Don’t Worry, Be Happy
The Wall Street Journal carries a great article today titled, “Life Is Good, So Why Do We Feel So Bad?” In it scholar Gregg Easterbrook outlines that things are going quite well, yet the country as a whole thinks we’re on the road to apocalypse. The thesis says it all: “Our impressions of ourselves and our neighbors come from personal experience. Our impressions of the nation as a whole come from the media and from political blather, which both exaggerate the negative.”
Easterbrook focuses primarily on economic and social issues, which are certainly important, but with so much media attention paid to the war in Iraq it’s easy to overlook that our hyper-negativity applies to war and peace as well. Numerous scholars have noted we are actually living in the most peaceful time ever in human history. For two examples of such claims see this New Republic article (pdf) or this post at The Futurist.
In short, most of you are better off now than you have ever been. Don’t let the nattering naybobs of negativity get you down, especially in an election year.
3 Responses to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
Joshua,
Veteran broadcast and print journalist Liz Trotta has long complained about media bias that exaggerates the bad. And yet she seems to find it a rather minor slip “out of being tired” that she effectively gave her stamp of approval for the assassination of Barck Obama. Is Liz Trotta happy? I wouldn’t know, but Trotta comes off as the negative attacking the negative.
When people lump gays in the same category as siblings engaged in incest are they happy or spiteful? Are they looking for reconciled happiness or the happiness of a gated community?
Peace, Biblically speaking, is far more than the absence of war, but a wholeness that entails reconcilation with God and with each other. That reconciliation is onging, and a think to rejoice, but may not call for a broad application of happiness, because for many happiness is rooted in contentment instead of hope.
The concept of happiness you present, while not contrary to the faith per se, is not rooted in the faith, either. So while things may be “good” for most, many who suffer or lack may be Biblically “joyful” without being Happy.”
Was Jesus happy? Yeah, I think so. I imaganine him laughing and havig a good time at social gatherings and in homes. Was Jesus happy? No, because he saw the brokeness. He witnessed the evil and rebelion and called us to a better life.
I think the deeper issue is joy, for instance as presented in the common lectionary New Testament reading of Romans 5:1-8. Happiness there is rejoicing in the blessing of salvation apart from our current conditions or those of the world. And yet in that rejoicing we reach out in compassion to others. We support and encourage each other not just when communication is easy or times are good, but also in the depths.
We can be “happy” and yet live in the reality of proper rebukes for happiness lived in indifference and shallwness.
A family member gave his nephew (physically confined to a wheel chair from a snowboarding accient, now living in hope for college and the future, sustained in faith but frustrated by stares or people who avert their eyes) a T-shirt reading something like “Jesus loves you” with words in parentheses underneath, “but I sure must have pissed him off”. That T-shirt could be seen as cynical or as an invitation for all of us to look deeper into the meaning of happiness; is it shared or treated as merely a personal possession?
One area you omitted is the negative impressions and feelings conveyed by narrow-minded religious figures. The Church as it overall functions as opposed to its ideal as founded by Jesus, has often led to suspicions about people who are different.
Negativity can be in the mind of the perceiver as much as an objective reaility.
Where is the line between between what we accuse others are and what we are ourselves? Safire of course wrote the “nattering nabobs of negativity” line for Spiro Agnew. However, it hard for me to think of too many administrations more dark and negative than that of Richard Nixon. Agnew railed against nattering nabobs of negativism, but few people of the time were as racially divisive and racially exploitive as Spiro Agnew. Few worked as hard to divide people for electoral gain. Agnew was what he accused others of being.
Whether or not people claim in polls to be happy or unhappy is virtually irrelevant unless there is the deepest examinations of opinions and feelings held below the surface.
Am I happy? Very much so! What blessings I have received through Christ and the workings of the Holy Spirit and the ensuing events. Am I happy? No, all of creation groans and suffers in the pain of childbirth: “Obama’s Baby Mama.”
Because you;ve divorced the notion of secular happiness and Biblical happiness, there is no completely just or rationale way to address your argument about happiness versus negativity. And are the “masses” so ignorant and gulible as to wed their notions of happiness to political blather?
Joel, Do you do birthdays and corporate events as well as blogs?
For a somewhat shorter answer, I raised my questions because the author of the New Republic article is an atheist. That doesn’t mean that his story is incorrect, only that from a Christian standpoint, a non-believer may easily emphasize human history in terms of great declines overall in violence, whereas Christianity is focused in “making all things new.” In some ways, his attitude is like the prosperous and happy of the 1980’s who were indifferent or hostile to ministries to and for AIDS victims; that is, if the good majority are doing well, there is no sense of urgency to worry about “the least in the Kingdom.” The NR author is a humanist who rejects a tendency toward evil and claims that it is the humanist approach (an inborn desire for harmony) that is causing humans to be kinder to each other. I respectfully disagree.
JP — do I do conventions? Well, the whole entire purpose of my life and existence is to comment at ITA. Should ITA fold, my life will be a meaningless and lonely roaming over a senseless wasteland.