Tag: Aristotle

Embracing Eudaemonia

One child came to school wearing a t-shirt that said, Eudaemonia. I asked her what it meant and she shrugged. Some fancy word. I thought of all the things we don’t stop to think about in our daily lives, and the times we do, what interesting things we are led towards. I was reminded of a recent conversation and experience.

Reel lives

We were standing in the latest add-on exhibit of the American Natural History Museum. The role of cell-phones, social media in our lives, and how our real lives coincide with our reel lives. This was never a problem for any generation before ours. There were a few people who had to live with fame – bask in it, grapple with it, embrace it, or accept its ephemeral nature at various points in their lives. But it was a small minority.

The majority of people lived their lives out without attention.

I was reminded of a recent conversation with the daughter. “Why are there so many people with image issues these days?” I’d asked her in an attempt to understand. She had been telling me about some friends of hers whose attention to what they ate made me feel sorry. For I do know one thing, metabolism only takes a dive as you age. So, if these young folks were finicky in their teens and early twenties, it was going to be no party in their 40’s. I said as much to her, and she laughed. “Yes – I know! I keep telling them too. I’ve seen my mother! I tell them. Do they listen? No!”

“Hey!” I protest, but she waves me off. “It’s okay to grow older. Happens to everyone!” There wasn’t much to be said after that, I supposed.

It is painful to see so many young folks have image issues.

“Well – before you knew there  were beautiful folks – film stars, models etc. But then, the regular people around you were not extraordinary looking in any remarkable ways. In fact the ones who were, were the anomaly and often felt out of place. But then, suddenly, with the rise of social media, beautiful images of influencers from across the globe are being flashed in to your faces every minute of every day. Suddenly, you think there are so many good people out there, I must the anomaly -with the normal looks that I do have.”

I mused on this. It is true. Social media seems to have exposed all the good-looking features and elements of people from all over the world. Suddenly that endearing cleft in your chin looks like a chasm, that pimple feels like a volcano, and those bushy eyebrows seem unseemly. But they are anything but. They are aspects of our personalities – some with fleeting effects, and others more enduring features.

Social media has tapped a deeply-ingrained not-good-enough response in humans. This not-good-enough combined with the vanity of seeing ourselves has contributed in unequal proportions to something that humanity has not grappled with for centuries.

Every time somebody glanced at a mirror, they may have had the thought, “Do I look good enough for <whatever occasion or person>’ Now, it can be every time we pick up the phone which can be up to 300 times a day – even if that particular thought related to our looks only comes a fraction of the time, it is still multifold compared to before.

Talk about messing with psyches. 

Art is evolving

Already art is evolving to address an issue like this: More quirky character based television shows are on the rise: shows with casts as varied as:

* Grocery store owners and their families

* School atmospheres with quirky characters

* Small offices, hospitals, a modern family in LA – you get the gist.

But the entertainment industry still goes for the good-looking.

Something has shifted in the storylines, character driven books etc. Human psychology and  its effects on average humans has shifted towards a more cause-and-effect method, begging the question: Are we all simply a product of our times and influences?

If somebody does this, then this must’ve happened.

While acknowledgement of issues can lead to some positive outcomes, the  diagnosing and labeling can lead to problems – is already leading to problems. For if all our problematic tendencies can be traced to psychological traumas, do we really have a problem? Surely, it was something that’s done to us, and therefore not in our control to fix or cure.

This means someone wanting agency in their lives is going to have to work against this narrative.

Sigh.

Therapy-Speak of our Daughters

I read this article in the New York Times about the therapy-speak of our daughters. It reminded me of this conversation I had with the daughter a few months ago.

While the article talks about more than image issues, it talks about this trend of diagnosing and labeling ourselves prematurely, unhelpfully.

“Several years ago, I started noticing something new when teenage girls or young women came to my office for their first psychiatric sessions. Patients used to dread being told that there was something, as they saw it, wrong with them. Now these young women were announcing their diagnoses — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression — almost before telling me their names.

They had researched their symptoms on Instagram; they’d taken TikTok quizzes about them; they had cross-indexed their conditions with those of their friends.”

