Do people have the right to be unhappy?

Happiness and unhappiness come and go in cycles. They just happen. Often, great happiness is followed by a great unhappiness. As for myself, I don't seek big highs so I don't have to deal with the big lows.

Absolutely, we have a right to be unhappy. That's one right that is probably secure into the distant future. But, unhappy people are a drag to be around, so if you are too miserable, please get lost, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out the door. This entrance for happy people only. The wretched of the earth need not apply.

Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO

A.) Saying that other people are personally responsible for their own happiness makes it sound like every individual lives in his/her own vacuum and enables a person to evade accountability for the impact his/her actions have on others? and avoid the "burden" of having compassion and empathy for others.

Some of this thinking owes its longevity and strength to our commitment to individuality -- in itself, not a bad thing.

Another source of this "you are the root of your problem" goes back decades to psychologists like Fritz Perls who emphasized that we are not in the world to live up to each others expectations. "I am not responsible for what you do. Your actions are always entirely your responsibility." Do your own thing; if it turns other people on, great. But suffer in silence, please. We really don't want to hear about your shit.

Then too, people don't want to take on any highly inconvenient responsibilities, like the possibility that their actions may actually hurt other people. "My sticks and stones can wound you deep but vicious words can't make you weep" supposedly. "I can't control how you feel." Off the hook.

In fact, we are responsible for each other in a web of consequences. No, we are not responsible for EVERYONE'S feelings, but we are responsible for the things we do to other people with whom we interact.

Being swept under the rug is a disgusting experience. It's dark, all the dirt is under there, the skin mites are huge, it stinks, and after all that, people are always walking all over you.

It's a very deep question. It's worth recalling that 'the pursuit of happiness' is written into the US constitution.

Some years back, my wife bought a book on 'positive psychology' by Martin Seligman. This was all about, well, what it says - positive psychology, techniques and attitudes for overcoming inner conflict and so on. I thought it was OK, if a bit anodyne. I was surprised to see a backlash against it - opinion pieces on 'the myth of happiness' and how unhappiness was somehow more insightful, more human, than the superficial smiley-face of 'positive psychology'.

Another item from the media that I have noticed is the so-called 'happiness surveys' of different nationalities. India always seems to come out on top, which is surprising to a lot of people, considering the poverty of much of India. The Poles and Russians always seem to rank very low. That doesn't surprise me, East Europeans often strike me as lugubrious, and the Russian climate and language hardly communicates joyfulness.

There was a long essay published recently by Wilfred McClay, mentioned by David Brooks in a NY Times piece called The Strange Persistence of Guilt. It notes that in modern culture,

Technology gives us power and power entails responsibility, and responsibility...leads to guilt: You and I see a picture of a starving child in Sudan and we know inwardly that we’re not doing enough.

“Whatever donation I make to a charitable organization, it can never be as much as I could have given. I can never diminish my carbon footprint enough, or give to the poor enough. … Colonialism, slavery, structural poverty, water pollution, deforestation — there’s an endless list of items for which you and I can take the rap.”

McClay is describing a world in which we’re still driven by an inextinguishable need to feel morally justified. Our thinking is still vestigially shaped by religious categories.

And yet we have no clear framework or set of rituals to guide us in our quest for goodness. Worse, people have a sense of guilt and sin, but no longer a sense that they live in a loving universe marked by divine mercy, grace and forgiveness. There is sin but no formula for redemption.

The only reliable way to feel morally justified in that culture is to assume the role of victim. As McClay puts it, “Claiming victim status is the sole sure means left of absolving oneself and securing one’s sense of fundamental moral innocence.”

I think this explains a helluva lot about modern cultural dynamics.

Reply to WISDOMfromPO-MO A right is right, a moral good. Unhappiness is not a good, therefore it isn't right and not a right.

Quoting Bitter Crank

Absolutely, we have a right to be unhappy. That's one right that is probably secure into the distant future...

