A Dialogue On Happiness

[dan2100]

The ideas argued in this dialogue owe a great deal to Ayn Rand and David Kelley, though my proximate impetus (big words!) was reading George Berkeley's Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. I intended, at the time, to write a second dialogue, since this one is incomplete – it raises some issues which it doesn't settle, but I guess Brant is right about me having a lazy side...

HITAKE: Doesn't everyone deserve to be happy?

YUNG: What!?! Why?

HITAKE: Shouldn't everyone experience some joy; at the very least some vague hint of life's beauty; some radiant brilliance outshining all despair, even if only for an instant?

YUNG: I'm not sure. Should those who do nothing to earn it be allowed the same reward as those who do? I won't endorse any egalitarianism of happiness, any socialism of the soul, without asking this. There are men and women who sacrifice their hope on the various altars for an unseen 'higher' purpose –

HITAKE: That's bullshit! What purpose could be higher than happiness? Why would anyone want to live a life untouched by it? What could drive such people to give up their birthright?

YUNG: The range of human weakness is too large for anyone to catalog much less deny. Happiness is an effect, not a cause. Remove its conditions and none can expect it to remain. If you plant a seed but allow it no sunlight or water or warmth it will not sprout.

HITAKE: There's something to what you say, but I can find no reason to breathe other than to be happy. I can't stand by while each grain in life's hourglass spills away and not at least have some –

YUNG: Perhaps this is as it should be: Each seeking the happiness you speak of. But each doesn't. Look at the world. Most can't define what it is that would make them happy much less pursue it. The few who can do both are few indeed.

HITAKE: Is this why people invent gods? To set something high above their suffering to prove their sorrows are somehow natural and necessary?

YUNG: I don't know. These things puzzle me, but I find no answers to your questions. Suffering is real – too real to be overlooked. It seems given this fact one can either rebel or accept – try to change the conditions to suit one's happiness or try to change oneself to suit the conditions. I wonder if acceptance is out of laziness or futility. I wonder if hope is born of despair or ignorance. I can't say.

HITAKE: I'm sure it depends on the case, but to give in as a consistent policy is to die before one's death. Once the passion for joy has died for whatever reason – laziness, futility or what have you – life has ceased. Life has a nature and it must be obeyed. Mankind has a definite nature, a need for happiness –

YUNG: Does it? What is this definite nature? Can it be clearly defined for all men at all times? Surely, you jest! How can you make such a claim, being merely one person at one time?

HITAKE: I can with confidence make it because of each individual's ability – which I too possess – to think, to understand, to take the evidence before one's senses and build a true, if incomplete, picture of the world.

YUNG: This is not the time or the place to examine your beliefs about human knowledge, but I will say they are indefensible. Let's get back to the subject of happiness.

HITAKE: I don't know if that's possible. With this matter so basic to human existence – and we are humans – I can't see how any could not examine the fundamentals of that existence, especially those upon which happiness rests!

YUNG: But isn't happiness merely an emotion, a simple feeling that has little link with anything else, including ideas and other feelings? And aren't feelings to be taken as given and unexaminable?

HITAKE: Surely, you jest! A few moments ago you talked of happiness as an effect with definite causes. Now you maintain it's an inexplicable primary. Feelings can't be taken merely as they are. Whether one fears this or desires that is dependent on one's values and experiences. Would you expect a newborn to fear a loaded gun aimed at its head?

YUNG: I apologize. I do believe happiness has causes, but it would seem that the variation in people is enough to dispel any notion that the same causes produce the same results in different persons. If there were a human nature, over and above the individual humans, don't you think all humans would be alike?

HITAKE: I'm glad you admit your mistake, but it seems you compound it with one as great. Surely, we can discern 'redness' from the red objects, such as an apple, a drop of blood, the morning sun, or a rose. Yet each is not red in the same way to the same degree. The apple may be a bright red while the flower is a soft red and so on.

YUNG: I see, but wouldn't you say that 'redness' is just an arbitrary term denoting a mere collection, a pile of random things that the mind in its need for order sticks together? From this we think we know profundities such as 'human nature' or 'redness'.

HITAKE: People can make that error. Imagination can create ideas out of bits and pieces fancily sewn into an intricate and, in many cases, believable tapestry. Unicorns, dragons and such are conjured up in this manner.

