Cold Constructs Blog

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Colin McGinn over at the Wall Street Journal posted a wonderful review of Watson’s book Against Happiness.

I must say that this view of happiness would go far to turn us towards a better direction in reality. Currently, it seems all we care about is happiness in and of itself. This neglects the better things in life such as satisfaction, which doesn’t necessarily end with happiness. With pure happiness (which is close to what McGinn correctly identifies as a kind of hedonism) there is no reason to make things better because they’re already so good. But how can they be? A quick look around the world and yes even around you personally and of course within your very own cognition… all is not well.

It should come as no surprise that ignoring the negativity would only result in a dull shell of a being. Take some time out to passively observe the patterns in nature. You will see that there is one fundamental principal on which the world operates: balance. Yes, too much CO2 is bad but so is too little. Certainly a lot of carnivores will ravage the lands if they’re in abundance, but without them the lands would be ravished by the herbivores. The systems of the world balance at the edge of order and chaos, achieving a beautiful synergy of opposing forces. (I’m not Buhddist, but I am a systemic thinker.)

So with a balance of happiness and sadness, we are brought away from superficiality, away from self-destructiveness, towards a keen understanding of life that can only be attained from a balanced perspective. Question yourself, the things people do and say, the way things happen. Do not blindly accept cultural norms or products as they are because everything we’ve made and done has flaws–whether it’s a flaw in usability, short-sightedness, resource usage, engineering, ignorance or what-have-you.

Interestingly, McGinn justly points out that Watson doesn’t identify sadness as having intrinsic value like happiness does. Why is happiness valuable? It obviously isn’t enough to simply be happy. As McGinn says, pessimism can lead to thoughtfulness, depth, or to add my own, the charge to improve things. Happiness, Watson argues, leads to stagnation and emptiness. So why shouldn’t sadness be held in at least as high regard as happiness? I know that I am much more satisfied with life when I am accomplishing something or fighting for something better, even though the battle inevitably brings along sadness. That is the nature of progress, movement, adventure. Embrace it why don’t we?!

Of course we shouldn’t become cursed wretches–we must approach it with a balanced perspective. Sadness is as good as happiness, not better or worse. They both have their place in our being. They can both lead to better living. But neither of them are ends in themselves. There is no end in life, but death itself. True satisfaction is in the adventure. As Lewis Black said about the book, “there are important lessons in our pain and.. a smile may make a better moment, but not a better world.” Dissatisfaction, after all, is what makes the world go round.

The first step towards real change is a change of perspective–a change in how you view the world.

I recently saw a couple movies that express excellent worldviews. The fact that they’re movies is incredibly important, because movies communicate messages in the most intelligible form known to man: stories. In Syriana, it isn’t about madmen bent on the destruction of the human race. It’s about a few ordinary men, doing their jobs. All they do is act in their best interests, and survive–even if it means securing themselves not in this world, but the next. It’s a symphony of tragedies. The relationship between these lives create the web of reality, and while their individual actions are local, together those actions make a global impact. The characters were closed-minded, paying no attention to the grand scheme of things, questioning nothing beyond their immediate environment or their place in it. That was their mistake. In the end some of them gain (or re-gain) a proper perspective, but sometimes it was too little too late.

In Lord of War, Nicolous Cage played the role of a salesman. He sold weaponry, and he was good at it. Arms proliferation is generally a Bad Thing, since there wouldn’t be the means for undeveloped countries to kill their own people or each other. Yes, they can use machetes (it’s happened) but shooting a gun is easier than hacking off limbs. But it doesn’t matter. This is a big world, no matter how small the internet makes it look. There are people in high places who, just as in Syriana, are just doing their job. What they do affects more people than they can imagine, but indeed they can’t imagine much if they don’t question their role in society and what that implies. Those that can’t are weak and do not wish to succeed, where success means leaving the world a better place than it was when you arrived. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

I’ve heard some say that smoking is a part of who a person is. If this is true, then that person is also destructive, because smoking is destructive - not only to the smoker but everyone around them as well.

I don’t smoke because I respect my body. I want to stay healthy so that I can live a full life, but this wouldn’t be possible if I let certain chemicals get the better of me. To let those chemicals overcome you and take control is a sign of weakness.

Why the fuck do we put up with bad air? Not just smoking or other poisonous inhalant but pollution as well. I’m finding it really fucking difficult to ride my bike to campus without getting a lung full of poisonous gas. I bet if we had an endless supply of coal and oil, we would never stop using it. Even to the point of destruction, only because it’s the path of least resistance.

If we stopped using it immediately, the systems of Earth would eventually bring themselves back into a healthy, stable state. Already we are paying for our great Industrial Revolution with shit like that tsunami, hurricane Katrina, and other deadly natural disasters. I said there will be bad hurricanes this year a while ago. I’m saying it again: there will be more bad weather, a lot more, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. With smart designs we can limit the damage and if we stopped burning coal and oil we’ll guarantee our children (and us, the future elders) safe living from the elements.

Sorry, but I mislead you. I said making the world a better place is easy. Well, it’s not. The easy part is figuring out what to do, but getting people to actually do it… that’s a whole ‘nother game.

Our technology is becoming advanced enough to allow a few people to make a huge difference, for better or worse. It could be our savior or our grim reaper. Either way, the solutions I propose on this blog are getting closer to reality by the day, but some things, such as smoking, don’t require any tech at all - only a simple wake-up call and some self-determination.

Smokers will argue that quiting is nothing to take lightly, or ask if I’ve tried it myself. Well, I wasn’t dumb enough to start in the first place, suckah.

Read this. NOW.

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idle­ness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for nothing did our mothers grow suspicious when we had “too much time on our hands.” They knew we might be up to something. And not for nothing did we whisper to each other, when we were up to something, “Quick, look busy.”

I can’t help it. I have to comment on the (forthcoming) genocide in Sudan. It’s exactly what happened with Rwanda: UN people talked about it a bit, expressed some concern, but generally didn’t give a fuck. They might send some troops, but they will be too few or do nothing, or both. The killing will happen, I’m certain.

It’s because we’re complacent. We don’t care. There’s no economic gain if anyone goes in. We can’t just stop genocides on the grounds of being caring, concerned human beings. Maybe you’ve forgotten what it was to be human - innately evil and greedy. Evil overcomes the good because the good don’t want to fight and defend themselves (they think it’s unnecassary). The good guys need to fight hate with hate, evil with evil, fire with fire, whatever you want to call it. The only way to stop those people from killing millions in Sudan is to kill them.

Maybe we’re evil now because only the evil people survived by taking advantage of good people. Maybe because we let sin into the world against God’s command. Or maybe because being evil is too easy, and we’re lazy. Plus we like it. Fact of the matter is, we’re mostly evil. Let’s not be naive about it - do something. One person can’t do much, but then where does change start?