Sans Fig Leaf
w
"Fluffy bunnies"
13 July, 2006
I was working on a another essay idea recently, which was mostly finished, though I was having trouble with the conclusion. Since I include quotations at the end of these essays, I decided to search for an appropriate quote, figuring that if I had a quote that I really liked, it would help shape the ending.
Among the topics I searched under was "happiness," and I was reminded once again that for every quote one can find in various quotation collections that is actually about happiness, there are about twenty that are about how happiness doesn't exist, or isn't real, or is only experienced by stupid people (or shallow, vacuous, noncritical, complacent people -- take your pick).
It's an old cliché: people who are happy and cheerful are like fluffy toy bunnies--heads full of of nothing but fluff.
I get tired of running into those attitudes, particularly because it is factually not true. The Journal of the Society of Neuroscience published an article just last year compiling several studies that showed that people with natural positive dispostions have significantly higher activity in the logical reasoning centers of the brain than those with negative dispostions. It has long been known to neuroscience that anger and negativity actually seems to shut down the rational parts of the brain, but the newer research suggests there may be more of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon going on.
In other words, they can't tell if the positive disposition is caused by the higher functioning in the logic centers of the brain, or if the happiness causes the higher functioning. Or if there's some other process somewhere else that causes both.
And I've known plenty of people who have what I consider a very negative dispostion who are good at logical thinking. So I know these things aren't absolute relationships. But that's my point: being happy is not the equivalent of being thoughtless. By the same token, being morose, bitter, and cynical is no guarantee of great intelligence or insight.
I've known plenty of thoughtless people who are never happy, and always seem to be angry, or at the very least, indignant all the time. Now by thoughtless, I don't mean stupid. Some people are very intelligent, able to reason through complex problems with ease and so forth. It's not that they are incapable of thinking, it's that they don't do any new thinking. Instead of discussing something with someone they disagree with, they simply repeat an argument they thought out long ago.
Now amount of new information will make them waver from their current notion. It's like all of their previous conclusions and explanations have been carefully assembled into an elaborate construct in their mind, not unlike a house of cards. You can't change one of the conclusions without bringing the whole thing down in a mess. So must protect this construction at all costs.
At least, that's how it worked in my head. I understand that outlook so well, because there was a time when I had it. I don't believe I ever sank into the full depths of cynicism, but I did get into the rigid world-weary mindset for a while.
Unfortunately, I can't with any certainty say exactly how I got out of it. There are a few incidents that I think of as turning points. One was when a good friend pointed out that I had a tendency to verbally bully people who disagreed with me. All my life I had hated bullies, and I was quite shocked to realize I had become one, so I set out to change. There were several others, but the common theme of them all was recognizing something that I didn't like or was ashamed of about myself.
This has led me to the notion that maybe I held so many people in contempt (usually not anyone I knew personally, of course, it was always "those people" out there, ruining it for the rest of us) because I felt little more than contempt for myself.
There is a lot of bad things going on in the world. There are people who don't care about anyone but themselves and don't care who they hurt along the way. I don't deny it. But I don't have to accept it. Because accepting it means that you become part of the problem, instead of part of the solution.
And even if it means I'm just tilting at windmills, I'd much rather be trying to be part of the solution.
Joy is not in things; it is in us.
--Richard Wagner
.