YUNG: Do you agree that human nature is but a phantom, a mirage to tempt but not quench our understanding?

HITAKE: No. While some ideas are made without concern for the truth, this needn't be the case. To see why, one must ask what ideas are and what their function is.

YUNG: Why ideas are images inside our minds, nothing more. Their function is merely to delude, and in deluding to quiet the mind.

HITAKE: I must say you have a very bleak view of our capabilities and their purpose. How do you understand the very idea of 'delusion' or 'mind' or 'idea' if the function of ideas is to shield us from the truth?

YUNG: They're merely words we use. Being words they have certain rules of usage, just as there are laws of chemistry and economics.

HITAKE: You speak of 'laws', but what are laws but ideas about how the world works. Being 'laws' they are probably – at the very least – thought to be true. Now how would one come up with the ideas of 'delusions', 'redness', 'human', 'rules of usage', or 'laws of the sciences'? Surely, there must be something more to it than mere habit or fancy! This is especially so since certain ideas must be grasped first to grasp others.

YUNG: I imagine that it's habit guided by necessity. Those uses that are successful survive. In this light, to use a word out of its common usage would lead to confusion. After all, one can't expect a whale to live as a man does.

HITAKE: How would one distinguish habit from necessity, the common from the uncommon, whales from men without ideas? According to you, there can be no human nature, so how can you know some men aren't whales?

YUNG: You are merely playing with words. An idea is formed, as I've said, by sticking together different things and calling them by one name. Ideas are just random piles. They are random since no person has all the facts about a given thing or group of things.

HITAKE: If you use perfection as a standard for happiness, we would all appear to be in hell. If you use omniscience as your standard, all human knowledge is doomed to failure. You fail to tell just how the mind sticks the different things together and how it is possible that such an arbitrary process can contribute to survival much less come to be known by its practitioners. You use ideas, often precisely, yet you undercut them. You can't enjoy the flower if you never allow it to grow from its roots.

YUNG: Poetry is not argument! It's not I that have failed, but you who has yet to succeed. You have not demonstrated how ideas work, how they are built and what use they have. Until then I can nothing but believe my somewhat faulty theory.

HITAKE: You're right. I have yet to tell you what I believe of ideas. But isn't it the best course to abandon a faulty theory even if no truthful has been found? Do not answer! I will now tell you my positive views on ideas.

YUNG: I will listen as a cat listens for a mouse.

HITAKE: First, we must recognize that our minds can discern differences and, thereby, likenesses. If this were not possible we could not hold this conversation or tell red from non-red.

YUNG: Isn't all contrast relative? I can only tell red if there are non-red things about.

HITAKE: True. But does this relativeness mean 'redness' is arbitrary? Would you say the eyes can't see because they need light?

YUNG: I would not condemn the eyes because of lack of light, for they operate by gathering light. Still, if something is red, really red, then its redness is not something dependent on there being non-red things about it. Thus, the mind via the eyes can't perceive the true nature of things. This is what I've maintained all along!

HITAKE: Again, you make an assertion about reality while denying anyone can know reality. If the eyes operate in certain ways – a point you readily admit – then it follows that one must understand these in order to see how they work. It is not only necessary for light to fall upon open eyes for it to be seen. There are other conditions. For instance, the light must not be too little or too much. There must be a certain level of variation for the eyes to perceive the different objects and their qualities.

YUNG: I will grant you these. I will even allow redness to depend on 'a certain level of variation', but what does this have to do with ideas?

HITAKE: We can't start with the flower. I was showing you the roots. Since you grant they're firmly planted we can move up the stem, taking care to avoid the ants and bees.

YUNG: Enough poetry! I have not granted that your foundations are firm. Rather, I wish to see where your argument is leading. I grant the eyes see something – at the very least, images. I doubt the eyes see the real objects or that the nose smells the true fragrance of a rose.

HITAKE: And just how would the real rose look and smell? To claim the eyes and nose and other senses don't perceive the true nature of things there must be something for comparison.

YUNG: Remember your experiences! Does not a house appear to loom larger as one approaches it? Does not the curtain look different when seen by the setting sun than by the noon sun? Does not the warmth of summer impress itself on you more firmly when you've just stepped out of a cool building, and vice versa in winter?

