Back to Barnes and Aristotle: Moral Virtue and Happiness

I went to a lecture on "The Science of Happiness" last night.

It didn't give me any profound or particularly useful clues or techniques on how to increase one's sense of happiness and well-being, on how to become more positive thinking- or how to achieve a constant flow of neurotransmitters such as dopamine.

One good outcome. It sent me back to Aristotle. Read here

The lecture took place in the William Barnes Room in a local hotel.

It occurred to me that William Barnes was a better guide than most to help us "enhance our experiences of love, work, and play". Barnes certainly led a meaningful life.

I still like these words of Albert Camus

Good advice from Imany, Slow Down

Happy, Happy, Happy Pair, Handel, Alexander's Feast


I also approve of a paragraph by Lawrence Durrell (discussed at a Durrell School of Corfu seminar by David Roessel), which was unfortunately edited out of the published text of "Reflections on a Marine Venus", about the "Greek way" of happiness:

"I knew what she meant, for somehow in Greece happiness- animal unthinking happiness- was the norm. It flowed out of good spirits and good health in a way that was simpler and more natural than happiness in other lands and climates. It was a primal attribute of place, whose god had selected this chain of sunburnt islands as his province of operation".

What we have lost, in Greece and elsewhere!

I've always made a mistake, when in Greece, when trying to translate the word happy, as in the question, "Are you happy?" On the whole Greek people never ask each other "Eisai eftichismenos?" or "Eisai efcharistimeni?" It's not only considered intrusive, it seems to be wrong from a linguistic point of view. Something worth exploring further.

Listen to Mozart's Adagio and Fugue, the music that Agnes Varda selected for her 1965 film "Le Bonheur" (Happiness), a film which explores the transient nature of happiness. I think this is (my favourite) recording by Josef Vlach. You can see the dark clouds coming.

What is happiness (for the French)?

“Si le bonheur consiste dans l’égalité des désirs et des forces, je marche aussi droit que possible dans les voies de la sagesse, et vous pourrez témoigner que vous avez vu un homme heureux » (from E. Fromentin's Dominique)

"Is it not absurd that we cannot be happy in our little life that is so soon over? Yet who can regulate the lone cry of the curlew or the cry of the eagle in the clouds!"

Llewelyn Powys, Letter to H. Rivers Pollock, 1930

Finally, a short poem by Ringelnatz:- an amusing and ironical take on the tragic nature of life -"Das ist die Tragik des Lebens"