Happine$$?

I was watching a TED video on happiness by a world famous behavior scientist named Daniel Kahneman (link: http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html, the video is very cool and does the topic much more justice than I do.) and he talked about a Gallup Poll he participating in creating that asked about the happiness of people relative to their wealth. Now the entire video as a whole was incredibly interesting in referencing the last blog assignment, in dealing with how we value our lives, which experiences we find valuable, and how we view them in memory. In reference to the poll, however, the happiness of those making under $60,000 a year clearly diminished the further down the income scale you went. However, after $60,000 a year, the line is flat. This reminded me of one of the experiences which I had hoped to have that I talked about in my blog, which was being ultra-wealthy to perhaps experiences what Eighton called a "transience of material being." It seems however, from a quantitative standpoint, that the "happiness" which money can buy, and perhaps the needs that it can fulfill, only last up to a certain point. A relatively low point when you think about the happiness that is normally associated with huge yachts and private islands of the billionaires, in comparison with those who have an income of $60,000. What is represented here, which changed my thinking about the matter of wealth and happiness, is a need for something more than material wealth at a point when just basic aesthetic needs are met. I'm not entirely sure what the flat lining of happiness at a very specific monetary number means. The value and functionality of $60,000 is different from person to person, and from single person to couple to family of six, however an interesting and witty observation of the lecturer was that, "money does not buy you experiential happiness, but not having money certainly buys you misery."

Good Experience Hunting

Value is inherently subjective. Just as the song suggests, the “why” of life is a “lesson learned in time,” a lesson that is differentiated among the unique experiences that each person goes through. If for some reason, I could work against the message of the song, in letting “time grab me by the hand” and directing me “where to go,” then I would attempt to experience mostly the things which I desire to know most about, so that one day I may speak truthfully to them in my own subjective way. That is experienced meaning, and here’s why:
    The first “possession” is a bit cliche, however it has a greater meaning to me and in the wider scope of humanity. I would like, one day, to be obscenely wealthy and have a nearly unlimited amount of money. I would be lying if I said this desire wasn’t partly out of a want to buy lots of extravagant items and have an vast amount of political power in the post Citizens United world. However, the true personal value of unlimited capital is in the transcendence of material objects and basic necessities. If all of my basic needs were guaranteed to be met in surplus, if I were to never have to worry about money. Additionally, if I always had the ability to buy the bigger, and the better and the shinier, I would hope to experience a sort of transcendence over material object. It is not necessarily the money that is important, but the experience I hope to have. I hope to one day be able to feel like I can be totally committed to something other than meeting instinctual and other various needs below that of transcendence on Maslow’s pyramid. Exorbitant riches is just a means with considerable other perks that meet other needs as well. The idea actually came from a man who was the opposite of a billionaire. In an essay entitled “On Dumpster Diving,” by Lars Eighner, after being poor so long and finding strictly instrumental, temporary use of material goods for so long, Eighner writes that he comes to a moment in which he truly realized the impermanence and insignificance of tangible objects. It was a feeling he remarked he shared only with the wealthy, of the total “transience of material being” that highlights the relative significance of ideals. In regards to an importance to humanity, I believe the value stems from a similar idea. The progression of humanity as a whole has come from the expansion of our minds and efforts beyond that of basic necessity. From an anthropological standpoint, humanity began to invent, write, speak and form coherent ideas only when agriculture made it possible to have a surplus in food, so that humans could spend their time and energy doing things other than fending for basic necessity. However possible this was without achieving innumerable riches, the concept of totally breaking free from material and necessary goods and objects is intriguing and only known, in my view, through experience.
