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Happiness is not getting what you want, it is getting what is good Everyone wants what is good for them, people just disagree about what things are good and some people unfortunately become very confused about what is good for them. This is an opportunity wasted because the pursuit of happiness in our lives is perhaps the most powerful motivator for a human being. It does not guide us towards becoming better in any significant way. Happiness in this sense is also not particularly helpful. Getting what you want does not make YOU better Which means to say that, very often, getting what you want is not your own achievement, it is someone else’s achievement. Also, and more significantly, you could get what you want despite your best efforts, not because of your best efforts. After all, you might want something that is mundane or perverse. There are surely at least some achievements that are more significant than getting what you want. At least, it is odd to think of this happiness as the highest possible achievement of a human life. If this is what happiness is, it also makes happiness unimportant in a human life. In these cases, happiness would actually require them to act inappropriately. More to the point, there are times when someone getting what they want will mean, for them, being a bad person or doing something that they themselves recognise is not right or appropriate. Theoretically, you could be a saint and get what you want you could be a sinner and get what you want or, you could even be entirely inert and get what you want, by the good graces of someone else. In part, this means that bad people can be happy. Getting what you want has nothing to do with being a good personīut, if this is what happiness is, then it puts happiness at odds with being a good person. Happiness today can broadly be described as a matter of getting and having what you want. These descriptions of happiness are richer than the happiness we have in mind today. Eudaimonia can be described simply as having the things that are good or more actively as having a life that is directed towards to the good alternatively, as having a life that is optimally structured in relation to things that are good or are of value or, a life that is actively maintained in a good condition by a governing power. The richness of this term lends itself to a rich diversity of interpretive descriptions.
#PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS CONSTITUTION PLUS#
Eudaimonia is a compound word made up of the prefix eu, meaning something akin to “well” or “having abundance”, plus the noun daimon, the power that controls or governs one’s destiny. The classical Greek word used by many great thinkers to refer to happiness was the word “ eudaimonia”.
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Philosophers devoted a lot time to understanding it. Historically, happiness was a very important concept. I, for one, have benefited greatly from seeking guidance from some of the great thinkers of history who devoted an appropriate amount of energy to the topic. Ironically, despite the vast array of technological developments we have amassed as a species you could argue that we have gone backwards in our general understanding of the deeper truths of our own happiness. We are going to work for the wrong reasons because we do not really understand what happiness is and what we need to do to achieve it. It makes us miserable because we are going to work for the wrong reasons. Work increases our wealth but makes us miserable. Too many of us experience our work lives as alienating, draining and overwhelming. We all understand that, no matter how successful you are, if you are not at all happy, if you are miserable, there is, at the very least, something important you have not gotten right in your life. It is regrettable because happiness is very important. Regrettably, happiness is not something we understand very well these days. We are, unfortunately, as a society, not helped by the guidance we get about happiness.
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The successful can and do suffer, struggle, and fail to attain a real sense of happiness and well being in their lives. One thing is absolutely certain, the poor do not have a monopoly on suffering. One thing I have learnt when working and interacting with very senior, wealthy and influential people throughout the world however, is that success does not necessarily bring happiness. The pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right in the American constitution.