despite the flaws of the american ideal of "rugged individualism"

it does have some good aspects to it. I tend to get upset when people either 1) praise the western ideal of individualism and self-understanding/focus on oneself and criticize social responsibility and eastern focus on the importance of family and community over oneself
or
2) praise the eastern communal priority and criticize the western value of individualism and "finding yourself".

so am I a hypocrite? I think in my mind, both are important and that either can be taken to a negative extreme. I think its a good thing to "find yourself" while also recognizing the value of commuity and the family as an important entity to cherished and respected.


jesus said "love thy neighbour as thyself."
not "love thy neighbour more than thyself" or "love thyself more than thy neighbor."

one should hold yourself and your neighbour (all people) in equal regard. my friend noted this last week when we had coffee and I was so thankful to her for sharing this observation. Most of my life I had interpreted that scripture as if it really said "Love your neighbour more than yourself".

The other day I discovered a letter I had written to myself, about 2 pages long, back in the summer of 2002. In the letter, I addressed myself as my close confidant, my most dear friend.
My best friend.
The past year or so I have tried or at least pondered the idea somewhat of being my own best friend. It is certainly true that I can be my own best friend or my very worst enemy.
I will not deny the fact that I can often be the latter.
Sometimes I find it very useful to write letters to myself and read them a bit later. Its an amazing form of self-help that helps you to step outside yourself and also help yourself.
The other night my friend Nadia put her hand over her heart and I put my hand over mine. "Everything I need to know is right here." she said. "yes, its all right here." I said.
I remember last October Ben Lee told me the exact same thing and I didn't believe him.
"Its all right here" he said, looking me in the eyes and pointing to his chest and then mine "What you feel, what's right here. That is the truth".

"And all God's people say..."
"Amen."

the falseness of intimacy
recently i have spent a lot of time wondering how much we really know other people.
sometime i think i really know other people, understand other people, think i have other people figured out.
and then i realize, that I don't have myself figured out, not to mention everyone else.
and that is painful.
the shocking realization that i thought i knew this person, thought i was close to this person.
nope. i know some THINGS about them. maybe i know their favorite ice-cream color, their middle name, their opinion on the final chapters of Flaubert's Sentimental Education.
One of my favorite books is "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck and one of its main ideas is that "Love is Seperateness". Basically that despite all your attempts to understand and be understood, the painful reality of life is that we are all seperate people with seperate ideas and seperate almost everything. No matter how close we really feel to another human being, part of it is an illusion. You never really know or understand another living being.
I'm not sure i'll ever be able to fully accept that. I like the illusion, when it lasts.

i called my dad today and we had a really good conversation. it made me feel really happy.
i have such an amazing dad. i am so blessed. i miss him but he will be back in 3 weeks.

I went to high school with several libertarians who considered calling a person a "hippie" the biggest insult they could render.
I've met some pretty awesome, nice hippies in my day, but that doesn't mean I would ever want to be one.

However, the other day I took a quiz where I was labeled a "hippie". YES, according to this quiz, I am a HIPPIE. If I was slightly less extroverted, I would be an "emo kid". So I guess some days, depending on my mood, I am either a hippie or an emo kid.

Here is the highly stereotyped profile that is (supposed) to describe me:

You are the Hippie! Characterized by a strong sense of extroversion, irrationality, gentleness, humility, and a faint scent of marijuana, you no doubt frolic through fields preaching peace and free love! Immediately following that, you then frolic to the hospital with herpes! You are probably either very spiritual or needlessly paranoid about "the man", like most hippies, as a result of your focus on intuition and feelings over cold, brutal logic. You probably enjoy poetry, especially beatnik ultra-liberal crap about how horrible fascism is, even though your suburbanized, sheltered idea of "fascism" is having to pay two dollars per gallon at the gas pump. You are also very, very social. And like any hippie who would have no qualms about hitchiking across the country just to meet some interesting people, you also love to interact with others, even complete strangers. Though I highly doubt they love to interact with you! Because we know most any hippie is peace-loving and humble, it stands to reason that you, as well, are terribly gentle and humble, almost to the point of revulsion. Your carefree attitude of peace and harmony is probably very, very sickening to realists or cynics or anyone who isn't a hippie, to tell the truth. In short, your personality is defective because you are overly emotional, extroverted, gentle, and humble--thus making you an annoying hippie. Now go do your drugs and have sex with filthy bearded men in tye dye shirts.

