass is half empty.

8. The service industry is rude and this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of misery because you're turning off tourists, among other people.

9. There is no trust of anything, including their own people, and this results in nihilism.

10. The people are neither Russian nor Moldovan. They exist in a nether world of no identity or culture. “How can you feel good about yourself if you don’t know who you are?”

11. Their new “freedom” means nothing without jobs. They cannot afford to eat at McDonald’s.

12. Corruption and nepotism is rampant.

13. Men don’t care about their appearance because they’re outnumbered by the woman who wear raccoon makeup.

14. They are consumed by selfishness: “No este problema mea.” They can’t even recognize selfish altruism, which encourages reciprocity.

15. The Moldovans are fueled by schadenfreude; “They derive more pleasure from their neighbor’s failure than their own success.”

16. Scapegoat everything on “Perestroika.” When you scapegoat other source for your problems, your proclaiming your helplessness.

17. Envy accumulates like toxic waste.

18. There is no queuing, a sure sign of nihilism, anomie, and chaos.

19. They trust nothing: doctors under thirty-five, their own friends.

20. The once cheery American Peace Corps workers are becoming gloomy and depressed.

21. No one wants to be in Moldova, including Moldovans.

22. Helping professions score the highest in happiness surveys.

23. The Moldovans have thrown politeness and civility out the window. They say, “Give me that.” No please. In contrast, Japan emphasizes politeness. A common expression: “Gomen nasai.” I’m sorry.

24. Freedom has been reduced to a small number of people who have enough money to consume the growing selection of goods.

25. Moldovans haven’t used the golden rule of positive psychology: hedonic adaptation: No matter how severe our misfortune, we adapt. But this adaptation cannot occur in the absence of culture, living in a shadow. Moldova is a “fabricated nation.” It really does not exist.

26. Weiner concludes with “lessons gleaned from Moldova’s unhappiness”:

27. Lesson One: “Not my problem” is a mental illness, a condition of no empathy.

28. Lesson Two: Poverty is too often used as an excuse for unhappiness. Their reaction to poverty is worse than the poverty.

29. Lesson Three: A culture that belittles the value of trust and friendship and rewards mean-spiritedness and deceit cannot be happy.

Part Four.America Ranks Low on the Happiness Index. Why?

1. America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world but ranks low on happiness index. (23^rd). Why? Some say we suffer from the “paradox of choice.” The more choices, the more we become anxious about making the “wrong choice”. Also more choices results in inflated expectations.

2. Abundance leads to restlessness. Again, think of the hedonic treadmill.

3. While Americans have enjoyed more abundance in general, they also work longer hours and have longer commute times, which result in unhappiness.

4. “The More Factor” is in many ways a curse. As we read in McMahon’s blog the Breakthrough Writer, the hunger for more generates a delusional fallacy, what McMahon calls “Either/Or.”

5. The hunger for More is in many ways instinctual. But as Tim Kasser observes in “Mixed Messages,” these instincts can go haywire, become inflated and actually work against us.

6. According to Laurence Shames’ essay “The More Factor,” Americans are misguided by the “presumption that America wouldkeep on booming—if not forever, then at least longer than it made sense to worry about.” But for all of our innovation and economic greatness, Laurence Shames laments that our materialistic excess has retarded our moral growth. As he writes. He opines that “Americans have been somewhat backward in adopting values, hopes, ambitions that have to do with things other than more.”

7. America encourages Darwinian competition, which results in isolation and paranoia. Our appetites for Darwinian competition are evidenced in the onslaught of “reality” TV shows like Survivor.

8. Darwinian competition has created a nation where pleasure has been reduced to schadenfreude, taking pleasure in other people’s failures.

9. The American Dream is living apart from the rest in a gated community, insulated with satellite TV, wireless Internet, techno-gadgets that keep us “connected” in the most unreal way. America is a good place to be lonely. People are not as lonely in other countries. Weiner points out that Latino cultures bring their family unity from other countries to America and that they rank higher than other Americans on the happiness index.

10. American consumerism is a religion that possessed most Americans and makes the shopping mall America’s Holy Temple. Of course, such worship traps consumers in the hedonic treadmill, leading to numbness and ennui.

Part Five. Write a thesis for your essay.

Posted at 06:46 AM in Geography of Bliss Lessons | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lesson #3: Causes of Happiness in Bhutan, Iceland, and Thailand (Third Revision)

Part One. Bhutan

1.  In Bhutan, Buddhism is seamlessly integrated in the culture in ways that produces happiness. For example, in Buddhism there is nothing greater than compassion and compassion creates happiness.

In contrast, in America compassion is replaced with infantile self-centered, selfish greed so that Walgreen shoppers fight and riot so that the police have to close the store. Or people fight in line at Lowes or swing squeegees at each for cutting in line at a gas station. The cashiers at Costco say they witness fights for parking spaces almost every day. A compassionate society is always happier than a dog-eat-dog society. But let's be clear: Compassion isn't the law; it's deeper than that: It's a cultural norm. Cultural norms, which get inside the soul, always have a stronger influence than laws.

2.  In Bhutan crime is kept at a minimum because the people believe they could be punished during reincarnation, returning to Earth as the very creature they harmed. They really believe this. They don't just say they believe in it. In America, the religious are often only "religious" one day a week. But in Bhutan they believe in punishment in the after life. Result: Country’s low murder rate is linked to happiness.

3.  In Bhutan, the people have “realistic expectations” unlike Americans who feel compelled to achieve “great things”?

Americans have an all or nothing definition of success in which you must be a movie star, the focus of the movie which is your life with everyone's eyes on you. Americans are a bunch of drama queens.

In contrast, Buddhism diminishes human excitement as foolish excitement for illusion. A lot of Americans would say they refuse to accept "realistic expectations," which are for them "low expectations," resulting in mediocrity.