Is this a cry for attention as she says in the article?

“One girl told me she had assigned herself a diagnosis of depression, which she later acknowledged she thought would make me care about her. Another girl was stuck on an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, mostly because it made her feel less alone by connecting her to a vocal and vibrant online community.”

Or is it simply so everybody can feel like they belong somewhere. More than ever, what is you is being celebrated and ridiculed. Exaggeratedly so.

“Another girl said she used her various self-diagnoses as a container for whatever felt like “too much” about her, allowing her to fulfill what she thought was the teenage female’s highest calling: to be chill.

Eudaemonia

Maybe the only thing that can actually illuminate the human condition is our biology – when we understand our brains better, would we able to wrest a better understanding of our psyches and all that plagues us too?

Our human calling is eudaemonia. How do we find the path and keep to it? The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, popularized the concept in Aristotelian Ethics, viewing eudaemonia as the ultimate goal of human life (eudaemonia means engaging in personal growth and meaningful actions).

When I told the child what Eudaemonia meant, her face lit up. She hadn’t given it any thought – possibly something gifted to her by a g(r)eeky parent, but she was thrilled to be able to share the meaning with them

https://nourishncherish.org/2020/12/06/eudaimonia-human-flourishing/

Dear Democracy

“Gosh! Must you always be this dramatic?!” said the daughter rolling her eyes up at me, wrenching them away from the screen. 

I suppose ‘nail in the coffin of democracy’ was not exactly the poised and controlled reaction I was going for. 

“Well..”I fumbled for a moment, and then said with a steely determination that took me aback, “You know what? Yes I must! If I am not upset at a moment like this, I don’t have use of the emotion at all! This is democracy – and it is supposed to thrive!” I said taking a handful of emotions from Pandora’s box and letting them course through my system in righteous anger, and disappointment. 

Time and time again, we have been disappointed by politicians and humans seeking power. The one job that requires no specific training or education. #ButterBattleCourse

“Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,

and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.” 

Hesiod, the 6th-century BC Greek poet Theognis of Megara 

Another eye roll, another laugh stifled, and another poetic exclamation later, I was spent. 

The chaos at the Capitol building as the senate ratified the election results was appalling. It was not being called a coup on television. The sitting 45th President of the United States had incited violence to be unleashed on the Capitol Building, and I felt a sinking feeling. We all know that the greater the power, the higher the fall and all the rest of it. But truly, nothing prepares you for that gloating face defacing the Speaker’s office with not an ounce of remorse. Nothing prepares you for the moment that a mob crashes into the Capitol Building, and gets to the Speaker’s chair in the largest democracy in the world. 

But Pandora had one last emotion that she had in her box. Hope.

The senators filed back in later that night and completed their constitutional duty well past midnight. 

Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;

the others have left and gone to Olympus.

Hesiod, the 6th-century BC Greek poet Theognis of Megara 

The next day, the daughter was showing us posts from her social network. 

“This video, see this one? Cries her heart out – thinks she is Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, and says she has come all the way from Tennessee for the revolution. ”

“What revolution? Wait a minute! She took a flight from Tennessee to Washington D C for this during a pandemic?! “, I asked, “And she is upset she was pushed back from the Capitol building?”

“I mean, we all know the ones who were creating the ruckus aren’t the smartest tools in the box, but they outdid themselves, Amma. This one guy searched up Georgia, and planted the Georgia flag – I mean the country Georgia’s flag. Then, one Indian dude shows up there with an Indian flag! I don’t know whether they stopped to think about what they were doing.”

https://qz.com/1953366/decoding-the-pro-trump-insurrectionist-flags-and-banners/”

I shook my head and we fell to discussing the sad state of affairs because one narcissistic man could not bear to lose. 

Reference: The history of the peaceful transfer of power: History.com

  1. The year was 1797. The first President George Wshington willingly stepped down after 2 terms in office setting a precedent to the two terms in office, that was later ratified as the 22nd Amendment to the constitution in 1951.
  2. The year 1801 set another important precedent. John Adams after losing to Thomas Jefferson quietly left Washington in the dark hours of March 4th. He did not attend the inauguration, but he did set the hallmark for the peaceful transfer of power. 