yeah i i really don't think this aptly describes me at all. i suppose the author thought he was being humorous.
though the hitchhiking thing does sound a bit more awesome to me than it probably should...

the one and lonely

A few weeks ago the New York Times published a story on studies done through Duke University regarding the loneliness of the average American. You can read the article by Henry Fountain here.
Apparently the amount of Americans who have felt "alienated" at times and is lacking in close confidantes has grown considerably since the 1950's.
The article states
"A recent study by sociologists at Duke and the University of Arizona found that, on average, most adults only have two people they can talk to about the most important subjects in their lives — serious health problems, for example, or issues like who will care for their children should they die. And about one-quarter have no close confidants at all.

"The kinds of connections we studied are the kinds of people you call on for social support, for real concrete help when you need it," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a sociologist at Duke and an author of the study, which analyzed responses in interviews that mirrored a survey from 1985. "These are the tightest inner circle."

I think like all people I get lonely sometimes. Its especially hard when you keep moving and changing schools. However, based on this data, I am considerably better off than the average Americans. I probably have about 6 friends I would consider "close-confidants" with whom I discuss a lot of the most serious issues in my life.
Though it seem there are several factors contributing to this dilemma that the article does not mention. First of all, as globalization expands, people are moving all around the world, there is a lot more long-distance traveling, and unlike 50 years ago, loved ones are often thousands of miles away. Also, the family unit has changed over the last 50 years. In more families, both spouses/parents are working full-time and there is less time to spend together or with friends. All of this traveling, moving about, and workaholicism probably accounts for a bit of this isolation. One of the things I love about my parents so much is that they both limited their hours of work and my dad tried not to have to leave for business too often when I was growing up or even now. I think the longest he was gone was for a month once, and it was only one or two times. In total, he was probably gone on business four weeks in total a year spread out over many months. I was taught that family, the family unit and dynamic, having a close family, was the top priority that came before work and other possible interferences. I really appreciate that my parents gave that to me. So much of life is recommitting yourself to your priorities everyday, and I feel like my parents gave me a firm foundation in realizing that your relationships come first before everything else.
However it seems like in our culture "family" and "friendships" aren't priorities endorsed by the media or many organizations at all. And most do not take "focus on the family" (a right-wing fundamentalist organization) and other family-endorsing organizations seriously. in the case of that organization, its for a good reason. Now we just need "Emily's List"-like organization, moderate, perhaps slightly liberal leaning, in support of family/relationships/commitment as priority. Though I'm not so sure that would work. I guess it would just have to be pitched the right way.

is the right to happiness a fundamentalism...a new kind of dogma?

I was recently reading an article in the New Yorker called "Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness" by Jennifer Senior.

Here are some key demographics from the article:

Other findings from the emerging field of happiness studies: Married people are happier than those who are not, while people who believe in God are happier than those who don't. On the former point, Seligman's book cites a 35,000-person poll from the National Opinion Research Center, in which 40 percent of married Americans described themselves as very happy, compared with just 24 percent of unmarried Americans who said the same. (Of course, he allows, happy people may be the ones who get married to begin with.) On the latter point, he cites a study showing that the faithful are less likely to abuse drugs, commit crimes, or to kill themselves. The act of worshipping builds community, itself another source of happiness, —and belief systems provide structure, meaning, and the promise of relief from pain in this life.
Smarter people aren't any happier, but those who drink in moderation are. Attractive people are slightly happier than unattractive people. Men aren'’t happier than women, though women have more highs and more lows. Surprisingly, the young are not happier than the elderly; in fact, it'’s the other way round, with older people reporting slightly higher levels of life satisfaction and fewer dark days.

