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.

Environmentalists, hippies, tree-huggers, whatever you want to call them… they’re all selfish bastards just like you and me. The only difference is that they’re not stupid. They understand the whole “look before you leap” idiomatic expression. They know that the more damage we do to our planet the more damage the planet will do to us. That’s why they’re selfish–they don’t care about the planet, they just want to make sure the planet doesn’t kill us. As it is we’re killing ourselves directly, which is just fine, but to have an entire ecosystem turn on you is just begging for a painful death.

We have all these great ways to utilize natural kinetics that doesn’t damage our world, from the ocean to the wind to the sun… we have the technological capability, we’re just too retarded to use it. Well, you are. Apathy is indeed synonymous with stupidity. Ever heard of Kitty Genovese? Yeah, it’s like that.

So we’re in some pretty deep shit now. The severity of the danger of our ecosystem collapsing is pretty obvious–you simply have to look. Or smell. I can’t stand cities because I can’t breathe in cities. Or, have someone do the looking for you. That BBC series tales a look at the status of our planet, which was nice. I love the BBC. While I was in Cambridge, I enjoyed watching it all the time and reading their excellent articles. This series is an excellent example of their usefulness. America needs a BBC dammit. But then we’d have to pay ‘TV licenses’ and shit like that. Meh.

Anyway. The benefits of sustainable energy are immense and so powerful that it allows some nations to leapfrog past the industrial age into… the next one, whatever they’ll call it.

But for sure we can’t just sit on the sidelines, screaming “no don’t do that!“. Luckily, we’re getting more powerful, becoming smart mobs… and now we’re in, everywhere, and we’re actually going to do something about it. If things go the tree-huggers’ way, I’ll be able to take a nice full breath of sweet, natural air wherever I am. I’m in.

Groups of people are the most fascinating things. A person is an individual that could be completely autonomous and even survive on their own if they’re strong enough, mentally and physically. But these individuals are components of a larger system. We’re simply social animals that demand other people to not just have a better chance of surviving, but really living as well. Put individuals in a group, and the plot suddenly twists. The individual becomes a mindless drone, dependent on the surrounding persons in order to make decisions. Groups of people eventually create customs and traditions, which are the basis of culture. Certain customs are more effective than others. So which countries have effective cultures and how did they accomplish it?

I’ve been to Norway and discovered how incredibly nice they are. Everyone can speak English, and quite good English at that, so I was able to talk to them and get to know them a little. I noticed how liberal they were with the human body. Naked statues (mostly female, if not all) were everywhere. So nudity is socially acceptable within their society. The same goes for Italy and France–others as well, but not to such extent. What about a nation that condemns sex publicly, such as the USA? We also embrace violence, and I think this can be noticed in our foreign policy…

However, sex nor violence do not make or break a nation. It has little to do with how the nation fares defensively and economically. There’s one rule that everyone needs to keep on mind: there are exceptions to every rule. Simple, true, and it can get you out of tough decisions sometimes, somehow. You realize you can’t make everyone happy, not everything will work, and there’s nothing you can do about it unless you want to burden the system and keep it from realizing its potential. Victorian England and the USA condemn sex, and they were pretty powerful. Muslim countries also condemn sex, but they suck more shit than my toilet does after I had some bigass bean burritos. There are numerous countries who embrace sexual freedom and they’re having a great time, such as Scandinavia. Thing is, here there are too many exceptions. So many that the rule must be wrong. There is no correlation between sex and a country’s greatness. Do any social customs matter at the national level? Do they make countries more progressive of hinder them?

When I created this post I set out to discover the relationship between social customs and their effect at the national level. I didn’t expect to find no relation at all. I only discovered that, perhaps, social customs remain effective at the social level. “Society” is defined as interactions between individuals, in groups or not. They come in all sizes, but none can be correctly identified as being larger than a single province within the nation, according to population and not geographical location. Social customs are just the way individuals act, and they don’t influence matters at a higher level. Of course there are exceptions…

I’m in Cambridge, England right now and have visited Italy (Florence and Venice), Austria (Salzburg), and Germany (Munich). What theme runs between all of these places? America. American music, t-shirts, and other products, stores, restaurants, and everything else are all here! WHY? Why can’t I hear any German techno at Oktoberfest (I didn’t) or see the fucking palace in Venice without a Hollywood movie shoot in front of it? (Seriously. I took a picture.) WHY in America can’t I find the best French science fiction books? Why do I hear more about Hollywood movies than original English films while I’m here?

Even overseas I can’t get away from American shit - it was bad enough in Central America. I left in the hopes of learning about the world that America is trying so feverishly to assimilate into a single, boring empire of pseudo-democracy. But I find it impossible to ignore its presence here, there, anywhere.

Americans don’t understand this. I want choices, but we’re being cut off from the world. I want to listen to what it has to say.

In America itself we have limited choices: corporation’s dominate all markets, cowering in fear of innovation as if risk and challenging traditions always brought destruction and bankruptcy. The United States of America was born from such a challenge! Today, however, Change is Bad(tm) and the US of A is now The Imperial Federation of Aristocrats. When will I be able to absorb great works from around the globe?

But what do you expect. All the fucking hippies are in power. We, the children of hippies, will throw down the gauntlet and get dirty. We’ll change the world, because right now, it really blows. On behalf of our parents, I apologize, because it’s their fault. Everyone will just have to wait until they retire.