Saturday, August 29, 2009

On the radius of happiness

One may disagree with Kofuku-no-Kagaku in various things, but in this at least they hit the bullseye:  You can't go off and create Utopia until you have thoroughly marinated in happiness yourself.  Even if you are running over with happiness and your family and workplace sparkle with it, you still face an unimaginably harder task to transform society.  Even a small town would be a challenge literally orders of magnitude greater.

It is a grotesque arrogance when someone who has no true understanding of happiness in their own everyday circumstances, still think they are qualified to change society in fundamental ways in order to increase the happiness of the populace.  Go back to first grade!  Find out what actually causes happiness and misery, find it out from hands-on experience, study your own life and those right around you, and learn. Then you can cautiously start talking. When you inspire joy and trust by simply being present, then you can show others the way.