History.com: There were several ways in which power was transferred. One of the best is the letter George W Bush left for Bill Clinton, and the tradition followed.

“How did it come down to this? Why is it so hard to lose? You played your game, move on!” I said.

“He must not have played rummy with his mom!” said the son, and we all burst out laughing. It’s true isn’t it? We win some games, we lose some games. Play teaches us so much: the joy of playing, the thrill of winning, the grace of losing, and the friendship that binds it all together.

I used to wonder how Hitler rose to power democratically and was able to commit such horrendous acts of genocide. Recent events have shown us all too clearly how this can happen. By removing bars of decorum and conduct, we have been shown that the country may not survive a younger, more ruthless strain of Trump’s brand of dictatorship. 

I quite agree with how Aristotle describes the nobility required of politicians: he opines that politicians should take an oath, almost as sacred as a Hippocratic oath, to remain fair and mete out justice. From the Nicomachean Ethics – By Aristotle. 

Oh! How dear Democracy is.

Eudaimonia – Human Flourishing

Somewhere in the forest of my rough notes nestled this little piece. I had evidently written it with a view to tying the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit and all that. 

A couple of the son’s friends had come over and without wasting a moment, they started a vigorous game of I-honestly-don’t-know-what. I could hear loud giggling by the couch as they jumped from the sofa to somewhere else and back on. After an hour of this, I asked them the point of the game. They exchanged quizzical shrugs. 

* Was there a point in the jumping game? 

* Was there a point in jumping? 

* Was there a point in a sofa or the cushions below? 

I laughed at their loss of words, and let them go back to their game. They were kind enough to ask if I wanted to join. Detecting a distinct take-pity-on-me vibe from the frazzled, frayed sofa, I gallantly told the children to proceed without me. They looked relieved and continued happily.

I looked at their flushed faces and saw that the point of the whole thing was that they were happy. Happiness as a concept has the philosophers stumped. Philosophers who deal with heavy themes such as meaning of life and so on, spend a considerable amount of time pondering the meaning of happiness, the importance of the pursuit of it all, among other things. 

I am listening to a lecture series on the Meaning of Life.  Professor Drone (lookup the name later) talks about pursuit of happiness among other things when he is explaining Aristotelian Ethics. Honor, Wealth, Excellence are all worthy pursuits in our lives, but it can all be towards something else: Happiness. Underlying our quest for Honor, W & E is a desire to be happy, he says. 

Unfortunately, as we grow, the little drops of sunshine that so easily caused mirth and joy tend to fade.

But as I read the little note above, I also felt a little pang – for it showed me what the children were missing now. The camaraderie of classroom replaced with the tiny tiles of an online meeting, the wholehearted enjoyment of jumping replaced by online games.  I had spent the whole day in one meeting after another. Meeting fatigued days such as this one tended to blend into one another, especially when the daylight faded out so quickly that only darkness remained, with a cold wind to keep one company. Wondering what my son was upto, I rose – my joints creaking like the wooden floor below to see if he needed company. 

Just as I was feeling dangerously sentimental about social distancing, its long term effects on the young minds, and all that sort of thing, I heard peals of laughter and the familiar sounds of jumping up and down. There was a FaceTime call in session, and the little fellows were re-enacting a scene from an online game they were playing together. The brawlers, as they called themselves, were making themselves real-life Brawl Stars. The video call was propped up on the globe in the middle of the table, and the swinging adventurers flew in and out of view of the camera. Judging by the sounds of it, the children had adapted with their customary cheer. 

the_world_playground

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” ― Albert Einstein

“Hi ma! Want to join us? We are just ummm just umm brawling!”  

I looked at the little fellows’ pals squealing and leaping off the sofas in their screens, and I declined the kind offer much to their relief.  I headed into the kitchen with a smile on my lips, a tune in my heart, and hope in my being.

Eudaimonia, also spelled eudaemonia, in Aristotelian ethics, is the condition of human flourishing or of living well. Ask Professor Drone to play with children and learn a lesson or two. Happiness lectures indeed!