It does not seem very secure at the moment, let alone the distant future.

Either "get help" (pharmacies are stocked with Prozac; not very difficult getting a prescription), get out of the way (homeless shelter, jail, prison, etc.), or die (but we don't have the courage to do it; kill yourself, we'll call it a suicide, and our reputations will remain intact).




Quoting Bitter Crank

But, unhappy people are a drag to be around,...

Probably because they remind people of realities they cannot or do not want to cope with ("Ignorance is bliss").

More importantly, if "happiness is a choice" then any negative felt in the presence of an unhappy person is one's choice. You can't say "Happiness is a choice" and then say "That unhappy person is compromising my happiness". No, you are choosing to let that unhappy person compromise your happiness. Either own the latter or drop the "happiness is a choice" bunk.




Quoting Bitter Crank

so if you are too miserable, please get lost, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out the door. This entrance for happy people only. The wretched of the earth need not apply...

I have not scientifically investigated it or read the research that has already been done, but I bet that after they are treated the way you describe a lot of those people do get lost: they end up homeless; they commit crimes--probably violent crimes sometimes if not a lot of the time--and end up in jail or prison; they perform poorly on the job and produce poor-quality products and services; they kill themselves; etc.

They may not hurt--compromise the happiness of--the person who tells them to get lost, but after the buck is passed they will probably hurt somebody else.

Respecting their right to their feelings and asking them to respect your right to your feelings is probably the more prudent thing to do.

Listening, empathizing and showing compassion is probably the most prudent thing to do.




Quoting Bitter Crank

Another source of this "you are the root of your problem"...

An unhappy person does not necessarily see his/her unhappiness as a problem.




Quoting Bitter Crank

goes back decades to psychologists like Fritz Perls who emphasized that we are not in the world to live up to each others expectations...

Yet we demand that everybody live up to the expectation of being happy.




Quoting Bitter Crank

"I am not responsible for what you do. Your actions are always entirely your responsibility." Do your own thing; if it turns other people on, great. But suffer in silence, please. We really don't want to hear about your shit...

Maybe it is not "shit" to them.

Maybe to them it is a feeling, concern, etc. that deserves respect.




Quoting Bitter Crank

Then too, people don't want to take on any highly inconvenient responsibilities, like the possibility that their actions may actually hurt other people. "My sticks and stones can wound you deep but vicious words can't make you weep" supposedly. "I can't control how you feel." Off the hook.

In fact, we are responsible for each other in a web of consequences. No, we are not responsible for EVERYONE'S feelings, but we are responsible for the things we do to other people with whom we interact.

Being swept under the rug is a disgusting experience. It's dark, all the dirt is under there, the skin mites are huge, it stinks, and after all that, people are always walking all over you.

I don't know about 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, etc., but it seems that today a lot of people say that they have the "right" to be happy.

That sounds to me more like an attitude of entitlement than a healthy knowledge of people's rights and the limits of those rights.

The right to be unhappy is not about entitlement. It is saying, "I am not infringing on anybody's rights, so please live and let live".

Just because a person lacks happiness and is not wearing a constant smile on his/her face and radiating joy does not mean that he/she is in the act of hurting anybody or wants to or intends to hurt anybody. It simply means that he/she is being human.

If nobody has the right to lack happiness, what is next? Nobody has the right to feel physically ill, maybe? "This entrance for physically well people only", maybe?

Quoting Wayfarer

It's a very deep question. It's worth recalling that 'the pursuit of happiness' is written into the US constitution...

As the last item listed in the same sentence after "life" and "liberty".

I would argue that the notion that some people in the population simply lacking happiness infringes on everybody else's right to the pursuit of happiness is absurd.

I would also argue that not respecting people's right to their own feelings--even if those feelings do not include any happiness--could be flirting with compromising liberty.