4.  In Bhutan, the people have a healthy attitude toward the reality of death and they do not deny death. This contributes to their happiness. In contrast, Americans sanitize death. The funeral, with embalming, designer outfit, deluxe coffin (usually $9,000 in today's market) and is a huge consumer experience that makes a ton of money for the funeral home and insulates the consumer from the reality of death.

5.  The people of Bhutan revere solitude. But later on we read there is no introspection, “no self-help books.” No one tries to be happy but everyone has a strong degree of happiness. Why does this lead to happiness? There is a difference between naval-gazing self-centeredness and solitude. Solitude can entail personal reading (as opposed to doing reading for homework), painting, drawing, writing, any act of creativity.

6.  They won’t sell timber to rich countries for money; they won’t sell their soul to the devil of greed. They have integrity which results in a clear conscience, a form of happiness.

A few pages later, the author explains how the rising GDP (Iraq, growing prison population, oil spill) doesn’t correspond to a rising happiness index or the Gross National Happiness. He writes that an old person in a care home contributes to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) but an old person cared for by family does not. Who is happier? Jeff Johnson writes about this in the Gross National Happiness and Development compendium. We can conclude that you should not strive for happiness, but strive for integrity and creative solitude. Happiness is the byproduct of those qualities.

7.  Happiness is a collective endeavor, not an individual one. (author criticizes them for being “too sincere.” What does he mean? Perhaps "too sincere" means lacking a sense of humor and irony?) We read “happiness is relational.” What does that mean? This is the opposite of solipsism, the extreme form of self-centeredness.

8.  GNH (Gross National Happiness), according to Sanjay Penjor, “means knowing your limitations; knowing how much is enough.” The Greeks had the same idea when they talked about moderation and temperance as being virtues, but in American society, built on consumer spending, we discourage moderation and temperance and encourage hype, extremes, pushing your limits and we come up with atrocities like HomeTown Buffet.

Part Two. Iceland: Happiness Is Failure

1.  In Iceland ambition is tempered by a sense of humor. The God of Ambition, the main God of America, is discussed as a truth we don’t realize until it’s too late: He is a false god. (end of Chapter 4)

2.  Colder climates are happier. Why? There’s the Get-Along-or-Die Theory. In warm climates we can be isolated if we want. In harsh climates, we need each other.

3.  “Interdependence is the mother of affection.”

4.  A society built on reciprocity develops love. In contrast, a lot of college students, moving from another country away from family and friends, live a life of isolation. They take classes alone, go home alone and study. The amount of isolation that afflicts a lot of college students is mind-boggling.

5.  Iceland is so small, there are no strangers in Iceland. This adds to a key ingredient to happiness: Having a sense of community and belonging.

6.  Iceland shares the pain of inflation. Unemployment is far worse because it’s experiences individually.

7.  Icelanders don’t suffer delusions of grandeur or immortality about their cities. They feel insignificant in the best, humble sense of the word. And this sense of humility results in happiness.

8.  They accept the wonder and harsh doom of nature. As a result, they feel close to nature and this is a spiritual orientation that results in happiness.

9.  Icelanders love their language and their greetings are benevolent such as “Go happy,” vertu saell,” and “come happy,” komdu saell.”

10.               Their language is “egalitarian and utterly free of pretense.” In contrast, America is a niche elitist society where the upper classes, doctors, lawyers, computer nerds, etc., all have their own "speak," which no one else can understand. Doctors and lawyers use language you can't understand so you feel helpless and feeling helpless makes you feel dependent on them and feeling hopelessly dependent on them is good for their business.

11.       They feel connected to the land and receive creative energy from it. In spiritual terms, this is called Pantheism, the idea that you can experience spirit or God through nature.

12. They have a sense of style, which is always connected to glamour. See Virginia Postrel in Atlantic article. Glamour elevates us from the banality of everyday reality.

13. Icelanders suppress envy by sharing things, in contrast with the Swiss who hide things.

14.      Failure doesn’t carry a stigma in Iceland. It’s okay to fail with the best intentions. It’s okay to try and fail. This is a nurturing society, not a society of haters. In contrast, failure in America results in shame, stigma, a permanent mark of ignominy and disgrace.

15. Naïveté serves them well. There’s a certain innocence, a goodness, about them. They’re not so “sophisticated” in an arrogant stuffy sense of the word.

16. The collective culture encourages creativity, which allows you to lose yourself in something larger than yourself, called “flow.”

17. Icelandic people thrive on being sad and happy at the same time, a natural part of the human condition.

Part Three. Happiness in Thailand:

Chapter 7: Thailand: Happiness Is Not Thinking

1.  The “sexpat” is not happy. He’s a farang, a foreigner with a lot of money, who is disheveled. “As long as his wallet is in reasonably good shape, the rest of him can fall to pieces.” He’s looked at as pathetic, mush, unhappy.

2.  Thais are happy and one of their beliefs is that too much thinking will make you unhappy: “Thinking is like running. Just because your legs are moving doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere. You might even be running into a headwind. You might even be running backward.”

3.  Thais do not read self-help books, go to therapy, or talk endlessly about their problems. Their wisdom lets them know that this type of naval-gazing makes your problems worse. You go backward.

4.  Another saying against thinking: “Happy people have no reason to think; they live rather than question living.”

5.  Conclusion: Thinking about happiness makes us less happy. So reading Weiner’s book, which makes you think about happiness, must be depressing.

6.  There are only 3 ways to increase our happiness: You can increase the amount of good feelings; you can decrease the amount of bad feelings; or you can change the subject. Take a tormented relationship, for example. Thais don’t trust words. To change the subject, they say, “Mai pen lai.” It means “never mind” or “pay not attention.” Wise guys in mafia films say, “Forget about it.” In America, we have a saying, “Water under the bridge” and “Let sleeping dogs lie (stay asleep).” Here are some tormenting questions: How come Person X doesn’t like me after all I did for her? Why is there suffering in the world? How can I enjoy this chocolate cake if just one baby is starving in Ethiopia? How can I focus on my homework when there is the possibility that the sun will explode and destroy our universe as we know it? How can I look forward to going to Heaven when so many people are doomed to spend eternity in Hell?

