Freedom and Happiness
Humans can be happy. But there is a difference in the types of happiness. Pure sensual happiness, even psychological happiness, is different than the happiness that comes about with the clear recognition of creation -- the use of reason and revelation to experience things outside of our own feelings. This second type of happiness has a vitality about it -- it is the experience of seeing God's face.
This type of happiness is not guaranteed for all, nor for any one person for all time. It must be chosen. It must be found through the free exercise of reason. It requires the individual to work for him or herself -- nobody can guarantee another's happiness, at least not of this type. It is God's one truth amidst hundreds of non-truths, and as such it is not easy to find or to keep hold of.
As children, we experience the first type of happiness -- the satisfaction of desires -- all the time. We also experience, if we have our desires fulfilled, the latter when we play. But because our systems of judgment are immature, we can easily confuse the joy of discovery with the happiness of our bodily systems, when we reflect on them. A society needs to emphasize the existence of creation outside of the individual man, as something to be discovered, and if this doesn't happen, the confusion will last even longer. Right now, the confusion is being reinforced. Moral values are not rational. Critical thinking is discouraged. Students learn facts, but they don't learn to value facts as discoveries about creation, because they can't experience them as discoveries about creation. Those facts they will use later in life are only useful because they are tools to achieve different types of sensual and psychological happiness. Those that are never used by students still serve a purpose -- they are a tool of conditioning, used by adults on students. If you give the right answer, I give you a good grade and my approving glance. Therefore, agreeing with adults, knowing what they want you to know, fulfills a psychological desire.
Additionally, I can make you psychologically and sensually happy. I can give you drugs and approval, I can condition you to want something and not something else. If this type of happiness is all we're going for, it is possible to guarantee. But the happiness of free choice must be discovered by the individual. I, interested in your happiness, find myself powerless to create it. I may be able to nurture it, to some extent, to challenge you when you become complacent, to push you to discover further into the works of creation -- but I can't give it to you. This is scary.
It seems self-evident to me that freely chosen happiness, even if it can't be guaranteed, is better than just the fulfillment of desires. But the student I talked to didn't see that. If you don't ever remember having experienced the joy of discovery, the clear perception of God's work, then the happiness provided by drugs and conditioning is all you think to shoot for. A conditioned, psychologically and sensually happy society seems preferable than a society that fails to provide the only type of happiness she's ever experienced. It doesn't make sense to think of a happiness derived from free choice, because the only choices she knows are between one way of satisfying desires, and another. The removal of that choice, if it results in the satisfaction of desire, is acceptable, even desirable.
A few questions: What of mystical consciousness? Does that require a free mind?
To what extent is psychological and sensual happiness necessary? We are animals as well as human beings, and if our animals aren't satisfied, our human beings will have trouble exercising reason and free choice.
This type of happiness is not guaranteed for all, nor for any one person for all time. It must be chosen. It must be found through the free exercise of reason. It requires the individual to work for him or herself -- nobody can guarantee another's happiness, at least not of this type. It is God's one truth amidst hundreds of non-truths, and as such it is not easy to find or to keep hold of.
As children, we experience the first type of happiness -- the satisfaction of desires -- all the time. We also experience, if we have our desires fulfilled, the latter when we play. But because our systems of judgment are immature, we can easily confuse the joy of discovery with the happiness of our bodily systems, when we reflect on them. A society needs to emphasize the existence of creation outside of the individual man, as something to be discovered, and if this doesn't happen, the confusion will last even longer. Right now, the confusion is being reinforced. Moral values are not rational. Critical thinking is discouraged. Students learn facts, but they don't learn to value facts as discoveries about creation, because they can't experience them as discoveries about creation. Those facts they will use later in life are only useful because they are tools to achieve different types of sensual and psychological happiness. Those that are never used by students still serve a purpose -- they are a tool of conditioning, used by adults on students. If you give the right answer, I give you a good grade and my approving glance. Therefore, agreeing with adults, knowing what they want you to know, fulfills a psychological desire.
Additionally, I can make you psychologically and sensually happy. I can give you drugs and approval, I can condition you to want something and not something else. If this type of happiness is all we're going for, it is possible to guarantee. But the happiness of free choice must be discovered by the individual. I, interested in your happiness, find myself powerless to create it. I may be able to nurture it, to some extent, to challenge you when you become complacent, to push you to discover further into the works of creation -- but I can't give it to you. This is scary.
It seems self-evident to me that freely chosen happiness, even if it can't be guaranteed, is better than just the fulfillment of desires. But the student I talked to didn't see that. If you don't ever remember having experienced the joy of discovery, the clear perception of God's work, then the happiness provided by drugs and conditioning is all you think to shoot for. A conditioned, psychologically and sensually happy society seems preferable than a society that fails to provide the only type of happiness she's ever experienced. It doesn't make sense to think of a happiness derived from free choice, because the only choices she knows are between one way of satisfying desires, and another. The removal of that choice, if it results in the satisfaction of desire, is acceptable, even desirable.
A few questions: What of mystical consciousness? Does that require a free mind?
To what extent is psychological and sensual happiness necessary? We are animals as well as human beings, and if our animals aren't satisfied, our human beings will have trouble exercising reason and free choice.