> No I didn't necessarily mean it as a joke. There's plenty of evidence
> that poor people aren't all that unhappy - and that money doesn't
> make people happier.
Taking this seriously:
The very idea of that anybody, except a select few could possibly deserve "happiness" was considered a radical idea, as you should remember from famous political slogans of the bourgeois revolutions: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" T.J.; or better "Happiness is a new idea in Europe," St. Just. What St. Just meant was the: if the idea that a happy life is a real possibility of daily lived-experience occurs to a peasant that then that idea will light a revolution.
I'm not sure what Doug means when he says, "There's plenty of evidence that poor people aren't all that unhappy - and that money doesn't make people happier." Surely he must define "poor" in a limited way. He does not mean some of the poor I have seen in slums in San Salvador or Rio de Janeiro, who are sick with fever and lack of food and contaminated water. Surely, he can't include the "miserably" poor in this category of "not all that unhappy poor?"
So if the miserably poor are not in this category of the "not all that unhappy poor" who exactly could be included? Only people who live relatively stable lives, with stable food supplies, and only people who are not being daily threatened by their betters with a whip or some other kind of imminent violence. Which is the point of Andie made with: "Most of humanity _in civilization_ has been slaves, serfs, or women, mostly with 40 (or less)-year life expectancies, subject to plagues and famines at least once a generation, also endemic war,conquest, enslavement, conscription, rape, chronicdisease, death in childbirth, paranoid witch hunts, irrational and cruel social taboos, 50%+ infant mortality, torture and the excesses of arbitrary and essentially unchecked power." And "Most of humankind has been miserable for most of its existence in civilization, but revolts are uncommon."
The very idea that the "poor are not all that unhappy" could only have occurred at very unusual times of history, and only after eliminating the "miserably poor" from any definition of the poor. Take a look at written history and just look at where and when the idea that the "poor are not all that unhappy" occurs. 1st Century CE Rome is the only other time I know where this idea occurred, but it is possible that other times and places maybe included; 5th Century CE Peking? And of course Bourgeois Europe. All such places probably built the relative "happiness" of their "poor" from the misery and death of others on the fringes of the Metropolis, or in the dominated territories of the Empire. For instance the increase of calorie consumption in Europe post 1650 was built on slaves worked to death on sugar plantations. Masses of people in Europe were lifted out of the misery where no happiness was possible by the extra calories of food consumption bought with the absolute misery of African slaves.
I don't mean to dismiss Doug's category of the "not all that unhappy poor" because I think that only from such poor people is self-organization possible. From my observations in Rio, it seemed to me that the "not all that unhappy poor" had some other advantages that the miserably poor (and also the Brazilian middle class) did not have. Dense social-networks through family, church, unions and political organizations. It is my guess that if rulers succeed in breaking these dense social-networks then even the "non-miserably poor" fall into despair and more unhappiness.
A personal note here. I am not endorsing a philosophy of happiness. I think that basically "happiness" and "optimism" are biological delusions. But that is my southern Italian peasant pessimism coming through. An analysis of the politics of happiness in no way implies an endorsement of an existential psychology of happiness.
Jerry
>
> On Nov 28, 2007, at 2:18 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> >
> > I know you mean that jokingly, but it actually is a
> > serious question.
> >
> > --- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Ah, but are they unhappy?
>
>
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