7.  Thais believe in keeping a “cool heart,” keeping bad feelings inside, but Weiner points out that Thailand has a very high incidence of wives castrating their cheating husbands.

8.  Unlike Americans, Thais are free from the egotism that makes everything so serious. When they trip and fall, it’s funny to everyone, not a huge embarrassment. You can call your fat friend, “hippo,” and it’s cool. Not so in America.

9.  The Thais hold a higher value of sanuk—happiness—over money and ego.

10. Thais are solaced that if things don’t work out well in this life, they might be better in the next one.

Part Four. Another A Example Introduction to Your Essay: A Personal Story About How You Became Disenchanted with the Idea of Happiness, Which Ties in to an Alternative Approach to Writing Your Essay

   There once was a man in his early twenties. Socially awkward, he had never even been on a date. Instead, he withdrew into his college studies, found companionship in books, and grew an unruly beard. Untouched by human warmth, his demeanor was a bit crazed and unsettling. His eyes were cavernous and penetrating.

   One day this young man was on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach and he passed a popular hangout, Patrick Malloy’s. It was crowded inside. The young man pressed his bearded face against the glass and looked with longing at the attractive people. They looked so life-affirming and at ease with self-abandonment, laughing, slapping each other’s backs, kissing one another, and sloshing their beers over their glasses’ rims.

   In contrast, the young man was a tightly-wound ball of repressed emotions, in turns angry and melancholy. He felt like a man of 85 trapped in the body of a 21-year old.

   Watching the attractive people enjoying themselves and embracing life with an admirable, insatiable appetite, the young man was convinced he would remain on life’s sidelines, a depressed witness to a life passing him by.

     Convinced of his own futility and fated to a life of loneliness, he went home, curled up into a ball and cried himself to sleep.

   We now travel 25 years into the future and focus on this same man, now in his mid-forties. He has a good job. He has developed social skills, he is well groomed, insouciant, and can conceal his cynicism behind a veil of witty repartee. He’s been married, divorced, remarried. He sits in Patrick Malloy’s with his lovely wife and her lovely friends. Beer is sloshing all around him. He doesn’t drink, save a diet Coke since he’s the designated driver. The music is loud and people are shouting over the music. His ears can’t take much more of this. Worse, an unrelenting boredom has set in and he is no longer listening to any of the several conversations blaring around him.

     He feels it both strange and cruel that earlier in his life he felt excluded from this club of beautiful people and now he is inside its very center, its most inner core, and rather than bathing in the warmth of belonging and popularity he stares at his watch.

     While squirming in his seat with utter boredom, he sees a young man outside the club. The man is bearded with the same cavernous eyes and the same look of despair the middle-aged man remembers seeing in his reflection. The young man, a mirror image of the middle-aged one, presses his face against the window and looks into the eyes of his older doppelgänger.

   Feeling helpless to give wisdom to the misguided youth, the older aspiring mentor shakes his head as if to say: "The presumed happiness you see in this night club is all in your head, little brother. It's all in your head."

   Indeed, the chasing of happiness is a sure way to NOT find happiness, as well chronicled in Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss. We see that the quest for happiness is doomed to fail because _____________________, __________________, and ___________________, and that happiness is the natural byproduct of certain cultural conditions, which, we learn from Iceland, Thailand, and others, consists of _____________________, _______________________, __________________, ____________________, and _______________________.

Posted at 01:17 PM in Geography of Bliss Lessons | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lesson #2: Chapter 2: Switzerland: Happiness Is Boredom and the Absence of Envy. Third Revision

McMahon’s Happiness Test

(only discuss if there wasn't time to do this in Lesson 1)

Are you a nihilist, that is to say, do you believe that happiness and meaning are impossible? Rodney Dangerfield, centripetal, centrifugal motion, movies rely on centrifugal narrative.
Do you believe in meaning (there is a connection between people who have meaning and who say they are happy) and if so what is your meaning?
Is your happiness the byproduct of having meaning or something else such as vanity, wealth, popularity?
Is your life full of false or real necessities?
Do you have a sense of belonging? Explain.
Are your pursuits the result of inner choices or are you bowing down to parental and societal pressure and in essence being a conformist?
Do you have a passion that takes you out of yourself or are you constantly self-centered?
Do you respond to suffering and loss with courage and dignity or are you a sniveling whiner?
Are you waiting around for people to love you? Here's the news: No one will EVER love you. You have to get off your duff and love others first. Only then will they love you.
You can't be enthralled by your personal problems, believing they're special and unique. If you can't see that your problems are everyone else's and thus are universal, you're doomed to be a miserble narcissist.

Part One. Some Facts About Switzerland

1. The Swiss rank high on the HI. They rank higher than their neighbors, the French and the Italians. They are more reserved, less volatile. Less volatility always contributes to more happiness. Volatility is a form of emotional drama and the inevitable end of emotional drama is the great crash. Your emotions burn out and you've got nowhere to go but down.

2. Some words used to describe the Swiss: Punctual, efficient, wealthy, clean, humorless, laconic, circumspect, civil, clean (some of the cleanest toilets in the world), austere. Taciturn (quiet), reticent (reserved), demure (shy), insouciant (doing something difficult without a fuss with a nonchalant flair). This is called the quality of insouciance.

3. One cause of Swiss happiness: They quell the impulse for envy. This means there are rules: No bragging, especially about how much money you make. Flashing your money in Switzerland is a sign of poverty. One trait is frowned upon in Swiss culture: braggadocio, the compulsion for self-aggrandizement, flapping your wings like the alpha condor and letting the world know you're the Apex Predator. That's an American trait.

