On Happiness and The Idea of Worth in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

Warning: This is rambling and disjointed. If I were writing this for an academic paper… it would be more logical. Instead, right now, I’m just playing with ideas.

“You deserve to be happy”.

It is something many have said to me recently. And I appreciate the sentiment. What I’ve been hearing is “You’ve put a lot of work into your marriage. It isn’t your fault it failed. You’ve put up with the misery for a long time. You deserve to be happy.”

I appreciate it. But seeing the phrase “You deserve to be happy” so much got me downright philosophical on the whole thing. Which is really unfortunate for all of you because my college degree was in Religion and Philosophy, lol.

If you think about it, the concept of “Deserve to be Happy” requires a great deal of analysis!

Some would suggest that everyone deserves to be happy. That the whole point of existence is to live in such a way that makes ourselves and others happy. But, as every day in this existence proves, not everyone can be happy. There are people in this world for whom happiness is a zero sum game. I cannot be happy unless someone else is unhappy, more or less. In fact, one could easily argue that the very existence of my profession is evidence of that instinct being LARGE in humans. If everyone on this planet could be happy without causing anyone else unhappiness… there would be no such thing as lawyers.

So, this first tenant must be embraced. Some people view life as a required zero-sum game; and that viewpoint will always create situations wherein one person’s happiness stems from (or causes) another person’s unhappiness. Simplest Version: My favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate. I am in line at an ice cream vendor. I order Chocolate Ice Cream. I get the last of their supply. The child behind me loves chocolate ice cream and now cannot get any. My happiness, without my direct intention, came at the cost of (or resulted in) the unhappiness of someone else. I did not intend harm and I did not personally gain from the unhappiness but my personal gain caused unhappiness. So… we have to accept, whether by intention, design, or accident… the happiness of some results in the unhappiness of others.

Now then, if we accept a world whereby some people are happy and some people are unhappy… then we accept, either knowingly or not, that some people should be happy or that some people deserve to be happy while others should not be happy or that some people don’t deserve to be happy. This brings us to the original point when discussing “You deserve to be happy.” Upon hearing that, I genuinely had the knee jerk reaction “Don’t we all deserve to be happy? How do we determine who deserves to be happy? And how do we place any form of specific value on ‘happy’?” Thus this entry.

After all, I highly doubt that there are a lot of people sitting around saying “Recip Erdogan deserves to be happy.” Or for a more local concept, there are very few people sitting around right now thinking “My greatest enemy deserves to be happy”… because at some point in our thought processes about happiness, we’ve provided it a value and a reason. A practical abstract of worth and what it means to be deserving of that worth.

For example, many said that I deserve to be happy. Does that deserving come from the concept that I’m a good person? That I’m a “nice guy”? Or does that deserving come strictly from the work previously attempted? Is this an example of “when hard work doesn’t pay off” so we then treat ‘happiness’ as the encouraging consolation prize? Or is the concept even more arbitrary? Is it said, “You deserve to be happy” simply because you know me and find me pleasant or interesting; so your concept of “deserving to happy” boils down to simply the cosmic tides of who you know and how you feel about them?

Sorry if that last bit seemed a bit… snippy. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just… honestly fascinated by this concept. Happiness is basically an abstract, temporary feeling of either euphoria or comfort that provides safety, warm feelings, and is caused by the proper chemical combination of serotonin and dopamine. Happiness, with its thousands of different poems and plays and scripts and songs, is a largely personalized experience that has a general universal understanding. But when paired with the concept of “deserving” really… makes me think. To Deserve means “to be worthy of something”… or “to be owed something”. And yet to deserve something isn’t always a positive. Someone can deserve punishment. Someone can deserve to be audited. When you see a particularly loathsome dictator executed, you may find yourself saying, “Got what he deserved.” Hell, that is a huge part (positive and negative) of my job. If we convict a guy for raping 5 little girls and we send him to prison for the rest of his life… some people will say, “Got what he deserved” some people will say, “He deserves worse,” and some (few) might say, “He didn’t deserve that.” What I hope all of us would say is that his victims didn’t deserve that.

But that is where I keep swirling my thoughts here. How do we define “deserve” for ourselves based on situations and circumstances??

Do I deserve to be happy because I busted my ass trying to save my marriage?
Do I deserve to be happy because I stayed in a misery-causing marriage for so long?
Do I deserve to be happy because I stayed in a misery-causing marriage and busted my ass trying to save it for so long?
Do I deserve to be happy because I’ve dedicated my professional career to trying to help other people after experiencing trauma?
Do I deserve to be happy because I write so much on Prosebox that enough people have read me and liked what they read enough to decide that I deserve to be happy?

and then turning to my wife:
I would argue that she deserves to be happy, too.
That despite what has happened between us, I acknowledge she means no malice. She deserves to find whatever is preventing her from experiencing happiness and she deserves to be happy, too. But that doesn’t come from… her hard work. That sense of “deserve” doesn’t stem from her dedicating her life to anything noble. I know, deeply, that I feel my wife deserves to be happy because that is what I want for her. So then… does my sense of “deserve” and “worth” stem from her at all… or am I essentially saying “I believe happiness has value. I believe this person has value. Therefore this person deserves happiness.”? Is that then why we can look at someone we detest or disagree with and declare that they may NOT deserve happiness? That we do not wish to see people we don’t value have the things that we do value? If so… that does go a long way towards explaining current American Political and Economic frustrations. Particularly in the Rural Iowans for Trump scheme of things.

