To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Per the entry on Ralph Waldo Emerson at Wikiquote:
-- "Widely attributed to Emerson on the internet, this actually originates with
"What is Success?” by Bessie Anderson Stanley
in Heart Throbs Volume Two (1911) Edited by Joseph Mitchell Chapple."
-- Apparently the result of a contest in which Chapple requested submissions concerning
"those things that make us all kin; those things that endure -- the classics of our own lives."
Thanks to Karl Giberson for the pointer and, a bit of a note on how I do things around here --
I found Giberson's site through a post by PZ Myers to his blog Pharyngula.
In general, I strongly side with Myers in support of rationalism, evolution and the Scientific Method
as against supernaturalism, obscurantism, and irrationalism,
but I think that he's often ruder about it than is strictly called for.
In this case, I found that Myers' criticism -- which he summarizes here as
"I detest the rarefied apologetics of sympathetic theologians
as much as I do the bleatings of the purblind literalists"
-- made Giberson's comments more attractive by comparison.
The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler
Written between 1873-1884,
but because of its controversial nature,
not published until 1903, after the author's death.
"Reader, did you ever have an income at best none too large, which died with you, all except £200 a year? (I.e., your kids are going to be poor unless they can find good jobs or good marriages.) Did you ever at the same time have two sons who must be started in life somehow, and five daughters still unmarried for whom you would only be too thankful to find husbands -- if you knew how to find them?
If morality is that which, on the whole, brings a man peace in his declining years -- if, that is to say, it is not an utter swindle, can you under these circumstances flatter yourself that you have led a moral life?
And this, even though your wife has been so good a woman that you have not grown tired of her, and has not fallen into such ill-health as lowers your own health in sympathy; and though your family has grown up vigorous, amiable, and blessed with common sense.
I know many old men and women who are reputed moral, but who are living with partners whom they have long ceased to love, or who have ugly disagreeable maiden daughters for whom they have never been able to find husbands -- daughters whom they loathe and by whom they are loathed in secret, or sons whose folly or extravagance is a perpetual wear and worry to them. Is it moral for a man to have brought such things upon himself? Someone should do for morals what that old Pecksniff (i.e. "hypocrit") Bacon has obtained the credit of having done for science."
This is a criticism of the Victorian image of "Mrs Grundy",
or the personification of socially-acceptable propriety.
If you've lived what others consider to be "a good life", but you're still unhappy --
and/or people who depend on you are or will be unhappy --
shouldn't you have done things differently?
"....living successfully, doing well in life, flourishing, andthriving. With this definition in mind, we can begin to follow the argument that eudaimonia is the end result of all of our actions."
"Now the good life isn't consumer goods and things like that. The good life is the life of happiness or eudaimonia. That's theGreek word.... That's happiness. We're guaranteed the right for the pursuit for the right of eudaimonia.... What does that mean? That means the life of human flourishing......
Not only do we no longer know what the good lifeis, but our replacement for it is infantile.... We have a population of children, of adolescents. Studies are indicating that peopleare carrying adolescence into their mid-thirties instead of 23, 24. It's basically our culture. But the good life is shaped by theaverage guy who's a beer drinking guy and drives a Toyota truck and likes to watch 'chicks' on the beach and go through a lotof consumer goods and have a blast. *. He's about twelve years old inside. He thinks below his belt and that's about the size of it.He's not an adult, he's a child. And if you threaten his toys he gets mad....
So this new definition is dehumanizing and infantalizing. And what it will do is it will cause a decrease of human flourishing withone key exception. In order for people to flourish with a bad definition of the good life, they're going to have to practice denialbecause they will, in fact, not be living in the way that they were meant to live and what their nature is. And the only way to dothat and not experience the pain is to anesthetize oneself. But the price you pay for anesthetization is you lose touch with realityand you cease to be truly human.
...But people can still be happy, they can still flourish to a degree if they have enough power and they can oppose their will on others andhave enough peace and goods and prosperity. Those people can be happy. But the price that they will pay will that it will anesthetizethemselves from the pain of living the way they were not meant to live. To some degree this will produce passive, listless, dependentpeople. Except for some it will produce aggressive, achiever oriented people because people will have to pursue....
It's like Turkish Delight in C.S. Lewis, you've got to have more and more of it. You have to pursue more of it and the goal will bepleasure and you'll have to impose your will. The key is not the guy with the most toys wins, he who dies with the most toys and beatsthe other guy wins."
