What the Aztecs Can Teach Us About Happiness and the Good Life May 02, 2020 | Registered: 9 years ago Posts: 3,708 |
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‘How many of you want to be happy in life?’ I ask. Everyone raises a hand. Always. ‘How many of you are planning to have children?’ Almost everyone raises their hand again.
Then I lay out the evidence that having kids makes most people more miserable, and that their sense of wellbeing returns to its former levels only after the last child has left the house. ‘How many of you still want children?’ I say. Maybe it’s just obstinacy, but the same people who wanted to be happy still put their hands up.
Re: What the Aztecs Can Teach Us About Happiness and the Good Life May 03, 2020 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 12,432 |
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My students reveal something that the pre-Columbian Aztecs knew well. You should stop searching for happiness, because that’s not really what you want.
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What they meant is that the Earth is a place where humans are prone to error, where our plans are likely to fail, and friendships are often betrayed. Good things only come mingled with something undesired. ‘The Earth is not a good place. It is not a place of joy, a place of contentment,’ a mother advises her daughter, in the record of a conversation that has survived to this day. ‘It is rather said that it is a place of joy-fatigue, of joy-pain.’
Re: What the Aztecs Can Teach Us About Happiness and the Good Life May 03, 2020 | Registered: 10 years ago Posts: 2,060 |