Quoting Wayfarer

Some years back, my wife bought a book on 'positive psychology' by Martin Seligman. This was all about, well, what it says - positive psychology, techniques and attitudes for overcoming inner conflict and so on. I thought it was OK, if a bit anodyne. I was surprised to see a backlash against it - opinion pieces on 'the myth of happiness' and how unhappiness was somehow more insightful, more human, than the superficial smiley-face of 'positive psychology'...

The backlash may have been because people recognize that a lot of happiness is cultivated in ignorance, lies, and unjust social structures/conditions while unhappiness is probably more in tune with empirical and moral reality.




Quoting Wayfarer

Another item from the media that I have noticed is the so-called 'happiness surveys' of different nationalities. India always seems to come out on top, which is surprising to a lot of people, considering the poverty of much of India...

Actually, that does not surprise me.

After reading Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures (1998 edition), by Gustavo Esteva (from Mexico) and Madhu Suri-Prakash (from India), my appreciation of the fact that people without Western standards of living can be happy while people with those standards of living can be unhappy was increased exponentially.

An impoverished family living in a shanty in a crowded Indian city welcomes and offers hospitality to well-off strangers. Americans living in their suburban McMansions see a not-well-off stranger in the neighborhood and call the police. Who do you think would report greater happiness on a survey?




Quoting Wayfarer

The Poles and Russians always seem to rank very low. That doesn't surprise me, East Europeans often strike me as lugubrious, and the Russian climate and language hardly communicates joyfulness...

It could be that they really are very unhappy compared to the rest of the world.

Or it could be that they can get away with not pretending to be happy, unlike in other places.

Or a little of both.




Quoting Wayfarer

There was a long essay published recently by Wilfred McClay, mentioned by David Brooks in a NY Times piece called The Strange Persistence of Guilt. It notes that in modern culture,



Technology gives us power and power entails responsibility, and responsibility...leads to guilt: You and I see a picture of a starving child in Sudan and we know inwardly that we’re not doing enough.

“Whatever donation I make to a charitable organization, it can never be as much as I could have given. I can never diminish my carbon footprint enough, or give to the poor enough. … Colonialism, slavery, structural poverty, water pollution, deforestation — there’s an endless list of items for which you and I can take the rap.”

McClay is describing a world in which we’re still driven by an inextinguishable need to feel morally justified. Our thinking is still vestigially shaped by religious categories.

And yet we have no clear framework or set of rituals to guide us in our quest for goodness. Worse, people have a sense of guilt and sin, but no longer a sense that they live in a loving universe marked by divine mercy, grace and forgiveness. There is sin but no formula for redemption.

The only reliable way to feel morally justified in that culture is to assume the role of victim. As McClay puts it, “Claiming victim status is the sole sure means left of absolving oneself and securing one’s sense of fundamental moral innocence.”

I think this explains a helluva lot about modern cultural dynamics.

Do those "modern cultural dynamics" include how a white, heterosexual, cisgender male like me has been told as far back as he can remember--and probably on back to the moment of his birth--that he "enjoys" "privileges" that non-white, non-heterosexual, non-cisgender, non-male people do not have, and that he is not conscious of those privileges and cannot know what life is like for the non-privileged, etc., etc.?

Yeah, even though deep down I know intellectually that that picture of "privileges" that I "enjoy" and other people do not is monochrome while the reality of the social world is too complex for one such snapshot, the guilt that people have used that picture to heap on me has terrorized my mind almost every hour that I have been awake and conscious.

Reply to WISDOMfromPO-MO I think really what your post is about, is more about 'the politics of identity' than happiness, per se.

Quoting Wayfarer

?WISDOMfromPO-MO I think really what your post is about, is more about 'the politics of identity' than happiness, per se.

I believe that what David Smail calls "psychological distress" is a more useful concept than "unhappiness".

And the way that I understand the work of his that I have read, he shows that, yeah, the politics of identity is strongly correlated with psychological distress.

In that case there is not a problem to be found in the individual self such as "mental illness" or poor moral character. Therefore, personal/individual rights misses the point. Instead, the source of the problem will be found at the system/group level.

