Is happiness desirable?

Hedonism

Many people believe that striving for happiness is a laudable aim. 

When people are in dire straights they are advised to "put on a brave face" and try thier best to be happy.

This philosophy of hedonism has its roots, like many things, in Greek Philosophy, with it's earliest proponent being Democritus, who argued that joy was the ultimate aim in life, and that sorrow was to be avoided.

Acording to this theory we should at any particular moment just do whatever makes us happy, and avoid things which make us sad or sorrowful.

Utilitarianism

This idea was revived by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th Century, who argued that life could be divided into the basic emotions of pleasure and pain, and that whilst pain was to be avoided, pleasure was the sole good in life. He therefore argued for the "greatest good to the greatest number." 

This philosophy, which became known as Utilitarianism, was expounded upon by John Stuart Mill who qualified the original philosophy by arguing that not all forms of happiness are morally neutral and that there are in fact "higher pleasures" and "lower pleasures." In the language of Mill:

"It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied"

In other words: It is not good enough to just be happy. Your happiness needs to be of a certain quality, or directed towards a higher end. According to Mill: It is not good enough to simply follow our inclinations from one moment to the next. Because whlst we may think that we know our own good. We can only possibly know in hindsight whether it was better for us to induce positive  emotion with drugs (a lower pleasure) or with opera (ahigher pleasure), for instance.

Epicurius

Which brings us back to the many Greek responses to the idea of hedonism. Many Greeks belived that there were higher ends, which superceded our our immediate need for gratification and happiness.

This idea finds its most fruitful expression in the work of Epicurus, who argued that what matters is whether your life as a whole is a good one. He belived that what matters is eudomonia (a Greek word which can be loosely translated as "good spirit"), which refers to some inexplicable factor which reaches beyond transitory feelings and towards a more complete conception of what it means to live a good life, and can only be assessed over the entire course of a human life.

Many Greek theories preferred to look at life like this. These theories, rather than focussing on the consequences of our actions at any moment (in their production of pleasure and pain for instance), look at what it means to be human and what the end (telos) of our lives is, when taken as a whole.

According to these teleological theories, our lives should be measued according to whether, taken as a whole, they are good or virtuous.

Conclusion

And so... In answer to the question I proposed above: Is happiness desirable?

My answer is yes! It is! But what I mean by happiness is what Epicuriucs meant:

He lived a life in a commune, living with close friends and surviving on what nature provided, and he wanted his life to be judged by people in its totality - and whilst I'm not about to become a hippy. I can appreciate his philosophy much better than our modern conceptions of happiness: which lead to consumerism, casual sex and drunken debauchery.

When people look back at my life they will look at my life as a whole, because that is what human beings do. Whether I am happy or sad from one moment to the next is immatterial, as long as I continue with my goals in life, despite what fortune throws at me.

From my favourite poem:

"It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the Captain of my fate,

I am the master of my soul."

- William Ernest Henley

Big Brother society... 42 days too many?

Imagine a world in which 4.2 million cameras watch our every move. In which the DNA of 4.5 million citizens is held in the world's largest database. In which we can not express our opinions in case it causes offense to those around us. In which we are forced to carry around ID cards to prove our rights; And, in which a suspicion of guilt can lead to our arbitrary arrest and detention for 42 days, without trial.

This sounds like a scene from Orwell, and yet it is in fact a portrait of modern Britain under New Labour... and yet it is not this per se which causes me to be angry. Rather, it is the attitude of the British public: who have allowed themselves to be slowly brought to a point where our liberties are in serious peril!

The latest in a string of illiberal decisions by this government was pushed through the Commons on Wednesday last, in a vote which was so tight it relied of the votes of a small band of Irish MPs to win the day. The new bill will allow British citizens to be locked up without trial for 6 weeks (42 days) and it represents, in my view an appalling attack on our fundamental liberty to go about our lives without fear of arbitrary arrest and detention. It is a suspension of heabus corpus, and reverses the rights that we have enjoyed since the signing of Magna Carta almost 800 years ago.

It's supporters claim that it is a necessary measure to ensure our security in an age of terrorism, and 69% of the British public are convinced that “in exceptional circumstances” we do need powers like these.

We are asked by supporters of the bill to think back to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London and imagine that these attacks could have been stopped if only we had been more proactive. But are we really deluded enough to believe that there is anything that could have stopped so determined an enemy; and what exactly are we defending if we are so willing to throw away our fundamental liberties?

A further reason given in favour of this law is that it is that it is only “terrorists” that have anything to fear, and not law-abiding citizens. But they would think that wouldn't they? Because it's not their brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who will be targeted by this legislation! The reality is that this kind of law does not affect the vast majority of the population because in modern Britain potential terrorist attacks now come almost exclusively from a small indigenous Muslim population: A fact which should make this legislation even more disturbing!

As a general rule any law which overtly or covertly singles out a minority group for special treatment under the law, goes against everything our legal system has been based on for centuries and everything it should be based on. In fact, it is exactly the kind of legislation which leads us down a path towards totalitarianism, which is something Winston Churchill understood better than anyone:

“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”

- Winston Churchill

The entire debate in this country has focused on how many days are “enough” to ensure our safety and yet surely, the real question we should be asking is should we be doing this at all? The answer can be found by completing the Churchill quotation above:

"...Nothing is more abhorrent than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization."