And another main finding? Well, that New Yorkers tend to be rather unhappy, of course!
And relating to my previous blog on choice feminism, one of the main points from this article is that
"Choice creates unhappiness, argues Barry Schwartz, so New Yorkers should probably be the unhappiest people on the planet. On every block, there's a lifetime of opportunities.” "
I've actually read this before. I recently read this sociology book on why so many blue-state Americans are waiting so long to get married or not getting married at all, and one of the main reasons is that there were too many choices. If there are so many opportunities, so many potentially perfect mates out there, why chose the one you've got, especially when you've reached the point where you realize they are less than ideal?

However, the article also notices that maybe having this hope is what happiness really is.

And maybe, too, there'’s something to all this abundance, all this aspiring, all this choice. For all its confusions, choice is also a source of hope, and for many of us, hope is itself happiness, whether it's predicated on truths or illusion.

The author than quotes Flaubert's Parrot saying, "“Isn'’t the most reliable form of pleasure . . . the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfillment's desolate attic?"

I guess another thing I have been considering lately is the idea of happiness in the context of survival. back in the day when the life expectancy was 35, the only real care in the world was living to see your next birthday and trying to procreate.
Now we are in a society where our next birthday is a given (we are dreading how old we are) and children arinconvenienceseless inconvience, apparently we are so overpopulated, some countries like China are limiting how many kids a family can have.
So basically, we already have survival as a given, we are greatly blessed by that, and yet we still want more, we think we need more. the more you have, the more you want. it is never good enough. it feels like "settling". why would i want "this" when i can have "that". According to Aristotle, happiness is "an activity of the soul that expresses virtue."
but is happiness really so virtuous? why do i want to be "happy" and what even is it?

the article continues with this interesting bit which goes along with my survival idea:

Until extremely recently, happiness wasn't even a value, much less an inalienable right. Instead, it was something one got to experience only in death, after leading a virtuous, and often self-denying, life. As McMahon points out in Happiness: A History, the words for happiness in both ancient Greek eudaimonia and every Indo-European language include, at the root, a cognate for lhappy” In English, it'ss happ, or chances as in happenstance, haphazard, perhaps. The implication is that being happy means being lucky. And luck is not something we can entirely will.
"Happiness is fine as a side effect,"says Adam Phillips, the British psychoanalyst and lay philosopher whose latest work, Going Sane, examines functionality and well-being, but from a much more literary and ruminative perspective. It'’s something you may or may not acquire, in terms of luck. But I think it's a cruel demand. It may even be a covert form of sadism. Everyone feels themselves prone to feelings and desires and thoughts that disturb them. And we're being persuaded that by acts of choice, we can dispense with these thoughts. It's a version of fundamentalism.

Many may not realize that John Locke's version of "right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" did NOT include the word "happiness". It was not "happiness" in his philosophy, but "property". For some reason, I do not know why, the founding fathers changed their version, in the Constitution to "happiness". Has vexed the western world considerably or helped it? I am often not sure.
One author states in the article, "“It seems to me that if you were to take a rather stringent line here," concludes Phillips, "“then anyone who could maintain a state of happiness, given the state of the world, is living in a delusion."

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I do feel that you are setting your self up for quite the let down if you expect yourself to be "happy" in your own definition most of the time.

sometimes i truly think that ignorance is bliss, as Thomas Gray so eloquently wrote in 1742.

but regardless, I'm beginning to think that conforming to the standard new york lifestyle probably isn't the best way to go if you want to be happy. but do i really want to be "happy"? is "happiness" the goal, the end, the ultimate pursuit beyond life and liberty? That's a good question.