The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress
by David Smail
Link: http://a.co/1GQHEYr

Looks a reasonable approach.

The Buddhist term 'dukkha' is used to describe the general state of humans. It is usually translated as 'distress', or 'stress' or 'unhappiness'.

Reply to WISDOMfromPO-MO People have a right to be who they are. Some people are resilient, happy (or at least cheerful), calm, at peace, whether the details of their lives justify such happiness or not. For a lot of happy people, little personal credit is due: they were born with a lucky potential for happy emotions.

Many other people receive a strong tendency for agitation, fear, anger, jealousy, and so on. Their lives may not justify wretchedness, but that is what they feel, none the less--and they are no more responsible for this than the lucky happy people. I wouldn't call them depressed; they are just plain unhappy.

That said, we could go out of our way once in a while to lend a hand to the unhappy, or at least not tell them to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO

the source of the problem will be found at the system/group level.

We all do things that affect the happiness of other people. Maybe we didn't intend to ruin someone's life by firing them for incompetence, but maybe that was the upshot. Maybe they needed more help to succeed -- and had they succeeded, would have been a great asset.

Maybe parents' pushing their child to constantly excel above all other students set the stage for that child's success, or perhaps set the child up for a lifetime of unhappiness - or disappointment, or some sort of distress.

Quoting Wayfarer

The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress
by David Smail
Link: http://a.co/1GQHEYr

Looks a reasonable approach.

"It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at a considerable distance from those ultimately subjected to them..."

Probably not a book that subscribers to "happiness is a choice" want to read.




Quoting Wayfarer

The Buddhist term 'dukkha' is used to describe the general state of humans. It is usually translated as 'distress', or 'stress' or 'unhappiness'.

How does Buddhism say we should respond to that state?

I'm not very literate in Buddhism. Part of one chapter in The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, by James W. Sire, is the most exposure to Buddhism that I have had.

Quoting Bitter Crank

?WISDOMfromPO-MO People have a right to be who they are. Some people are resilient, happy (or at least cheerful), calm, at peace, whether the details of their lives justify such happiness or not. For a lot of happy people, little personal credit is due: they were born with a lucky potential for happy emotions.

Many other people receive a strong tendency for agitation, fear, anger, jealousy, and so on. Their lives may not justify wretchedness, but that is what they feel, none the less--and they are no more responsible for this than the lucky happy people. I wouldn't call them depressed; they are just plain unhappy.

That said, we could go out of our way once in a while to lend a hand to the unhappy, or at least not tell them to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

the source of the problem will be found at the system/group level. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
We all do things that affect the happiness of other people. Maybe we didn't intend to ruin someone's life by firing them for incompetence, but maybe that was the upshot. Maybe they needed more help to succeed -- and had they succeeded, would have been a great asset.

Maybe parents' pushing their child to constantly excel above all other students set the stage for that child's success, or perhaps set the child up for a lifetime of unhappiness - or disappointment, or some sort of distress.

Until a person can recognize that he/she is unhappy, own it, and look for the causes, probably nothing can be changed.

Heaping guilt, shame, economic hardship, etc. on him/her just adds to his/her load and distracts from addressing root causes.

Where does this leave happy people? If it ain't broke don't examine it, let alone fix it?

I don't know. Maybe it used to be that religion would "afflict the comforted" in great numbers and nothing else has taken religion's place in that role. Or the mass media has taken religion's place in that role, but people simply change channels, close a browser window, etc. I doubt that there has ever been a rational thinker who believes that it is wise to live in a perpetual state of happiness.

Quoting ?????????????

It's not like that around here and what you write seems really weird to me. What's the non-existent disease...

I think that it is well-documented that in the U.S. at least it is big business to manufacture, prescribe and dispense prescription anti-depressants to people who are merely unhappy--our stressful, competitive, dog-eat-dog way of life can do that to people--and do not really have any biological abnormality.




