Happiness - Essay 2

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older – William Lyon Phelps

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years – Mark Twain

The young suffer less from their own errors than from the cautiousness of the old – Vauvenargues

It is better to waste one’s youth than to do nothing with it at all – Georges Courteline

A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis about 40 years before the physical kind – Aldous Huxley.

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Reflective essay on one or more of the quotes
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Perhaps the most certain thing about happiness is its elusiveness. To define, isolate, pin-point or just wave a hand in the general direction of happiness is impossible. It can be constantly moving away from us, yet we know it's always in the same place. To suggest that happiness is the result of single inputs, such as the interesting thoughts prescribed by WL Phelps, is an oversimplification that takes us no nearer to this goal. Surveys attempting to quantify happiness generally do find that it increases with age. Some people suggest that this is more due to a realisation than it is to a specific circumstance or stimulus. They say we are already happy, like the man who travelled around the world only to find what he was looking for when he returned home, we are already there but are so focused on deciphering the directions we haven't noticed yet. How this explains the increasing distance one can feel from happiness, after once being certain they were happy, is not clear. Proponents of 'realisation' theory, may then invoke the caveat of 'truth' - True Happiness. True happiness comes from within, so if you were once happy, but are not now, that happiness was a house of cards built on objects and people that assured us that we had what we wanted and were therefore happy. Others suggest that happiness comes from helping others. Some of the happiest times in my life have been involved a combination of shared adventure, learning new skills, helping people and achieving goals. The stark ommissions from that list are clearly the aspects of my life I take for granted - health, security, feeling loved and having someone to love. And the list is probably longer.

My feeling is that, like most things in life, there is a place in between the theories on happiness - although the two dimensional spectrum of a 'grey area' is again too simple. A multidimensional (including time) kaleidoscope may be more appropriate. From within and without, through time and space - we may recognise happiness when we see it, but the chaotic course of events may spin us around, leaving us disoriented and bewildered now unsure of what happiness was. Our fuzzy memory of how it felt to be happy only serves to distract and confuse us more in our pursuit of it. But what use is a discourse on happiness without a road map to its location or a tip on where the maps are hidden? I would suggest that we can take action to create an environment that we enjoy (which for me are those four variables above), but without the belief that we are already at our destination, we won't get there.

Society/Politics Essay practice 1

This is essay number one – this is difficult and took me longer than the allotted 30 minutes. Quotes are from the official GAMSAT preparation guide from ACER.
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Technology is the science of arranging life so that one need not experience it – Anonymous

The machine does not isolate from man the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them – Saint-Exupery

If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery – Michael Harrington

The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village – Marshall McLuhan

Only science can hope to keep technology in some sort of moral order – E.Z Frieberg
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Critical comment/review task in response to one or more of the quotes
Criteria: Quality of ideas, organisation and presentation of argument, effectiveness of expression
Attitude or viewpoint will not be judged.
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Just as true happiness cannot be purchased neither can it be synthesised through technological advance. Indeed as Michael Harrington points out, without some meaningful guidance to technological advance provided by a society that has at least kept pace with the threats and opportunities provided by new technologies, misery will ensue. These essay will discuss two underlying reasons why this is so. These reasons relate to the motivation behind a technological advance and an understanding of the broad implications of its application.

The motivation behind specific technological advances necessarily determines in what field the advance has been made and to whom the benefits of the advance will accrue. Social advances have generally accorded with the French national motto of liberté, egalité, fraternité, or, increases in freedoms, equality or social cohesion – reflecting the evolution of the social conscience. Where society has momentum in these directions, technological advance will be more likely to serve such principles. Thus creating as least an opportunity for improvement to the human condition. Where the momentum of social change is towards socially fractured, individualistic, or even fear driven reforms and behaviours, technological advance is likely to be motivated by private gain or antagonistic ends and will be less likely to promote happiness and at greater risk of contributing to misery.

Understanding the implications, at the broadest level, of adopting new technology is the second vital role that social progress plays. Awareness of the potential uses of new technology will guide its development, dissemination and adoption. Social advances such as those outlined above will improve the chances of these technologies being used to enhance social welfare. The discovery of nuclear energy and its potential uses highlights a society lacking the insight and conscience to foresee and break the chain of events that led to the development of nuclear weapons and their use. The result, as Saint-Exupery says, did ‘not isolate from man the great problems of nature but plunge[d] him more deeply into them’.

So if social advance at least equal to technological advance may prevent an automatic increase in misery, how is society to know whether its advances are sufficient? The answer is that it can’t. At best society must thoughtfully and imaginatively reflect upon the two considerations outlined above – what is driving the change and what impact will it have? Bearing in mind the noble aims of liberté, egalité, fraternité.

Back for more

It has been such a long time since I've written a paragraph that attempts anything other than communication of information. Assignments, journal articles, emails - creativity or pleasure squeezed out under the pressure of necessity. Considered, evidence-based writing a straight-jacket on the excitement of a finger-pointing rant or an indulging introspective wallow. I can feel rusty synapses creaking (some snapping perhaps) as the brain attempts an old routine that has become unfamiliar.

There are two main reasons for this unexpected return to blogland. First (and maybe foremost), I am going to sit GAMSAT on March 20. Perhaps a reason for my prolonged absence here is the degree of uncertainty that has been surrounding my plans for the future. Career options have been changing daily, the stockmarket more predictable than my next idea for a job. As such it has seemed pointless in constantly providing updates, with an occasional tangent bemoaning the quality of commercial media journalism. So how is GAMSAT and blogging related? Approximately 20% of the test is two short essays (about 25 minutes each to write). And the best practice for writing them in the appropriate style under the appropriate time constraints is to do so on this blog (and hopefully get some critical feedback on the writing - and the ideas if one feels the need).

There are two essays - the first is a more structured critical response to a set of quotes relating to a socio-political issue, while the second is more a reflection or consideration of a set of emotional/personal quotes. So I hope to follow each of these styles every other blog.

The second reason to write only revealed itself after I'd already decided to start writing again - or does this invalidate it as a 'reason' and make it a consequence/side effect?

Upon opening Hoist-the-spinnaker for the first time in many a month I thought I'd check the activity of other bloggers on my side bar, first was Beck's blog. Suddenly I was transported back to Tanzania - not the Tanzania that I remembered most clearly, but the Tanzania that existed for the first 6 months of 2008 - the Tanzania that was relegated to distant memory, a previous life, that was overlaid by the events of mid-2008 that split life into two separate parts. It's a cliched start to a book, dividing life into 'before' and 'after' a specific event (or sequence of events in this case). But that is how it is.

So there I was, 10 minutes and 2 years ago, amid the energy, excitement and wonder of those first six months. Juxtapositioned against life as I see it now, the impassioned interest in life and the unknown seems replaced with an academic scrutiny of appropriate options. Or maybe I just look and feel older. Am I superimposing an innocent youthful energy on images of the past? Either way, I figure that by once more venting what needs to be vented and letting my knee-jerk reactions to events jerk unrestrained - something might happen, don't know what, but I'll wait and see.