Because if we see value in something, like “Being an American” and see someone that we detest or disagree with, like “Being a Muslim” or “Being Mexican”… then they declare that such a person does NOT DESERVE the thing of value. Regardless of what any factual statement, evocative appeal, or legal precedent may exist. Which is why appealing to those voters with any sort of logical or fact-based appeal will lose. NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID as so many are quick to say… and, sadly, NOT because they are all racists. I’ll show you what I mean:

Take a good cross-section of America today (all ages, genders, economic indicators, etc). They are going to read a short sentence and answer a single question. The sentence is, “As you are walking to work, you see a homeless man begging for change on the street.” The question is, “Does this man deserve to be happy?” You are going to get different answers. Some will say, “Yes.” Some will say, “I don’t know.” Some will say, “No.” That decision is not based on the homeless person’s color as color was not shared. SIMPLY on the VALUE the individual places on HOMELESS PERSON. If there were additional sentences, the story may change and people’s answers may change.

“As you are walking to work, you see a homeless man begging for change on the street. You recognize him as the homeless man who pushed a child out of harm’s way the day before.”
- Does this man deserve to be happy?

“As you are walking to work, you see a homeless man begging for change on the street. You recognize him as the homeless man who pushed a child out of harm’s way the day before. As you look, you can see that this is the same person who tried to rob you at gunpoint the year before.”
- Does this man deserve to be happy?

And so, from that perspective, we can open up and understand the entire concept of “deserve” and “strife”. Rural Farmer in Iowa sees his entire way of life burning down. All the State’s money is spent on Cities (like Des Moines, Davenport, Waterloo). Meanwhile, every hospital in a 50-miles radius to the Farmer has closed its doors permanently. The City has all those drug problems and minority assistance programs. Meanwhile, the closest place for replacement parts for his livelihood is a two-hour round trip! And when it comes to the kids that are supposed to keep Rural Iowa afloat? The kids with an education go to the cities; the kids without an education stay in Rural Towns and get addicted to meth or start having too many babies.

So from that perspective… what does the Rural Iowa Farmer consider “deserve” to look like. He worked his whole life and now everything he worked for is fading away. What does he deserve? When you have politicians come by and start shouting about “The Liberal Elite” and “the corruption of Big Government” while demonizing “people on welfare” and saying the problems are caused by “too many foreigners”… that helps him change his focus from the injustice of not getting what he deserves to the injustice of OTHER people getting what he deserves. I had to understand this to understand my dad!

He worked his whole life. Did everything he could. Withstood shitty jobs, sacrificed his time and his health, and persevered through everything. And now he has to worry about retirement and his health and his wife’s retirement and her health and his children and their health. And the government systems that kept saying, “We’ll have enough money in social security, it’s okay” are now saying “Well, we may not have enough money in social security.” And those are the same people that want to control health care? That want more money? That want to take my guns?! They don’t deserve that! So he sticks to his Conservative Republican guns and is horrified at how many people he once trusted disagree with him now. AFTER ALL, they all worked hard and deserve better than they have right now. Why in the hell would these people trust Government to get them what they deserve?! ESPECIALLY after Obama who did so much to help “others”… if WE aren’t getting what we deserve; why would Obama work so hard to make Immigrants, LGBTQA, Racial Minorities, The Poor get what we deserve?!

This, then, is the ultimate problem for all of us today. Political or not. Friendships, Families, everything.

We’ve lived so long believing that scarcity is the only way to analyse anything. AND SCARCITY IS IMPORTANT! But it falls to perspective.
We’ve lived so many lifetimes as a species looking at everything as though it were, say, a plate full of cookies. Whether that is love or respect or shelter or food or water or anything. There are 5 cookies on this plate. There are six people in this room. THAT MEANS that someone isn’t getting a cookie; and I’ll be damned if I’m the one left out!! Or even for kinder people… THAT MEANS that someone is going to have to share their cookie; and I’ll be damned if I only get half of a cookie this time!
I would argue the two important questions we need to ask, instead of just rushing forward with this same scarcity mindset would be:
(1) Why are there only five cookies to begin with?
(2) Is there any way we can either (a) all have equal amount of cookie; or (b) make more cookies?

Granted, in the real world… these are easier questions to ask than to answer.
Why are there only five cookies to begin with can be answered as anything from “Because God gave us a limited planet” to “Because the people that gave us the cookies held 25,000 back for themselves.”
Is there any way we can all have equal amount of cookie is a question that would only have a suitable answer if we could fundamentally change the way humans view everything. There are very few people willing to live in a “share and share alike” community and there are literally thousands of years of world history proving that. Any time we insert the “deserve” perspective, it will create those problems. “I work sixty hours a week; that guy works forty hours a week: I deserve more cookie than he does!”
Is there any way we can make more cookies? Ah, the fundamental and infinite problem of Stark Trek Utopia Theory. This concept essentially asks, “If we could just make scarcity NOT EXIST, we’d be fine, right?” This theory should have its own unique discussion but there are two fundamental issues we can mention right away. First: as we currently understand physics, there is no way to make this happen. We can’t just… make more of things infinitely. Conservation of Mass and what all. But then… even if we could? Imagine the waste problem. We can do recycled goods but our landfills are still growing out of control. Imagine if we could literally make infinite of anything!! Second: Scarcity is what propels almost every single World Government and the entirety of Global Economics. IF there was a technology that could end scarcity; EVERYONE IN POWER AND EVERY WEALTHY PERSON would be threatened by it and work tirelessly to destroy it. Look at climate science now. These powerful governments and ultra-wealthy businesses don’t honestly deny climate change. They just think they’ve found a way to survive it with their wealth intact. Their perspective is “Who cares if billions die; as long as I’m still rich and/or in power; I can survive.” You don’t think they’d be like that if they discovered Post-Scarcity?! I can just HEAR them say, “Don’t release this yet. We need to be absolutely certain that there is no other way to survive. I’m not going to lose millions of dollars so easily!! Let the others suffer and perish; I won’t release this technology until I know it benefits me directly!”