Quoting ?????????????

which are the social sanctions that force people to homelessness, incarceration or suicide?...

Social isolation. Little or no support network. People busy being "happy"--tailgating at college football games, vacationing in Hawaii, binge watching TV, etc.--are too busy to be emotionally available to the unhappy people in their environment. Employers deciding that it is more cost-effective to get rid of an employee who is struggling emotionally than to get help for him/her.

I don't have a PhD in Psychology or Sociology. I don't have data/sources to back me up. But am I really going out on a limb by suggesting that those factors lead to homelessness, incarceration and suicide?




Quoting ?????????????

That's really weird. I've never come across this view. Are you sure you're not projecting unto others your own interpretation of what it means that people generally want to have a happy life?...

"The Community Church of Mill Valley conversation series “Who Is My Neighbor?” hosts Ruth Whippman on Feb. 5 to discuss her journey into the American obsession with happiness. When Whippman, a British documentary filmmaker for the BBC, moved to America, she began to hear from her new neighbors an almost obsessive preoccupation with one word: “happiness.” When she began to explore the topic, what she found was a paradox: despite the fact that Americans spend more time and money in search of happiness than any other nation on earth, research shows that the United States is one of the least contented, most anxious countries in the developed world.
 
So Whippman undertook a journey to investigate how this national obsession infiltrates all areas of life, from religion to parenting, the workplace to academia. She attended a controversial self-help course that promised total transformation, where she learned that all her problems were all her own fault; visited a “happiness city” in the Nevada desert to see why it has one of the highest suicide rates in America; dug into the darker truths behind the influential academic “positive psychology movement”; and ventured to Utah to spend time with the Mormons, officially America’s happiest people. Out of this came the new bestseller, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks..." (emphasis mine). Source: 'America the Anxious' Author Dives Into Our Obsession With Happiness @ Feb. 5th Community Church Event 



Quoting ?????????????

Yes, that's usually the case. That's why people who don't respect the pain of others are usually seen as jerks.


But this takes as a given that the view you present is a universal and accurate one. But it is not. It might be an accurate description of your social circle.


Yes, that's why most people are not the way you describe. They're not that irrational, illogical and inconsistent when it comes to the pain and sadness of others.

I think that I have already covered all of that.

On the question of responsibility for your own happiness, I think it's been pretty well documented scientifically that we can have at least some influence on our own happiness. There is definitely some element of personal responsibility involved.

I guess my question is, why would being unhappy be a desirable state? And if isn't one, why would you bother worrying about having this kind of unenforceable requirement for happiness.

Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO

B.) At the group level, unhappy people are being scapegoated or swept under the rug because, no matter what is the cause of or reason for their unhappiness, their presence is a reminder of the failures and shortcomings of particular societies and social systems and of humanity in general.

Not only that, but on an individual level, the presence of the outwardly unhappy is an unwelcome reminder of the presence of the inwardly unhappy state of the outwardly happy. I call it The Grand Taboo.

Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO

"life is meant to be enjoyed"

By what or whose over-riding authority is life meant to be enjoyed? God? Satan? Jack Sneed? Jesus, Mary and Joseph? Fate? The Big Bang? The Positive Psychology Cartel?

My own opinion is, as I have said several times, that life has no inherent meaning and there is no grand intention. It's up to us to decide, whatever the question is about our human/social reality. IMHO, one of the minimal things life is meant to be is "endured". If you endure through the rain, snow, cold, heat, forests of stinging nettles, and all the other crap, you might have a chance to be happy. Nobody is, and nobody should be, happy all the time. That requires a psychotic break from reality. Life just isn't great all the time.

But, you know, every now and then one's life is sunlit, pleasantly cool/warm, no nettles, no big problems, no pissed off wasps (or WASPs, either) and one is happy. One is happy--mostly to no big credit of one's own; just a little credit.

And realistic people know that life will probable present again sand burs for bare feet along with too much humidity and professionally angry minorities in one's face. That's just life.