    When thinking about the significance of experience, I often recall my favorite scene in Good Will Hunting, when Dr. Maguire reams Will out for debasing his wife on the grounds of Will’s lack of worldly experience. He castigates Will’s presumptuousness about his life and claims it unfounded, remarking that although he could probably tell him everything there is to have read about war, and Michaelangelo and love, he has never truly experienced any of those things. This is one of my favorite scenes because I have a strong belief that knowledge is legitimized to a great extent through experience, although not always possible as we cannot experience everything there is to experience. An area of study I particularly value is government, and I think that to be able to speak to it one day in my old age with satisfaction of my knowledge of it, I would like to have experienced being part of it. Again, with the caveat of inherent human selfishness, I can’t say that his desire doesn’t entirely come out of a need or want for power. However, I don’t think it’s importance should be diminished because of it. There can be dual satisfaction to my participation in government, as the value I am here attributing to it, is solely that of experience and learning. For me, it would fulfill a personal desire to learn through experience and know firsthand what the impact of the decision making process and public policy from a perspective foreign to those outside of the process. A distinctly human value of learning through experience, especially through the realm of government, is informative and life-fulfilling. If we could learn all that life had to offer from a book or from some uploaded link, or any other way that didn’t involve living life, I personally wouldn’t see any point in living. In many ways, we live to learn, not just to have the time to learn from a second hand perspective, but to serve the function of the primary receptor of information and subjectively process the world around us to understand it better in our own way.
    Another experience which fits under the experience based learning umbrella of the previous example, is perhaps a contradictory example. I want in many ways to experience war. Much of what I hope to accomplish in life, is derived from the dedication to a human ideal which I believe strongly in, which my dedication to is strongly urged on by the “last full measure of devotion” given towards it by soldiers of our history. While one may look upon this as a naive, romanticism of patriotic values and war, I do not believe war is productive, nor is it the right of any human to impose force on another unless out of utter necessity. That line of necessity is certainly a point of contention, however, my ideas on war as a whole are wholly unformed in my opinion based on the fact that I have never been to a war. Not that any part of me wants to experience the hell of war, however the epistemologically curious side of my mind drives me to desire to experience that which I desire to speak knowledgeably on, for that is a point of ultimate personal satisfaction and value. Perhaps this is a naive sentiment, and contradictory no doubt considering that no rational part of my psyche would willingly place itself in the throngs of battle for merely the interest. What would motivate one to, for lack of a better term than that of Full Metal Jacket, to put oneself “in a world of (expletive)?” Another question which I believe could only be found through application. I believe the human value in the experience of war would be to despise it. Although I am speaking from what I would consider a perspective of epistemological insufficiency, I don’t believe that it would be too baseless to say that war is undesirable if at all avoidable. If all of humanity who hasn’t been to war knew its true personal costs, than war would disappear off the face of the Earth, I think that would be a good thing.
    An experience I would like to have before I die is best described as the Walden experience. True I am ripping off Thoreau’s idea, however I value nature as an integral and often forgotten part of my life and the lives of all of humanity. Perhaps it is just an aesthetic appreciation or actually an enlightening distance from society that could be gained from spending a significant amount of time drinking in the magic of the natural world, however it is something I could not speak to with any certainty until doing it. Although hopelessly cliche, I do think the inherent connection humanity has with nature is undervalued, and we could all gain some amount of appreciation for the visceral beauty and value of the world around us just as it was before technology and as it continues to be in many places.
     A final experience I would like to have, is to write a memoir. I believe this would be an experience of ultimate self understanding. Not just a memoir, but a manifesto of understanding of Nate Gallant. To be able to go through the channels and previous experiences of my life with retrospect and track the events and perceptions that have formed the body and mind writing the memoir, would be the ultimate feat of self awareness and metacognition. It would be the ultimate form of self satisfaction and fulfillment to be able to have a total sense of awareness of my life, tangibly and idealistically, and where it has originated. It would be of the ultimate reflective value, and I think a way of nostalgically creating a meaning for myself through a recognizable relation to the world around me. From a sense of importance to humanity, I think a sense of ultimate self awareness is beneficial no matter what the circumstance. To be able to go through an experience of intentional self understanding in examining your own life through the microscope of writing is a formidable exercise in metacognition and evaluation of worth and place in the world. Whether the conclusion of that examination is good or bad, I believe that the awareness of it is good, and beneficial no matter what the outcome of the search.