Death

I've been reading lots of books recently, but this one is certainly special, and deserves a mention. It starts with the brutal rape and murder of a 14 year old girl from her perspective, and tells the story of her journey in heaven to come to terms with her own death...

I'm only on Chapter 6 at the moment, but I'm hooked!

God and complexity

I'm perplexed.

I find the argument made by Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene" compelling. He argues that there are two possible states of play for the start of the universe:

EITHER

1.) An intelligent god came into existence and then created unthinking matter and intelligent life

OR

2.) A universe of unthinking matter came into existence and intelligent live evolved naturally

The argument is simple:

Argument (2), let's call it: the "big bang hypothesis" is much less complex and therefore far more probable than Argument 1 (1), which we will call: "the god hypothesis." This is because "the god hypothesis" posits god's intelligence at the start and thus increases the complexity of the problem, by adding a perfectly designed and intelligent designer to an already complex situation.

But is God necessarily more complex than the material universe?

The counter-argument posited by those who have faith is that god does not need to be complex because God exists outside of the material realm. This means that he is not materially complex in the same way that the universe is.

At this point my head begins to hurt, because personally I don't find the argument compelling for the following reasons:

1.) We live in the material world. It is all we know! Therefore, calling god "immaterial" is extricating him from our understanding of complexity and abstracting him from any comparison with the material complexity of the universe.

2.) Intelligence is an extra layer of complexity. Although it is possible to argue that the "knowledge" inbuilt in the "design" of the universe is akin to intelligence. But surely a designer would have to be more complex than his design? Wouldn't he?

The remaining solution, is, I feel, to water down the complexity of god:

To counter the problem of "material complexity" our God would have to be immaterial (if we can accept such notions).

Additionally, to sidestep the problem of intelligence, our god would, at the very least, be of an intelligence akin to the "inbuilt" knowledge of the universe. For instance: Our god's function would be limited to starting the big bang and adjusting the parameters of the universe. This would make him a far cry from the Old Testament God of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence.

So in order to allow God, according to this argument, we have to accept that our version of god is limited... But the problem we then face is that perhaps our new conception of "god" is so watered down as to be a mere philosophical shadow. A semantic explanatory presence replacing the hole where an explanation of our beginnings would fit.

Is there room for spirituality in this conception? Is there more room for a god than I allow?

I would like to think that there is.

As I'm sure most atheists would admit: I hope I'm very wrong.

The Stock Market Collapse

This crisis in the Stock Market should be a serious worry to us all. There was a good peice in the Telegraph this morning, about the possibility of a major US bank defaulting, and another in the Guardian suggesting that we might be about to see a base rate cut by the Fed.

What should worry us about this is not the possibility of a bank defaulting, but the possibility that by pumping more liquidity into the market we will be supporting the reckless economic behaviour which has led to this crisis and make a future economic collapse worse.

"But what if the Fed cut rates because it knows something the markets don't? What if a major US bank really is in trouble? Even if America now implements the "nuclear option" of a sudden cut in the "Fed funds" rate - the equivalent of our base rate - that may not help very much. Hundreds of US mortgage lenders, thousands of house-builders, and millions of Americans have already gone bust."

Alone

Alone... The word is life endured and known.
It is the stillness where our spirits walk
And all but inmost faith is overthrown.

Siegfried Sassoon

Chavs: The new underclass?

I've just been reading a few articles about the delightfully middle class slang word used to describe the "white trash" of England and I find it all quite amusing. In an article in The Guardian for instance; John Harris quotes Simon Heffer to caricature the attitude of Middle England:

"Our underclass has been allowed to get out of control ... They and their children regard school as optional. Drug dealing and theft are the main careers, nicely supplementing the old staple of benefit fraud."

...and goes on to argue that such talk is elitist nonsense which unfairly writes people off without giving them a chance. (Well, if you do insist on throwing up a straw man John!)
A similar line is taken by Julie Burchill of The Times, who goes on to suggest, with much middle class, guilt-ridden hand-wringing that calling people "chavs" is akin to racism:

"Whenever I stand up for chavs — on the basis that the white indigenous English working-class is now the one group you can insult without feeling the breath of the Commission for Racial Equality on your neck, which makes it pretty damn cowardly apart from being what I call “social racism"— there will always be some joker who will bend over backwards to reassure me that not ALL the working class are wasters..."

It is at this point that my blood (quite understandably I think) starts to boil.

Frankly, I don't think either of these columnists really have the faintest idea about what they are describing. The "chav" may be something approaching a caricature, but it has come to be synonymous with the underclass of Britain; many of whom who seem to wear it like a badge of honour. These people are not "working class," and to describe them as such is an insult to hard-working people.

No, these people populate the dole queues, benefit offices, STD clinics and street corners of our fair nation, and though we may laugh at the caricature. It is actually a symptom of a class who totally lack aspiration because they were born, not just into poverty, but moral despair.

The poverty of old had a cure. Namely, a rigid morality, which gave a pang of guilt when you did something wrong and which spurred you on to try harder. A morality embedded in a society where mutual concern was predominant and where "keeping up with the Jonses" was somewhat less to do with the size of the Satelite dish on your council house and somewhat more to do with decency and getting on in life.

I'm a libertarian, and I think that that liberty has a price, and that this is one of them. It is a sympton without cure, and the consequences of this are grim. Feel free to disagree.