4.  The Swiss are even keeled. Eric Weiner calls this boredom. But research supports the Swiss: Better to live in the middle range than to have highs and lows. Volatility does not lead to happiness. Having a steely reserve is far better in the long-run. My daughter Natalie is willful, stubborn, and prone to grouchiness but overall she is emotionally steady. Her sister Julia has higher outbursts of joy but she also has more ear-crushing hissy fits. My wife and I live in fear of Julia's tantrums.

5.  In the seventeenth century in Basel, there was a prohibition against public laughter. Now there is no need for such a law because the people have internalized the desire to repress their emotions and this has led to increased happiness. Again, this is very un-American. Americans are for huge emotional displays to the point of exhibitionism of their emotional dramas on reality TV shows.

6.  For the Swiss, joy comes from nature, the Pastoral, the Alps. For Americans, joy comes from gadgets.

7.  Slovenly hedonists, those who seek self-indulgent pleasures, would prefer Denmark; anal-retentive prudes would prefer Switzerland. I know which country I would prefer. I would feel more comfortable living in a culture that helps me impede my indulgent behavior. That would be Switzerland.

8.  The Swiss are fond of rules: For example, it’s illegal to flush your toilet after 10 P.M.

9.  Switzerland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. One possible reason: Being around happy people makes our own unhappiness even more unbearable.

10.               The Swiss have a high degree of trust for one another.

11.               The Swiss have a lot of patience. And they are affluent.

12.               The Swiss consume high quantities of high-quality chocolate and there is a connection between chocolate and happy brain chemicals.

Part Two. What is envy and why is it dangerous?

Envy is the resentment and bitterness we have when we perceive that others have a better situation than ours.

Or perhaps we could define envy this way:

Envy is when we're addicted to the belief that others have better, more exciting, more fulfilling lives than our own because, firstly, we want to believe that such a better life exists and, secondly, feeling we suffer more than others gives us ample opportunity for indulging in the narcissistic deliciousness of self-pity.

The causes of envy are the following:

1. a sense of entitlement; we see others bathing in the glory of their sick materialistic muscle flexing like the TV show Cribs and we feel resentful if we can't have the same things.

2. the Darwinian competition gene; it's in our DNA to dominate others. That's why we like to be the first car at a stop light and we will swerve into the empty lane even at a red light. This is why fights break out at Costco and Christmas sales.

3. narcissism, which compels us to seek more glory and attention than others

4. immaturity; having nothing to define ourselves other than our things.

5. empty life, void of love, friendship, and meaningful work

6. Also some cultures breed envy more than others. A culture, like the United States’, that encourages bragging, ostentation, and bling will stir envy. A culture like Switzerland’s, that encourages modesty and privacy will discourage envy.

The effects of envy are the following:

1. growing obsession with those we perceive to enjoy life more than us resulting in our conniving plots to accelerate their demise

2. all-consuming bitterness, which leads to self-loathing

3. self-pity

4. in extreme cases criminality. “I’m gonna get mine” becomes the impetus for doing "whatever it takes."

Part Three. Twelve Common Fallacies or Misguided Notions About Happiness

1.  Happiness Quest Fallacy: Happiness can be attained by searching for it. In fact, the search for happiness is usually a self-centered, selfish enterprise and is therefore doomed to create even more unhappiness. Most people who seek gurus, psychotherapists, life coaches, self-help books will inevitably find their lives in more ruin and despair than before.

2.  Dominance Fallacy: Happiness can be achieved through Darwinian dominance over others, such as making yourself better looking than others and accruing “better” things, will make you happy. In fact, exercising your impulse for Darwinian dominance, focusing on self-aggrandizement and ostentation, and turning your life into one big boasting session, and animating all your talk with “look-what-I-got” braggadocio makes you obnoxious and therefore lonely and loneliness is a clear indicator for unhappiness.

3.  Chimera Fallacy: Most of your cravings and longings are for what you believe will make you happy are not focused on reality at all but on a chimera, an idealized phantasmagoric representation of life that entices and tantalizes you, but at the same time always eludes your acquisition. In other words, you are often in love with the idea of life more than life itself. You are more in love with the idea of certain car, or the idea of marriage, the idea of home ownership, or the “perfect” body than the realities, which in comparison are always banal, corrupt, grotesque version of the ideal that animates your imagination. Related to the Chimera Fallacy is the Pulchritudinous Fallacy, which states you can not be happy and worthy of love until your body is stunning, beautiful, perfect and embodies the word pulchritude.

4.  Perfection Fallacy (perfection is a chimera, see above): The fallacy of perfection says you cannot be happy unless you have the perfect body, the perfect car, the perfect job, the perfect spouse, the perfect house, the perfect wardrobe, etc. No perfection can be obtained and the process of trying to attain this perfection makes your anal-retentive (or is it the other way around?) and therefore obnoxious and repellant. Further, this perfection quest makes you afraid to live because you fear subjecting your perfect things to real life will ruin them. Thus you cover your furniture in plastic and keep your cars garaged. Your house is more like a mausoleums or museum than it is a real house. Your life is a stage to others and yourself.

5.  Pulchritudinous Fallacy: I won’t be happy unless people love me and no one will love me unless I am the embodiment of pulchritude, exquisite, rarified beauty. Please see Jon Hamm in episode of 30 Rock in which he plays someone of pulchritude and tell me if he’s happy.

6.  Hedonistic Fallacy: The fallacy of hedonism states you cannot be happy unless you are always augmenting your pleasure. To live is to experience pleasure, or so says the hedonist, until he finds that his pleasure quest becomes an obsession and an addiction and that his numbness to stimulation compels him to inflate his hedonistic stimulators to greater and more dangerous levels. The final outcome of hedonism is always nihilism, the sense that life means nothing, addiction, emptiness, numbness, and boredom.

7.  Effortless Fallacy. This fallacy says you cannot be happy unless your life is completely absent of conflict. You no longer have problems, conflicts or crises to deal with. Life with all its responsibilities can be such an inconvenience, after all, and therefore you cannot be happy until you relieve yourselves of these inconveniences. Of course, in doing so we retreat from life itself and regress back to the Womb, the state of Unconscious Slumber (through drugs, alcohol, TV?) and find that we have become spiritually dead.

