Pahsis Fromm's Varying Traits Of Western Ideals

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.

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.

With the scent of smoke stained into the history of a devastated Jamestown, we look back on the recent accounts of Bacon's Rebellion and wonder what actually happened. What drove a man to disturb the peace and burn down our beloved city? Is what we witnessed the acts a Patriotic man protecting the rights of his fellow countrymen or are they of a selfish man hoping to gain the power he so wishes to have? To justify Bacon's actions, would be like justifying a child burning down their house after the parents said they could not have a cookie for dessert. Bacon's Rebellion is a man's search for power hidden in the agenda of protecting the people's rights.

According to the classic sense, a life full of happiness is a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness. However happiness has been twisted by a secular culture and the classic sense has given away to “pleasurable satisfaction”. Pleasurable satisfaction depends on external circumstances going well. Moreland points out that because of this the modern sense of happiness, “pleasurable satisfaction”, is unstable and varies with life’s circumstances. Pleasurable satisfaction becomes increasingly addictive and enslaving if it becomes the dominant aim of one’s life. By contrast, classical happiness brings freedom and power to life as one ought, as one increasingly becomes a unified person who lives for a cause bigger than one’s self. Western culture has been disillusioned into seeking happiness as their main priority in life. Although, happiness is important, when its importance becomes exaggerated, it leads to a loss of purpose in life, and even depression. What Western cultures need to realize is that true happiness can never be achieved. Over the past 50 years, levels of health, wealth, and liberties have increased, but levels of happiness haven’t.

Marx and Nietzsche trace depression and the modern malaise to people's inabilities to realize their potential and act on human instinct, which can be formalized with a notion of alienation of the self, because the constraints imposed by capitalism and Christian morality, respectively, cause individuals to develop identities distinct from their own, so each author calls for the abandonment of these systems.

Happiness is given a new perspective in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The thirst to constantly be happy became so extreme that the World Controller’s believed it was necessary to sacrifice one's individuality and humanity. For example, the purposeful act of mentally impairing the lower castes, such as the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, took away their ability to make choices, as well as have conscious, individual thoughts; two crucial components that contribute to a person's individuality and humanity. Furthermore, the conditioning of children immediately after they are manufactured, disables one's ability to make conscious and truly informed decisions.

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;

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.

The 20th century has seen a continuation of the battle between reason and romanticism, rationalism and mysticism. With little conflict, Darwin and Freud co-exist in the modern mind. Marx exhibited the split vision, extolling the power of practical, realistic workers who would create a utopian world. In fact, this dichotomy which began in the Renaissance and became a gaping wound in the 17th and 18th centuries as we embraced science and reason as our god, has allowed for 20th century aberrations like Hitler and his Aryan ubermenchen or Stalin and his totalitarian state. Clearly, the 20th century mind is in dire need of healing. But only reinventing a healthy vision of humans in the world, one which integrates both the rational bent

Most of the witnesses cite seeing a man with a sling on his arm. He confessed that he would fake to have been injured and sometimes would be on clutches. He would request his victims to assist him to carry something to his car which was often packed in a place where he would not be seen. Other times he would pretend to be a police officer or he worked with the fire department. He would bludgeon his victims with pieces of wood or any blunt object; he did beat some to a point of death while others did die. He would strangle them and sexually assault them. He later decapitated the bodies while others he ditched them a whole. When searches were conducted some heads were found without bodies, while others were found in pieces as stated by Dekle,

Confronted through the matters of lack of morality in an irrational society, random acts of violence, and absurdism in the human condition, Camus’s idea of happiness is something so simplistic that not even his own characters believe it to be true, except Monsieur Mersault. However, before analyzing his work, it is crucial to understand who Albert Camus was as a person, especially with how his upbringing

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.

The literary element of suspense is essential in any piece of decent literature as it creates momentum between each rising action within the plot. By means of suspense, the author invokes anticipation and a lack of certainty, drawing the reader further into the plot. Short stories, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne display various methods of the integration of suspense in literature and its influence on the story. False relief, foreshadowing, and hidden truths being amongst the many. Likewise, the tone and mood of the story are vital to the establishment of suspense. They combine to influence the reader’s emotions whilst

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.