Does everyone want to be happy? We are told so ... but I have my doubts as to what this means. Are serial killers happy offing their next victim? Perhaps. Did OJ find joy in slashing the throats of his ex-wife Nicole and Ron Goldman? Perhaps. Did Pol Pot have a smile on his face as he slaughtered 2 million Cambodians? Perhaps. Was Chairman Mao gleeful when his Great Leap Forward starved to death perhaps ten million of his countrymen? Perhaps.
Obviously happiness is a very relevant thing. Monasteries and nunneries exist for a primary purpose of assuring a state of grace to their participants ... a distillation of happiness. We all believe that happiness should be all goodness and light. But this is clearly not the case. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that many people find comfort in things that most of us consider bizarre. Our newspapers would quickly fold if they could not report on the many aberrations and outright crimes perpetuated by anti-social creeps who are seeking out their own sick form of joy.
So, our classic notions of what motivate people may be right in the whole, but clearly misfire for large swaths of homo sapiens. Do we need to rethink what the guarantee “pursuit of happiness” phrase in the Declaration of Independence means? Perhaps we need a finer form of the word “happiness?” Specifying that it must be the benign form of this emotion?
I can’t think of a word for this constricted form of joy. Can you?
Afterward: Beatific?
