Philosophical argument against pursuing happinessfrom @glass__museum

Transcript

Happiness is overrated. Growing up, I really believed that happiness should be the goal of life, played my memories of that one John Lennon quote. But the more I learn and the happier I get, the more I realize that there are other things to value beyond joy. In fact, as someone against injustice, I want to be a killjoy. This is one of author Sarah Ahmed's main points in her book, Living a Feminist Life. In it, she explains how institutions are built as promises of happiness, promises that often hide the violence of these institutions. So to be willing to expose this violence makes someone a killjoy because you're claiming the existence of a pain that most would prefer to ignore. This isn't to say that joy is meaningless. Indeed, joy is tremendously powerful. Hope and happiness are crucial parts of resistance. But in the midst of that joy, we also need to remember that this happiness is a privilege that is not granted equally. Much of our happiness in the imperial core is either directly or indirectly built upon the suffering of others. And so they paradoxically rank unhappiness that happiness can cause. Whether it's the Sheehan decorations that you bought for your bachelorette party tier your honeymoon trip to Dubai, while you may be celebrating the happiest day of your life, this happiness is built upon the suffering of others. The elevation of happiness as the ultimate purpose of life entails a willful ignorance towards all the cruelty that exists. Because it's hard to be happy when you think about death or misery or suffering. But the thing is, there's always someone dying and miserable and suffering. Happiness, then, must require one to distance oneself from pain. It's the reason people avert their eyes from their unhoused neighbors, why people like to stay in the good part of town. But this distance ultimately does nothing to change reality. Not thinking about uncomfortable things doesn't change the fact that this discomfort continues to worst. And it's this distance, this tolerance for the status quo that ultimately enables all the death and misery and suffering to continue. To uphold happiness as the highest value is to comply with the system No, on the other hand, are not grateful when that system is extended to include us, when that system is predicated on inequality and violence. And calling out that violence means disrupting the comfort of people's willful ignorance. Well, why can't you just let people enjoy things? They all scream in good unison. Why would you make me confront all these sad, poor people when I'm trying to be happy? To which Ahmed would reply, because your enjoyment is a fantasy that the system created for a privileged few. Sometimes you gotta kill the vibe because the vibe in question is an illusion maintained by a denial of reality. This illusion of happiness rooted in ignorance is also explored by author Ta Nehisi Coates in his book Better the World and Me, where he refers to this as the dream. He writes that, For so long, I have wanted to escape into the dream, to fold my country over my head like a rank. But this had never been an option because the dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. The dream persists by warring with a known world. The dream is perfect houses and nice lawns. It's Memorial Day cookouts, treehouses, and cub scouts. It's all our ideas of what a happy life entails. But this dream can only be made reality through the exploitation of others, and most would prefer to reject this inconvenient truth. Thinking about injustice doesn't make me happy. Happy. I'm angry and upset and ashamed, and rightfully so. These feelings can be uncomfortable, but I think they're necessary, powerful feelings that should be embraced. We're complicit benefactors of an unjust system, and we can either ignore this fact of reality and live in an ignorant manufactured utopia of complacency, or we can face the darkness directly and channel these feelings towards change.