on happiness, part II

i feel like i should write about this somewhere or other, and i'm feeling the blog over the journal for this one - it should at least be available for someone to read sometime. i suppose that is the purpose of all this nonsense, anyway, right?

well, here goes, happiness, part II:

i'm in a class about "Conceptions of Human Nature" - basically talking about how/if humans are unique, and what we should do about this. we talk about rationality and the potential for "happiness" a lot.

about a month ago i came up with this:

if -
the goal of human life is happiness
and -
we've been knowingly evolving

why aren't we all the happiest yet?

either we're confused: happiness isn't our goal (maybe it's the pursuit that we want), or we've never explicitly set out and consciously evolved with this aim, or there are other forces that have come between our evolution and ultimate happiness.

why are they called "intentional communities"? what are the rest? would this suggest that evolution (social evolution) is not guided (i.e. by people)?

it seems like we're lacking an explicit collective social consciousness, but [[i think]] we rely on it nonetheless.

today, march 5th, as i was walking to my spanish class i was thinking:
this place makes my stomach hurt. it makes me sad - but i don't even know what that means anymore. walking to class all i see is destruction, sadness, death. i see no value. i see a system where replace this notion of value with an idea of money, a set of numbers and unintelligible rules. i am ashamed. i am ashamed of my part in it all. for i no longer know what to say - how to relate - how to relate to someone so used to being left alone, blinded and convinced that consumption, an iPod, a cell phone will solve these problems. institutions have become the community. they must - how else will we find ourselves, others? who works for whom? am i a slave to institutions - or otherwise? why is it this relationship: master & slave? in communities there is no such thing, no such potential.

later, we were talking about nihilism in class. basically it's like "why don't we all just kill ourselves..." and there is no answer. or, well, the answer is like this: if we killed ourselves it wouldn't matter anyway, so what's even the point of that. if it happens it happens.

right.

and in the class right after that, Social Cognition (300 level Psychology class), we're talking about "Subjective Well-Being" (the measure psych'ists have come up to approach what normal people call happiness)...

here's some scary shit:

-in 1940, only 40% of houses had showers or baths, and only 35% had toilets.

between 1957 and 1998 in America:
-"real wages" (i.e. spending power, adjusted for inflation) doubled

-but subjective well-being basically stayed the same. 33-35% of people report themselves as, "very happy"

what does this all mean? that money, and/or quality of life doesn't make us happy?

what is the purpose of life, if not the pursuit of happiness? are we moving closer to this ideal collectively? do we have any hope as a species?

needless to say, today was kind of a depressing day.