On Compassion

While reading the essay, "On Compassion" by Barbara Lazear Ascher, I came across a passage regarding the Mayor of New York City's decision to place all of the homeless in a nearby hospital. The passage reads:  

I think the mayor’s notation is humane, but I fear it is something else as well. Raw humanity offends our sensibilities. We want to protect ourselves from an awareness of rags with voices that make no sense and scream forth in inarticulate rage. We do not wish to be reminded of the tentative state of our own well-being and sanity. And so, the troublesome presence is removed from the awareness of the electorate.

Ascher seems to feel that the lack of permanence as an inherent aspect of human existence, in her words, "the tentative state of our own well-being and sanity," is something that we as humans can be ignorant of and have a difficult time facing. I'd tend to agree, on a political, societal and existential level, these are topics difficult to grapple with, and ones that cannot be looked up in some encyclopedia or plugged into a math equation, if we even decide to face them at all.

Molon Labe - Greek for "come and get them"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUVQ_z6Zcs

To say that, “There is no permanence” is making a powerful statement about the human struggle. The quote reminds me of another by Napoleon Bonaparte that read, “Glory is fleeting, obscurity it forever.” Both men have first hand seen the malleability of man’s impact and man’s struggle. Both saw everything they had ever worked for, everything they had known, taken from them, whether it be by a flood or military coup. The idea that nothing that humanity does or will ever do will have a lasting and permanent impact on the world we live in is daunting. Utter lack of permanence means that no points are given for effort, or even success. All things are equal in the eyes of destruction. The flood that destroyed all of humanity in Utnapishtim’s story no doubt destroyed the good and the wicked because they were all human. The lack of permanence in the world means that all work of humanity is lost at some point, which certainly pokes a hole in the  majority of people who claim to live to leave a lasting impact on the world. It would be pure nihilism to think, however, that just because finality will destroy all work, no effort should be made at all. Certainly an effort is made every day by the vast majority of humanity to act like humans and function beyond just procuring basic necessities. So what then, drives all people to get up every morning? The answer is twofold, it comes in the form of embracing temporariness and it comes from hope.
    There is no science beyond instinct. Nobody actually knows what tomorrow brings with full certainty, or whether tomorrow will come at all. Anyone who claims to know is acting out of some faith. In this case faith is a good thing. One must have faith that we will all wake up tomorrow if humanity is to continue to function. One must hope that tomorrow will come and that our lives will be the same as we left them when we went to bed the previous night. With a lack of permanence comes a lack of guarantee of anything really. I highly doubt the people of Sumer expected Enlil to be hypersensitive to the “noisiness” of humankind and whimsically bring upon them an apocalyptic flood. However even if there is the prospect of complete annihilation, as there is today for example, with the ever looking threats of nuclear holocaust or even those who believe in the Biblical flooding parable, life goes on. With the hope for tomorrow and the embracing of today, life goes on. In the face of mortality, Enkidu finds meaning in life in extrapolating satisfaction out of the joys of the life he lived. More specifically, he is commanded to find particular meaning in relation to his civilized enjoyment, in all of the great things the harlot gave him in spite of the curse of the knowledge of mortality. Although in modern days, appreciation of life and self validation of existential meaning doesn’t normally come through eating “bread fit for gods” and drinking the “wine of kings.” However, this moment of mortal reflection for Enkidu serves as a perfect metaphor for the meaning of human life. The conspicuous lack of permanence and tendency towards chaos of the Earth is the civilized knowledge imparted upon human beings. We are human because we can recognize these things, and yet we live with them in civilization with the knowledge that our lives really are not under our control. It’s exceedingly difficult to then pinpoint exactly where all of humanity derives it’s meaning. I believe that it is the job of each individual to determine their own purpose for living with the fact that not only all of their earthly work, but they themselves will no doubt perish to eventually be lost in a sea of anonymity. The common thread, although loose at best, can be characterized as finding satisfaction in those things accomplished even if in slight or short existence. As well, for me at least, there is a hope that drives forward progression. Perhaps there isn’t any permanence to life or any of its travels or endeavors, but there is life nonetheless. To not make an attempt at finding meaning beyond nihilism would be to denounce one’s own humanity and lay waste to the gifts and wondrous facets bestowed upon humanity by nature. Meaning requires acceptance of the knowledge, and the living of life in spite of it. Joseph Campbell put meaning interestingly when he said, “I don’t believe people are looking for meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” The emphasis on the value of living and just of sucking dry the fruit of life given to us is a good way to imagine the human experience.
    Creating order out of the chaos that manifests itself in a total impermanence is probably the hardest task of all. It is a task that requires the combined efforts of everyone on Earth as there has to be order for humanity to function, as Hobbes and many other’s including myself would argue. Order is a task that requires an embrace of a purely human creation, society. In an entropic world, things such as governments, laws, structure, dictate order as much as they may appear to stifle individuality and are necessary in this endeavor. The search for immortality must come from within them then. Society is the place where civilization exist. It is where the only means of becoming immortal through stories or fame can exist. Through the embrace of these means is where the only immortality can be found. Although a story can be erased, there are thousands of native myth’s every year that do when cultures dye out or its story tellers are long forgotten, the permanence of the story in Gilgamesh is an interesting lesson among the message of mortality and impermanence. The fact that the Utnapishtim survived, and tells the story of Sumer before the great flood, and that Gilgamesh is revered in the final paragraph of “The Return” for writing down the otherwise dead and forgotten peoples is significant. The writers of Gilgamesh certainly intended to immortalize Gilgamesh through this story and the experiences that he brought with him.
    In my head I imagine human progression as an asymptotic graph, however not a perfect curve by any means. It is one that skips, falters jumps and flat out dead drops straight back into chaos repeatedly in history, and one that will do the same endlessly in the future. To push towards that asymptote however is the purpose of humanity. Be it a self indulgent and self created destiny of mortal beings, humanity hopes that it’s progresses can one day lead to better things and greater advancement. As vague as that may sound, it’s a real ambiguity. There is no permanence. Tomorrow is unknown, but humanity must face it with the utmost resolve, optimism and desire to explore lest it have no meaning at all. Tomorrow must be approached with the same natural, human wonderment that caused our ancestors to venture out of their primitive dwellings, to hone fire, to venture west, and to push past our Earthly realm and beyond.