Quoting Bitter Crank

My own opinion is, as I have said several times, that life has no inherent meaning and there is no grand intention. It's up to us to decide, whatever the question is about our human/social reality. One of the minimal things life is meant to be is "endured".

Good point. Life is something to "deal" with. We are thrown into the world, and must deal with the given by creating a linguistic-based strategy of "being in the world", preferences, heuristics, guidelines, habits, and do this within the historico-cultural setting that is the given.

Quoting Noble Dust

the presence of the outwardly unhappy is an unwelcome reminder of the presence of the inwardly unhappy state of the outwardly happy.

Sort of like, "grace in reverse".

Quoting Brian

I guess my question is, why would being unhappy be a desirable state?...

Among other potential problems, happiness can be a form of ignorance and/or denial.

Quoting Brian

And if isn't one, why would you bother worrying about having this kind of unenforceable requirement for happiness.

Being scapegoated for problems that people are denying or cloaking is not good.

Reply to Bitter Crank

How so?

The Grand Taboo is, to me, that thing that we can't talk about. It comes up all the time in conversations in everyday life, though.

"the presence of the outwardly unhappy is an unwelcome reminder of the presence of the inwardly unhappy state of the outwardly happy."
— Noble Dust

Quoting Bitter Crank

Sort of like, "grace in reverse".

Quoting Noble Dust

How so?

Oh, I was just riffing on a phrase of Anglican catechism (I'm not Anglican) that ran through my head when I read your sentence ""the presence of the outwardly unhappy is an unwelcome reminder of the presence of the inwardly unhappy state of the outwardly happy." It reminded me of

(1928 Book of Common Prayer, p. 581):...an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us; ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.

Actually the BoCP was defining a sacrament, not grace, so my smart ass comment falls twice flat. And no, I didn't know that the quote was from the 1928 BoCP, either -- Google Search, as usual.

Quoting Noble Dust

The Grand Taboo is, to me, that thing that we can't talk about. It comes up all the time in conversations in everyday life, though.

"the presence of the outwardly unhappy is an unwelcome reminder of the presence of the inwardly unhappy state of the outwardly happy" is indeed something we tend to not acknowledge. It spoils "the magic" of good times.

Henry David Thoreau said that "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" which is not something most people want to talk about, either.

Freud supposedly said something along the lines of "Happiness just isn't in the cards." If he didn't say it, he should have.

No. Nor do they have the "right" to be happy.

Reply to WISDOMfromPO-MO

A right to be unhappy??

Shit, some people have an obligation to be unhappy!

:D

Michael Ossipoff

Quoting ?????????????

No, that doesn't seem right. Even if happiness can, in part, be the result of ignorance and/or denial, it is not happiness that's the problem, it's ignorance and/or denial. Happiness might be said to be a problem, if it's impossible without ignorance and/or denial (assuming that ignorance and/or denial is always a problem)...

I said that it can be a form of ignorance and/or denial.

Therefore, that would be a reason to not want it.

If a culture puts happiness on a pedestal and pathologizes unhappiness, and if knowing and accepting reality can threaten happiness, then good cultural actors are probably, if not definitely, going to avoid some or many parts of reality.

In that kind of social environment unhappiness may sometimes or a lot of the time be the only rational choice if a person values knowledge of reality.

Quoting ?????????????

Of course, even if that's the case, it still does not answer the original question which was "why would being unhappy be a desirable state?".

See above.

Unhappy is the default. If you do nothing, that's where you'll remain.

I don't belive anything is moral or immoral, there is only what you wan't vs. what others wan't.

I take the same stance as the Church of Euthanasia, suicide is more than likely the best thing you can do for the world and others in it. I haven't seen studies so Im just going from my own non-scientific observations; depressed people use significantly more resources, but dead people; use 0. I think you should be encouraged to make a move in one direction or the other, and that the world would be a much better place for it.