* I'd also add spectator sports and especially television here as my own personal betes mal.
"Our ability to achieve EUDAIMONIA depends upon our having (some) power & access to resources in the world. The powerless never actualize their (moral) potential....
Since the good life (EUDAIMONIA) requires power, ethics is built upon a base of politics; without (some) wealth and security the individual cannot realize (actualize) his/her potential politics therefore includes economics: wealth, its origins, its kinds (use-value, exchange-value, and the hybrid money) Aristotle on the best POLIS: a vigorous city with broad popular support and a strong "middle class" ."
Encyclopedia of Jewish Concepts
by Philip Birnbaum
page 601
(previously published as A Book of Jewish Concepts)
"When the United States and the former Soviet Union co-existed for decades without declaring war on each other, that armed truce was not shalom. If neighbors in an apartment building never exchange cross words because they never exchange any words, that is also not shalom. The word shalom comes from the word shalem, meaning complete, all parts together. Shalom is when all parts of the whole, all people in the group, blend together in harmony."
"...the Hebrew word "Shalom"....is translated in a variety of ways but points to a sense of peace that only God can provide. It is translated sometimes as whole, full, or finished. It also carries with it a sense of being well or in good health. There is the idea of fulfilling an obligation, either a contractual agreement to do a task or the repayment of a loan, as well. Overall it expresses the deepest desire of the human heart which can only be filled by the God of Peace."
"The word traditionally translated into English as "blessed" or "happy" is in the Greek original μακαριος (makarios). A more literal translation into contemporary English may be 'possessing an inward contentedness and joy that is not affected by the physical circumstances'."
Beatitudes - Wikipedia
.
"The term welfareshortage is self-descriptive, that is, there is a shortage of welfare (click here for definition). We wish to use the term always in a special and emphatic sense. We shall therefore throughout this article write the two words as one and use italics.
The term is an exact translation of a word we originally read in the Dutch language, namely, welvaartstekort. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, under all conditions, there is even among the richest of nations and the richest of men a permanent, inescapable welfareshortage.
Moses taught that there would be a permanent and universal welfareshortage. This idea is, however, not accepted by many religious leaders. By denying this Biblical doctrine of a permanent welfareshortage (as taught by Moses) those leaders establish a (false) "ground" or reason for interventionism into economic affairs by governments."....
"C. A. Verryn Stuart was a Netherlander who died a few years ago. He was in his lifetime professor of economics at the StateUniversity in Utrecht (Netherlands). In 1920 he wrote a basic textbook in economics which during his lifetime went through sixprintings. The title for the sixth revised edition is: De Wetenschap der Economie en de Grondslagen van hetSociaal-Economisch Leven (De Erven F. Bohn N.V., Haarlem, 1947). In English this title would read: The Science ofEconomics and the Foundations of Social-Economic Life."
Verryn Stuart teaches that there isa universal welfareshortage, universal in time and place. This is a very fundamental idea. We shall, in what follows, quotebriefly from the first chapter of Verryn Stuart's book, and explain his ideas. Readers can proceed in the assumption that in thismatter of welfareshortage we are in unqualified agreement with this famous Dutch economist. (Quotations are our translation.)....
.
Definition:
"Welfare (prosperity, welvaart) then is:
the capacity of a man to satisfy the desires of which he has become conscious. The idea expresses a condition of balance between wants and the means of satisfying them. (go back) However, because of the character of conscious life which is a continuous wanting, the attainment of balance is not accomplished; there is only a pursuit of balance. Every satisfied want makes way for an active new want."
"The Universal 'Welfareshortage' "
by Frederick Nymeyer
Progressive Calvinism, July, 1956
One of the most interesting parts of Fahrenheit 451 is happiness. Faber, Montag's friend who was a former college professor, listed and discussed three things a person needs for true happiness (p. 83). In summary, to be happy, a persons needs:
- quality information with depth
- leisure time to digest the information and think (leisure time, not free time)
- the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.
"Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career (or at least help your husband to) and keep our country strong and be a success in everything; instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It won't sound right. It's going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if -- only if -- you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they're beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about success?"
(I have slightly edited punctuation for clarity -- ed.)
"... the level of one's socio-economic status has meager effects on one's "sense of well-being" and no significant effect on "satisfaction with life as a whole," to quote researchers Frank Andrews and Stephen Withey.
Psychologist Jonathan Freedman discovered that levels of reported happiness did not vary greatly among the members of different economic classes, with the exception of the very poor, who tended to be less happy than others."