8.  Narcissistic Fallacy: You cannot be happy unless you persuade the whole world that you’re not only right about things but that your lifestyle (the way you eat, dress, your musical tastes, etc) is so superior to everyone else’s that the whole world should conform to your ways or at the very least aspire to be like you.

9.  Spiteful Fallacy: You cannot be happy unless you have exacted revenge. Someone has wronged you and you cannot find satisfaction in your soul until you spite this offender. Your desire to spite the person is so obsessive that you’re willing to “bite your nose to spite their face.” Your spite will blacken your heart and eventually kill you.

10.               Vindication Fallacy: You cannot be happy unless you prove to your ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend that you are “a winner” and “were the one” and that they “blew it” by dumping you. Or you must prove to a parent or an authority figure that they were egregiously mistaken to predict that you would fail in life. Your whole existence is centered around going back to your ex or your parent and rubbing their nose in your “success.” Of course, you’re acting like a petty egotist and petty egotism evidences woeful unhappiness.

11.               Intellectual Fallacy: This chimera (see above) states that you cannot be happy until you’re worthy of others’ admiration and love through intellectual prowess. Through your extensive research, you become the “highest authority” on some subject or other or you are simply plain smart and you therefore deserve the admiration, love, and respect of others. You may feel that your happiness is contingent on a PhD or the publication of a book or a guest spot on CNN or some such nonsense. In fact, intellectual pride will only make you obnoxious, lonely, and therefore unhappy.

12.               Melancholy Fallacy: You can’t be “deep” and “soulful” unless you’re sad, melancholy, constantly afflicted with Weltschmerz (sadness for the world). This fallacy speaks to a certain type of self-aggrandizement which compels you to take yourself too seriously and as such see yourself as “deeper” than others.

Part Four. Writing a Successful Profile of a Miserable Person:

1. vivid details

2. capture the way the person looks, talks, and acts.

3. understand the person's most egregious psychological flaws

4. use scintillating anecdotes

5. develop a strong transition between the profile and the thesis statement

Example of an "A" grade profile:

I became acquainted with Lawrence Burgess about twenty years ago years ago at my apartment pool. In his mid-thirties, Lawrence, a recent divorcee, was an attorney, who had just transplanted to Bakersfield from Miami. He had the long eyelashes of a camel, lambent blue eyes, and a head of curly sandy, brown hair. Jogging five miles every morning, the six-foot Lawrence had a long-limbed, slender body and tanned albeit wrinkly skin, which he showed off by wearing an expensive collection of hand-painted Speedo briefs, some of which were adorned with leopard spots, others with tropical flora.

Lawrence discarded his Speedos once the colors, faded by the sun and chlorine, lost their sheen and luster, and he’d drive down to Los Angeles to pick up replacements. One day at the pool he remarked to me in his high-pitched scratchy voice about how quickly his Speedos faded. The apartment janitorial staff was obviously dumping too much chlorine into the pool, he once complained to me.

Lawrence had other complaints as well. For one thing, the women in Bakersfield, he whined, were, in comparison to the women he had dated in Miami, ghastly, cankle-afflicted ignoramuses who wanted to rush him into marriage and make several babies.

In spite of his high-status job and good looks, Lawrence had many things in common with the homeless. First, there was Lawrence’s poor hygiene. He had dandruff, he smelled of alcohol and he had an acute case of bad breath.

In spite of his putrid breath, he was a successful womanizer who had stepped on the toes of too many ladies. On one occasion the aggrieved woman became so angry that she made hundreds of photocopies of his mug shot and stapled it around the complex with a caption: “BEWARE! MAJOR SLEAZOID ON THE LOOSE!” I saw one of the photocopies high on a telephone pole and imagined the enraged woman must have used a ladder to get it so far beyond anyone’s reach.

And then Lawrence disappeared after the apartment manager evicted him. Lawrence’s violations were legion. He broke all the pool and hot tub rules, drinking out of glass containers and staying in the hot tub beyond the 10 P.M curfew. But most of all, it was the noise he made in his apartment as his scorned girlfriends, overcome by tantrums, threw irons, pots, and pans at him, so that on too many occasions the police had to be called.

I had forgotten about this lost soul until a few years later when, celebrating a full-time college teaching job in Torrance, California, I was out with my friends at Woody’s nightclub. It was there that I bumped into him. I didn’t recognize him at first. He had lost about six inches in height and barely fit into his baggy suit. We stared at each other for several moments. And then in a great outburst this sun-burned homunculus tightly grabbed my hand and started shaking it up and down in an exaggerated handshake. I looked down at his hand and noticed his fingernails were disturbingly long and filled with caked-in dirt. I tried to let go of his reptilian claw, but his grip was firm and my struggle caused him to spill some of his red wine on my shirt.

“You still live in this hellhole?” he said squinting at me.

“Actually, I got a new job,” I said. “I’m leaving soon.”

As if this last thing I said offended him, he erupted in a spray of bitter laughter, and I smelled a billow of dank rot in my face. I backed away a couple of feet. He turned from me, headed for the bar, ordered another wine, and turned around again, this time looking at the sea of women’s faces. He had dated dozens of them, he boasted with a triumphant grin, but then his face quickly turned to anger. “They were all nothing until they met me!” he blurted, jabbing the air with his finger.

Writhing in his own hellish juices, Lawrence Burgess pathetically fits the template of misery and unhappiness so well defined in Eric Weiner’s masterpiece The Geography of Bliss. In it we find that misery afflicts those like Lawrence who succumb to various fallacies of happiness, which include _______________________, _________________________, ________________________, and _________________________________________.

