The Happiness Myth

Dalai Lama and Stalin – Happy Bedfellows?

Read an article on the weekend about happiness and how tyrants use the lure and promise of happiness to lock ‘their people’ in behind them.  If they’re good at manipulating the minds of the hoi polloi, they’ll have a long reign at the top.  Witness regimes both current and past – they often lasted for many decades.

Now, we see some of these regimes crumbling such as Egypt, or under extreme threat such as Syria.  It seems that finally the penny dropped for the populace – the promise of happiness was not fulfilled.

Religions use the promise of happiness (even eternal happiness) as the hook to attract followers.  When this happens there is often an authoritarian theme – you need to display Total Obedience, otherwise the happiness goodies will not come your way.  Such is life – or death.

The article I refer to can be found in The Australian newspaper.  Written by Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill, it makes the point that gurus such  as the Dalai Lama spin a line that is patronizing and authoritarian.  Like all happiness peddlers, they presume to know what is good for us and what we need to make us happy.

But real life does not work like that.  Real happiness is something that only we can find individually.  We are NOT an amorphous blob, that can be made happy by a single prescriptive formula.

Unhappiness Has Its Own Reward

Being perpetually happy is not possible, nor is it desirable.  In fact, great human advances invariably came as a result of someone’s UNHAPPINESS.  This form of unhappiness manifested as ‘inspirational dissatisfaction’ which in turn triggered a creative response to solve the problem.  Once the problem has been solved we then move back to a state of relative – and temporary – happiness, till the next problem (or period of relative unhappiness) appears.

History is replete with examples of people who overcame great odds to solve a problem that was causing them pain or frustration.  This in turn produced a great leap forward for civilization.

Call it the yin and yang of happiness, guys.  We need both happiness AND unhappiness to reach our full potential.   Whether it be in our personal lives, in our home based business, or whatever – use your own unhappiness to springboard to a better tomorrow.

Love to see your comments.

Tagged as: dalai lama, joseph stalin, the happiness myth