On Happiness

Not many people are happy, but all the libraries are filled with books on happiness, and this very fact should make us curious.


The Ancients gave us dozens of recipes on how to conduct a happy life, each of them contradicting the other, or at least, with


very dissimilar opinions. The Modernity has its own solutions up to the negation of the very possibility of having a happy life.


And recently, mister Francis H. came up with his own idea of   happiness.   He argues that the problem of happiness can be


reduced to wealth, knowledge and a personal belief of being "in control" of one's own life. Let's at first consider   these factors.


 


Wealth is important, according to mister Francis H., because it allows the satisfaction of one's basic needs. It seems to me that


if it was true, the Ancients had no chance to be happy at all and we can not be happy as well, since in the time to come people


will be even more wealthy than they are now (see later on the part of my essay "On Future") and able to better satisfy their


needs. Well, I guess the notion of wealth is just relative. Same as basic needs which can cause even more trouble. What are


basic needs? Color TV and refrigerator or your own jet plane? Or maybe just a barrel in a harbor as Diogenes showed us?




Knowledge. In my opinion the problem with knowledge may be similar to the wealth issue. Knowledge in general (meant as


scientific knowledge) has increased dramatically over the last centuries, but arguing that this has contributed to general


happiness is at least risky, not to mention superfluous. This problem has two main aspects, firstly, its relativity (as in the case of


wealth); we can fly to Venus and kill most of the microbes but there is still much more to be done.   Secondly, its validity in the


pure aspect, as giving us answers about the world and life in general. On the other hand, as far as personal...