Pahsis Fromm's Varying Traits Of Western Ideals

Beginning with Greek philosophers, mankind has constantly pondered the meaning of happiness. Questions of how to attain joy, and how to keep it have been debated for centuries. Various religions provide roadmaps to achieve contentment: Christians preach the Ten Commandments and Heaven, and Buddhists prize the idea of karma and reincarnation. Yet others seek a more material form of satisfaction; especially in the United States, increasing emphasis is placed upon personal wealth.

Within The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, he mentions that there are two ancient truths concerning how the mind works. The first truth is the foundational idea of the book: the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict with each other. The second truth is Shakespeare’s idea about how “thinking makes it so.” (or, as Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.”) Like a rider, on the back of an elephant, the conscious, reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does. Nowadays, we know the cause of these divisions, and a few ways to help the rider and the elephant work as a better team. We can improve this ancient idea today by explaining why most people’s minds have a bias toward seeing threats and engaging in useless worry. To change this bias, we can use three techniques to increase happiness, one ancient, and two very new.

In Barbara Fredrickson’s Selections from “Love 2.0: How our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do and Become”, our conventional viewpoint on love is changed so that it can lead to a happier and healthier life. Similarly, in Karen Armstrong’s “Homo Religiosus”, she talks about religion and culture to explain the meaning of life and help people reach internal happiness. Both of these authors make sure that people forget about their previous beliefs so that they can reach Fredrickson’s system of “positivity resonance”, or Armstrong’s idea of internal happiness, or antta.

After some decades a new idea came to surface which later became known as “transcendentalism”. In this idea man and god are not separated and each individual should behave in a way that they represent the God within himself. Therefore man became the center of the world and responsible for what happens to them. If we want good things happen to us, we need to take action toward what we want and deserve. “Out of this comes the idea of the American Dream, the idea that one can, if one wishes, make a fortune, rise to great heights, and achieve” (J. Pidgeon).

There are certain things that are in the control of the humans, at the same time there are several things, which are not under the human’s control. Thus, to persist a happy life, the humans are required to put an end their desire such that the satisfaction of

From the seventeenth century to the late twentieth century there has been a change in society creating a modernist era which saw the ending of feudalism and the devotement of capitalism. (Hudson, 2003:3) This period saw changes in the way individuals lived their lives and viewed the world; there were political changes and systems of punishment. The changes stirred

Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to the effects of actions on general happiness, I admit or rather earnestly maintain.

From floating obstacles courses to movies that make you literally feel the characters sensations, and more, Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World offers a peculiar yet interesting story that very much relates to modern times. The book is set in a future Utopia, but the advanced technology isn’t the only thing that’s changed. People in the society of the book, the World State, have a very loose grasp on what truth and happiness really are. These interesting relationships prove just how incompatible truth and happiness can be. In society as a whole, truth must be chosen over happiness in order to obtain a self-reliant, thriving population; however, in today’s world, individual happiness is often chosen over truth by way of inhibiting substances.

There is a universal truth that is largely accepted, socially as well as scientifically, when it comes to the observation of human beings: they are adaptable, and thus, are always evolving. Every day, people are conditioned and molded by their surroundings because they are influenced, as well as prodded, by the idea of acceptance in a society, which in return, transcends into a conceptual idea of conformity. However, there are occasionally unique individuals who refuse to adapt entirely, and instead project unorthodox ideas that differ from the status-quo of societal beliefs. Consequently, this manner of individualism causes them to be looked upon differently in the realm of where they reside. In many works of literature, a free-thinking individual

The Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin categories three cyclical waxing and waning value systems of Western history, the sensate, which focuses matter alone as the ultimate reality and our sensory perception as the means to truth, the ideational, which holds that true reality is beyond the material world in the spiritual/metaphysical realm, and the idealistic, which attains the highest and noblest expression of both sensate and ideational values systems.

Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine right;

In contrast, the conception of happiness in Indian culture is a combination of both individualist and collectivist viewpoints. From the individualistic viewpoint of happiness in Indian culture, an individual has the power to pursue their own happiness and do whatever they deem conducive to their well-being. According to Kumar (2003), it is believed in Indian culture that “man should do whatever is possible to enhance pleasure and avoid pain . . . one could beg, borrow or steal or even murder . . .” (p. 2). In simple terms, one should do whatever is in their power to achieve ultimate happiness. This is an individualistic viewpoint because the Indian culture trusts an individual to make decisions that will benefit them. In a

At first glance, happiness is a state of mind that many, if not all people aspire to achieve in their lifetime. What exactly is that state of mind is up for debate among the east and the west, and varies between different cultures, traditions, and religions. In the west, happiness is mostly associated with success, wealth, fame and power. In the east, happiness can be viewed as freedom from mundane occurrences such as the occupation of western powers from within a country, the end of war, poverty and famine, and liberation of the false self. In contemporary times, and with the arrival of eastern philosophy, religions, and traditions in the west, many are turning inwards and using a tool believed to have more power than an atomic bomb, the human mind. In China, India and various other Asian countries, the mind has long been a powerful tool used to liberate one from suffering, the cyclic cycle of life, as well as a means to reach enlightenment and immortality. However, the mind is only a tool, and not the way per se.

This is a study conducted by Navjot Bhullar, Nicola S. Schutte & John M. Malouff in 2012 where they used different scales to measure their individualistic-collectivistic orientations, emotional intelligence, mental health, and their satisfaction with life. Their aim and objective was to determine and examine any correlations between individualistic-collectivistic cultural orientations and emotional intelligence, mental health, and life satisfaction (Bhullar, N., Schutte, N. S., & Malouff, J. M., 2012). They predicted that those with a higher collectivistic orientation will significantly correlate with better mental health and that in that, collectivists will report lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress (Bhullar, N., Schutte, N. S., & Malouff, J. M., 2012).

Almost everybody seeks happiness in life, but nearly everyone, including myself, finds the journey to become happy daunting and all consuming. As life, including my own as I enter harder classes, increases in difficulty, people discover that many factors play a role in one’s success on this journey; among these is the community that one lives in. From one’s birth onward, he or she is surrounded by a community. This ubiquitous body, which includes friends, family, and acquaintances, has a great deal of influence on a person throughout his or her life. Especially in the modern age, this influence has become increasingly difficult to avoid, and as a result, some, such as the transcendentalist thinkers, have tried to escape their communities and live free of others’ influence in order to find happiness. In their attempts, these thinkers have discovered a great deal about themselves and the relationship between community and happiness, ultimately realizing that community is not a prerequisite for happiness. In fact, community is, in large part, unessential and even antithetical to happiness.