As I went on my morning dog walk this morning, I felt a sudden burst of inner thinking. I thought about Ram Dass and his saying “just be here now”. What did it mean to me, what does it mean to people? Such a thought process eventually led me to debate the purpose of happiness today in our society.
I often ponder my fellow men, women and non binary with the question, what makes you happy? A storm of different answers rises and fluctuates between material gain, stability (emotional or wealth), ideological gratification and numerous other ideals. They all hold different views depending on the values and morals that one has, but they share one thing in common. They are utopias. Individual utopias, such as material/immaterial stability, or societal utopias, such as ideological achievements. Their commonality is that of a romanticisation, of an end goal. They are also often times contradictory of each other, an anti-capitalist would criticise the market while pursuing happiness through material stability. I am guilty of it as well, as I pursue academic goals while being critical of academia and its own distancing from direct action.
While material gain or stability can be explained through the pretence of capitalist society, ideological pursuit of happiness is very much unique. Ideologies, I would argue, are the purest form of democracy. In essence, the ability to share ideas, values, morals freely and without restraints (that is not to say such force is not used to silence activism. In such cases ideology transformed from an idea to practice.). It is also boundless, much like art or music, it is not controlled by an elite. Although the mainstream ideological acceptance of ideas and morals are concentrated in the elite, ideologies can be changed, shaped, destroyed and created by everyone. It is not restraint to a certain group of few who benefit from unhindered freedom of ideological expression, but instead the building block which such freedom is possible can only occur through the free exchange of ideologies in the market of ideas.
So why is it that society today has seen an influx of ideologies and utopias? Partly it is because of economic instability, climate change, corruption and inequality. It is also, at its very nature, a utopia. It symbolises and crystallises the idea that ideology is a pursuit of happiness. In its more “extreme” forms, it calls for a complete abandonment of the current system in favour of drastic systematic changes, which could range from workers led councils to authoritarian autocratic dictatorships. It romanticise the idea of drastic change leading to happiness, maybe a collective one, but at the end it is an individualistic one. One pursuits an ideologies that would fit they own individual worldview and hope to shape the entire world according to their world view. For me, this type of happiness goal can be compared with those who seek a relationship only to gratify their happiness through it. It is an ideal, an imaginary scenario in one's head. The mantra of achieving this goal to be happy never fulfils itself. The goal has been reached, but one does not find happiness in it. More times than not, getting through that finish line and looking around, a sense of emptiness captures the soul, traps it in a vicious cycle of repetition of search and discovery.
After such realisation, is it truly worth it? Was it worth it? If the pursuit of what we have thought would have made us happy has been reached and its outcome presented itself as its truly self, that being a feeling of emptiness, were we wrong to pursue such ambition of happiness after all?
It might lie in the question itself. We ought to ask ourselves not what makes us happy, instead we should ask ourselves what is wrong about being unhappy? What is wrong about feeling sad, angry or indifferent. Don’t all emotions hold the same weight? And I would go even further and say that these aforementioned state of mind have a much greater impact on the self than happiness ever will. Happiness can only teach us what makes us happy, it cannot teach us about ourselves, our inner troubles and anxieties than it can show us the projection of our good side through compliments, social status and generated wealth. Happiness can only be as good as how much happiness we feel. One cannot exist without the other. Furthermore, the completeness of happiness, that being feeling just happiness, will eventually lead us to feel nothing at all. An allegory I enjoy using here over and over is that of the giant cookie. If one has too much a good thing, it will eventually and slowly crumble, with all of its good slowly vanishing.
This would not be a complete article if I were to not discuss the elephant in the room, capitalism. Of course, many studies have shown that introduction of neo-liberal capitalist policies in markets correlate to rising mental health problems. While this could be debated by stating the fact that mental illnesses detection techniques have gotten better, or one could double down on these studies and point to the numerous disadvantages young people face in late stage capitalism, I would like to go a bit deeper, dig a bit more into this idea. I believe, below the surface level, through our collective acceptance of Neo-Liberalism we have, in a way, turned happiness into a commodity. It is in a quite similar fashion of how ideology has been turned into a commodity in the market of ideas. We sell happiness not through materialism, but through immaterialism. The essence of being happy, and the pursuit of happiness that is sold to us as our individual magnum opus.
So what are we ought to do? Accept our misery? Fall into despair by giving ourselves to the market of emotions? I started this article with a quote from Ram Dass: "just be here now". Remember your past and forgive it, even the events that were out of your control. Look towards the future, embrace it. Accept that it holds things that will not only be out of your control, but things which you cannot change at all, as you will never know what will happen a minute from now. Now, look at you. At the person you are now, feel your feelings, ask yourself what you are feeling and truly feel it. Let it pass through you. May it be a 'pleasant' or 'unpleasant' feeling, accept it, acknowledge it. Let it bless you with its beauty and then… let it go.