Important Notes:

Most important chapters for unhappiness are the following:

Chapter 6. Moldova

Chapter 4. Qatar

Most important chapters for happiness are the following:

5. Iceland

7. Thailand

3. Bhutan

2. Switzerland

Posted at 09:40 AM in Geography of Bliss Lessons | Permalink | Comments (0)

1C: Geography of Bliss Lesson #1 Third Revision

Lesson #1: Essay Assignment, Introduction and Chapter 1: Netherlands

In 5 pages, critique the idea of happiness, its fallacies, mythologies and misconcenceptions as you see this twisted happiness evidenced in the book. You must also use personal examples. Your Works Cited page must refer to the book, my blog, and a source of your choice.

Some Common Fallacies About Happiness We'll Explore

1. You can't try to be happy because happiness is the byproduct of a meaningful, purpose-filled life.

2. You must have a mature definition of happiness. If you seek to be happy and by that you mean ego gratification, power, hedonistic pleasure and material wealth, you'll find yourself on a treadmill that leads to despair.

3. Happiness cannot be found in isolation. You need to connect to others.

4. The search for happiness is intrinsically a selfish, immature impulse and therefore doomed to fail from the very start.

5. Getting a "free ride" will never make you happy. Instead, you will rely on the source of your income, become an emotional cripple, and suffer from learned helplessness. And yet many of us fantasize about getting a "free ride."

6. Even though all of us, or most of us, know intellectually that money is not a source of happiness, most of us say, "Screw it" and go for the money anyway, committing ourselves to a life of greed, avarice, and rapacity and thus sealing ourselves into a life of unhappiness.

7. Happiness should never be looked at as an absolute. Rather it is relative to our specific situation. For example, if you're starving a cup of lima beans is a source of joy. If you're rich, a cup of lima beans is not a source of joy.

8. If happiness can be found at all, it cannot materialize unless we have, as Freud said, love and work.

9. Often times when we think we're miserable, we're actually working toward being happy; and when we think we're happy, we're actually working toward being miserable. Or put another way: When we think we're falling in life, we're really rising; and when we think we're rising, we're actually falling.

10. Some people have lower standards for happiness than others. The dumber you are, the easier it is to be happy. The smarter you are, the more difficult it is. Dumb people lack the imagination to see the possibility of a "better world" to aspire to; in contrast, the smart person can imagine this "better world" and the longing for this improved existence, this understanding that such an existence has not materialized, leads to unhappiness.

Dumb people are ignorant and ignorance breeds bliss.

In contrast, smart people think a lot and the more you think, the more unhappy you will be. Over-thinking leads to unhappiness.

Dumb people don't suffer from over-thinking so they tend to be happier than smart people.

Part 1: Writing an Effective Introduction

One. Should transition to your thesis statement.

Two. Should establish your passion for your subject.

Three. Should show your ability to connect abstract ideas to real life situations.

Four. Should pique your reader's interest

Example of an "A" Introduction

I was sixteen in the summer of 1978. The past few months had been tough. My parents separated, and eventually divorced, and my grandmother had just died of leukemia at the age of sixty-four. It was decided I’d spend the summer with my grandfather in San Pedro. He was working for his friend, Forbes, in Carson. Forbes owned a machine shop and my grandfather and I would load and deliver parts in a flatbed truck to industrial centers and ports around Los Angeles. I hated the work. Long back-busting days starting at six and ending around four after which I’d drag myself to the YMCA to workout. I’d come home and go straight to sleep, knowing the monotony would be repeated all over again. I remember one night in particular as I tossed and turned on the pull-out couch, I thought to myself: “So this is what’s it’s going to be like after I get out of school. A full-time job. Misery day in and day out. And for what? So I can go home, catch a workout, steal a little dinner before bedtime, and then go to sleep so I’ll have enough energy to drag myself through the same drudgery the next day? And for what? Nothing, that’s what. Life is shit.” In my mind, all jobs were the same, more or less. You had to show up, you had responsibilities, and you were essentially doing something you didn’t want to do. So at the age of sixteen I had found the truth of existence: Life is shit.

And here I am many years later trying to teach The Geography of Bliss, while tossing pearls of wisdom to my students so that they can find happiness, but I am hardly worthy of teaching a book about happiness because at my very core I am, and always have been, a cynic and a nihilist. Even more disturbing, I am a married man with twin baby girls. A man entrenched in such a cynical attitude is not a pleasant personality for his wife and two daughters to wake up to every day. What’s the cure for such an attitude? Hopefully, in addition to teaching the students, I can learn something myself about the wisdom of the world's happiest cultures, a wisdom that rejects the fallacies of happiness. These fallacies include ___________, ______________, ______________, and __________________.

Part 2: McMahon’s Happiness Test

Are you a nihilist, that is to say, do you believe that happiness and meaning are impossible? Rodney Dangerfield, centripetal, centrifugal motion, movies rely on centrifugal narrative.
Do you believe in meaning (there is a connection between people who have meaning and who say they are happy) and if so what is your meaning?
Is your happiness the byproduct of having meaning or something else such as vanity, wealth, popularity?
Is your life full of false or real necessities?
Do you have a sense of belonging? Explain.
Are your pursuits the result of inner choices or are you bowing down to parental and societal pressure and in essence being a conformist?
Do you have a passion that takes you out of yourself or are you constantly self-centered?
Do you respond to suffering and loss with courage and dignity or are you a sniveling whiner?
Are you waiting around for people to love you? Here's the news: No one will EVER love you. You have to get off your duff and love others first. Only then will they love you.
You can't be enthralled by your personal problems, believing they're special and unique. If you can't see that your problems are everyone else's and thus are universal, you're doomed to be a miserble narcissist.

Part 3: Study Questions from Chapter One.

1. Why is happiness a moral imperative? We’re so programmed to have the drive to“be happy,” whatever that means, and we suffer “the unhappiness of not being happy,” says Darrin McMahon. We seem to be hardwired with the nagging sense that “something isn’t quite right” and we want to make things right.

Sometimes our efforts to make us happy are misguided and backfire. Like we obsess over crap we don't really need and once we get it we don't even like it. The writer Jim Harrison put it this way: "We piss away our lives on nonsense."