HITAKE: Again, you argue from the relativeness of perception. Yet wouldn't you find it strange if moving closer to some object it did not appear larger? Wouldn't this be a violation of the laws of perspective? And wouldn't it be eerie if the heat of summer always imposed itself upon you the same whether your flesh was cooled beforehand or not? Wouldn't this violate the laws of thermodynamics? Need I say that the senses must obey these same laws. They are not free to apprehend things in magical ways, but must obey the laws of reality.

YUNG: But how can you know these are the laws of reality? If you must learn of them through the senses, it is you who are violating logic. One can not build an argument upon itself.

HITAKE: Now, you are trying to turn things on end. You maintain that we know the true nature of things yet you have yet to show in what fashion you arrived at this conclusion. I maintain the senses work and have a definite nature. I maintain the mind is likewise.

YUNG: I do not disagree that both the senses and the mind have a means of operation. I will not speak of their respective natures because it is my view that their true nature is something we can't know. I am even inclined to say there is no such thing as a true nature since we have no proof for its existence except in our hopes.

HITAKE: I give up! There is no sense in arguing with you over this matter. You maintain that we can't know the nature of things while at the same time assuming certain definite ideas about their natures. You undercut the senses by proposing they should apprehend objects in the same appearance under any conditions. Now, you have taken your view to its final end. If we can't know the nature, then things do not have a nature. With this being so, how can you make any claims at all? Whatever claim you make would be attaching some kind of nature to some thing or other.

YUNG: Very well, let's get back to happiness.

HITAKE: How can we? If happiness derives from certain causes and, according to you, we can't know the true nature of things, then it must be that we can never be aware of the causes. Also, from this, if anyone is happy it must be for reasons he can never know much less repeat. Thus, it must be a flickering, temporary thing. In short, you have undercut – in your own mind, since I have tried to present to you a different view, one compatible with our natures – everything including happiness.

YUNG: What you say sounds valid, but how would you account for error, for mistakes, for all these things that stand in defiance to your model of reality?

HITAKE: Mistakes happen. This I admit, but for me to do so I must know that it is a mistake. Wouldn't you agree? If I assumed all my views were mistaken, I'd have to say the view that mistakes happen was also mistaken.

YUNG: What of dreams, illusions, and hallucinations? Couldn't you be dreaming this very talk? If not, how can you prove this is not the case?

HITAKE: From whence do your ideas 'of dreams, illusions, and hallucinations' come? From your experiences! You could not know of them unless you were able to experience them, directly or indirectly, and for that you must be able to distinguish them from experiences which were not 'dreams, illusions, and hallucinations'. Put another way, you can't know these as deceptions without having sensed when things were not deceptive. How can you be so doubtful of certainty and, at the same time, so certain of doubt? Surely, these two attitudes must clash!

YUNG: I grow tired. I wish I could argue more with you. Tomorrow, perhaps. We have come very far from happiness. I doubt you'll convince me or I'll convince you.

HITAKE: I'm not sure we've have come so far. If happiness requires certain conditions, then it follows that you must be able to provide these conditions to be happy. It also follows that you must be able to know these conditions to provide them – unless you expect everyone to stumble blindly from joy to joy. If you take the later course, then the conclusion must be man can never be happy except by accident and then only fleetingly.

YUNG: I agree. You have shown how the foundations must be, but they are otherwise. Human happiness is, therefore, only a random occurrence. With this I bid you farewell until tomorrow.

HITAKE: Farewell!

[dan2100]

Was it really that bad that no one even bothered to comment on it?

[anthony]

Was it really that bad that no one even bothered to comment on it?

Nope, I think rather because it's that good.

Who dares gild the lily? ;)

If you didn't quite say it all when it comes to each person's personal (some might say, subjective) pursuit of that elusive happiness, you came pretty close, I believe.

Tony (my "Yung" got the upper hand over my "Hitake" many years ago.)

[dan2100]

Was it really that bad that no one even bothered to comment on it?

Nope, I think rather because it's that good.

Who dares gild the lily?

If you didn't quite say it all when it comes to each person's personal (some might say, subjective) pursuit of that elusive happiness, you came pretty close, I believe.

Tony (my "Yung" got the upper hand over my "Hitake" many years ago.)

Thanks! I wanted to write a follow-up to it, but others projects got in the way.