That is a serious danger. It seems, then, that our attempts to get rid of the nagging sense that things are not right makes things MORE WRONG. That's the nature of the human beast. For example, a rich woman in Argentina died of heat exhaustion while showing off her body-length mink coat in the bloom of summer.

2. What is solipsism and why can’t we define happiness in terms of solipsism? Happiness is not solipsism or something “inside.” Solipsism is an extreme form of self-centeredness in which you are the only universe. A universe of one. Happiness is the intersection between the inside and the outside; hence the geographical and cultural location is a huge factor. “You can’t have what’s in here unless you have what is out there.” Solipsism is the idea of happiness born from the juvenile and the adolescent who thinks, "I will retire on an island with a crate of Corona and lots of . . . " For Weiner, happiness isn't found in solitude but in culture, family, etc.

3. Why does the author travel the world in search of happiness? Because one idea of happiness is about the search for Paradise on Earth. Happiness is not just on the inside. It’s a function of place.

4. What is the paradox of seeking happiness according to Eric Hoffer? The search for happiness leads to unhappiness. And we might add that Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning that it is absurd to look for happiness. Happiness is the natural byproduct of a meaningful life. In other words, people who are engaged with their work and the love of their life are not centered on the self (remember solipsism) and they experience a certain degree of liberation.

5. Is hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good, a legitimate way to find happiness? Is pleasure the same as happiness? You might want to watch an episode of The Twilight Zone in which a robber dies and thinks he goes to heaven, a place that indulges all his fleshly caprices. You might also consider Tennessee Williams after he became famous and lived in a luxury hotel. Hedonism always dissolves into solipsism.

6. Must hedonism always end in concupiscence, the blind pursuit of pleasure leading to insatiable desires, or can we be moderate in our hedonistic drive? Some people are more capable of moderation than others. Some of us are more prone to addictive, obsessive, excessive behavior and relate to food, alcohol, TV, to name a few examples, in an all or nothing fashion. Hedonism always traps us on the hedonic treadmill. We adapt to pleasure and increase the spike but adapt to it again and again. The end result in numbing.

7. Can and should we measure happiness with brain activity? At the end of the chapter, Weiner shows the absurdity of this and the lack of humanity.

8. What are the shortcomings of using interviews and surveys to measure people’s happiness? People lie, they are confused and can’t answer accurately, or they are self-deceived. See page 12.

9. How would Schopenhauer define happiness? (not in book) The absence of misery and suffering.

10. What’s a better definition of happiness, pleasure or flourishing?

11. What is Darwinian happiness? (not in book) The pleasure and wellbeing of knowing that we look better, feel better, and act smarter than others, resulting in our making more money, living longer, and having better things. Consider the studies that show we prefer relative good looks and wealth for ourselves more than absolute good looks and wealth. For example, we'd reject a salary of 300K a year if EVERYONE made 300K. Rather, we'd take a salary of 60K a year if EVERYONE ELSE only made 20K a year.

12. A better approach to happiness is to forget about happiness and focus on flourishing. We must flourish in life. How do we flourish? What is the connection, if any, between flourishing and virtue? To flourish is to focus on a meaningful passion. One of the great benefits of being focused on a meaningful passion is that you can forget yourself and in turn forget the foolish quest for happiness, which invariably leads to unhappiness. The short definition of flourishing means to find work that is meaningful to you as opposed to being a passive consumer of "happiness." Freud knew this. He said the only thing you can do to mitigate the inherent insanity and misery of life is to find love and work.

13. What are some universal guidelines for happiness? See page 14: Extroverts happier than introverts. Married people happier than single. People with college degrees are happier than those without. People with advanced degrees are LESS happy than those with just a BA. Homogeneous societies like Denmark and Iceland are more happy than heterogeneous societies. I question this. Maybe people are happy with their insulated world but such cultures are too limiting. For example, I’ve been exposed to a lot of diverse food in LA. I couldn’t move to some homogenous society where food diversity is lacking. I’d be miserable. Income is not a predictor for happiness except in extreme poverty.

14. What is a striking contradiction about happiness? Many of the world’s happiest countries have the highest suicide rates. Perhaps countries that offer the highest potential for happiness create a standard that makes depressed people feel their unhappiness even greater.

15. How do countries fare in happiness rankings? Many African nations are at the bottom of the Happiness Index but not Ghana, which is in the middle. Former Soviet Union republics are at the bottom of the Happiness Index, including Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Moldova. Fiji, Bahamas, and Tahiti are in the middle of the Happiness Index.

16. What is Chapter One’s central idea? The Experience Machine, which asks the question: Is hedonism true happiness? If you could plug your brain into the Machine and experience nonstop pure pleasure, would you? Would this be happiness and if not what are the fallacies of such thinking? What would you be missing out on? Life’s richness is far beyond pleasure. Pleasure is an achievement, not a consumer passive experience. You would no longer have the possibility of unhappiness (reminds me of The Twilight Zone episode in which the guy goes to hedonism hell)

Part Four. Happiness as Flourishing or Thriving

1. Finding a noble passion outside yourself and free yourself from the private hell of self-centeredness.

2. Finding a passion that makes demands on your intellect and imagination so you’re always pushing yourself and never capitulating to stagnation and complacency.

3. Developing the discipline to pursue your passion.

4. Cultivating a passion that gives you both distinction and belonging to your community.

5. Cultivating a passion that earns you a livelihood, that is money to live.

6. Cultivating a passion that gives back to the community. Studies show that people with “helping” professions rank the happiest. Nurses are at the top. Bankers are at the bottom.

Part Five. The Consequences of Not Thriving

1. You’ll feebly seek to fill the void through addiction and hedonism. As such you will be the eternal adolescent with no understanding of what it means to grow up and flourish. Sadly, you'll become like Snooky or her band of lost souls from Jersey Shore.

2. You’ll try to distract yourself from not thriving or flourishing by watching lots of TV, compulsively going on the Internet and text-messaging people—all of these activities are directed by anxious, desperate energy.

3. You’ll suffer from lethargy, depression, and acedia (lost in a fog from having no focus)

4. You’ll seek other people who aren’t flourishing because of course misery needs company. The problem is you and your associates (I can’t use the word “friends”) will reinforce each other’s behavior.

5. You’ll eventually succumb to nihilism, the belief that life is all B.S. and means nothing, so it doesn’t matter what you do. Of course, this is a pathetic rationalization for having never flourished.

6. Perhaps you’ll make money but in the absence of flourishing you’ll find meaning through Darwinian fantasies of domination over others.

Posted at 07:48 AM in Geography of Bliss Lessons | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lesson #4 for Summer and Winter Semester: Unhappiness in Qatar and Moldova, and America

Part One. Qatar

1. Weiner’s big question upon visiting Qatar, the richest per capita country in the world: What happens to your soul when you indulge in excess, craven luxury? See page 100.

2. Can all their wealth lead to the good life and happiness and Weiner, relying Betrand Russell, defines it on page 110 as connecting with something larger than yourself? The answer is no because self-indulgence disconnects you from the outside. Self-indulgence results in solipsism, which is the opposite of connected happiness.

3. Qataris are the nouveau riche and as such they possess arrogance and insecurity. See page 102.

4. Wealth makes us unhappy because we instinctively use wealth to isolate and insulate ourselves from the outside world. Happiness is connection with others. Wealthy people tend to be unconnected. See page 114. I’m reminded of Citizen Kane.

5. Qataris have no taxation or representation so they feel disconnected from their own society. See pages 118 and 119.

6. Weiner equates Qataris’ sudden wealth to winning the lottery. Winning the lottery historically is connected with unhappiness and ruin. See pages 122-125: We adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure and then we have adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure again. It’s like a cycle of addiction with nihilism, emptiness, and ruin being our final destination. I see this with my love of cars. We call this the “hedonic treadmill.”

7. We learn on pages 126 and 127 that there’s a gap between our rational intellect and our brain’s hard-wiring or “software.” Sadly, we’re programmed to chase after chimeras (BMWs, wealth, etc.) that don’t make us happy and we can’t even learn from our disappointment but continue to chase chimeras anyway.

8. Some of us are addicted to sadness as it is suggest to Eric Weiner on page 127.

9. Qataris rely on foreign labor so they feel disconnected from their country. They are dependent on cheap foreign labor and are in a way helpless. Rich but helpless. No rules, no laws, no taxes, no work. Just unhappiness.

10. We know nothing. We think we’ll be happy from achievements and wealth (Hindu word is maya, which means illusion) and we feel pained by setbacks (Hindu word is mushkala, which means illusory loss). See page 139.

Part Two. What We Learn from Qatar: Excessive Wealth Makes Even Decent, Well-Intentioned People Become Unhappy

1. When we become wealthy, we understandably become distrustful of others who may feel tempted to take advantage of us, to use us for their gain. As a result, we close our circle and we become more and more disconnected from the world. Think of the film Citizen Kane.

2. This disconnectedness from the world and constant protectiveness makes us feel embattled, which in turn creates a permanent mask of skepticism. Without checks and balances, this skepticism of others’ motives can easily turn to paranoia, an obvious condition of unhappiness.

3. When we’re filthy rich, people no longer relate to us as people. They relate to us as sycophants. Other people’s compulsion to lavish us with praise and be generally obsequious gives us a false sense of grandiosity. We begin to believe we’re as great as people treat us resulting in an obnoxious, undeserved sense of entitlement.

4. When we’re filthy rich, it’s tempting to use our money and power to clean up our messes. We become more reckless in our behavior since we know our money can take care of our errant ways. Think of the recklessness and misery of Bill Murray playing Phil Connors in the classic film Groundhog Day.

5. When we’re filthy rich, we’re compelled by normal human nature to experience “the best” and what we find is that our brains adapt to pleasure and excitement requiring more and more stimulation. The researchers calls this constant adaptation the “hedonic treadmill.” We constantly have to spike our pleasure before we adapt to it and then spike it forever and ever in a an endless cycle with us always losing the pleasure game, resulting in disappointment and frustration. And yes, unhappiness.

6. Like it or not, wealth is a drug both for the wealthy person and others who are intoxicated by the wealthy person’s aura of living on a superior, elevated plane. This mutual intoxication between the wealthy person and his or her admirers creates a sick symbiotic relationship based on fantasy, greed, and envy, components for miserable relationships.

7. It is human nature when we are rich to hire others to do everything for us. Over time we become helpless cripples dependent on our “help.” This, alas, is yet another cause of our unhappiness.

8. As human beings, we have a rational brain that knows wealth is dangerous and most often results in unhappiness but we also are hard-wired to pursue wealth no matter what our rational brain tells us. Understanding this conflict in ourselves and seeing our rational intellect being helpless to curb our irrational appetites, again, is another cause of our unhappiness.

Part Three. Unhappiness in Moldova

1. Envy: To resent others for having a better situation than yours. The unhappy cannot bear the sight of the happy.

2. The human condition is one of contrast: Hot means nothing without cold. Mozart is enhanced by Barry Manilow. Happy places are more interesting because of unhappy ones. The darkest part of the planet is Moldovia. It is the least happy nation on the planet.

3. The body language is sour and bitter and this in turn makes people feel sour and bitter.

4. Natasha says “We have no money for life.” That is her reason, but Weiner doesn’t buy it because he’s visited other countries who in poverty don’t hold that attitude.

5. The male citizens are skinny; the male cops are fat and thuggish, a bad sign.

6. They’ve been beaten down into learned helplessness (see other lectures on this topic) The Moldovans say, “This is Moldova.” Or “What can I do?”

7. Moldovans compare themselves to the richer countries, not the poorer ones. So of course the glass is half empty.

8. The service industry is rude and this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of misery.