Pierre Hadot Happines

Do material things and possessions make us happy? Many of us use these worldly possessions, such as money or objects, to pacify us. However like Hadot, I don't believe that these things actually make us happy. I believe we have convinced ourselves that they will make us happy but it's only a temporary or superficial happiness.


However we decide to define wisdom, we do know that technology, possessions, fame, fortune, high grades, attractive figures, and disease-free years are not enough to make life meaningful. As attractive and pleasing as these things can be, nothing external can make us happy if being happy means more than satisfied or pleased. (Section 18-8 Pierre Hadot). I agree with Hadot believing that as pleasing as “things” can be they do not give us a long term feeling of happiness. As a society, we have defined our happiness based on materialistic and physical beauty. However, I do not believe that we find our ultimate happiness through these things. I believe they give us an instant gratification but nothing more. We constantly search for more, whether it be more beauty or buying more things, and it never ends because they never keep us happy for a long enough time.


True happiness is something that comes from within us not from material things. For example, I grew up on a farm in Mississippi. When I think back to our lifestyle, we did not have a lot at all. My father divorced my mother which caused us to leave Racine, WI. I can remember at the age of five, my mom and the kids packed up to move to Mississippi. We moved in with my grandmother and grandfather. The house was four bedroom but very crowded for addicting 4 more people to the home. My grandmother has 14 children so this house was always packed with aunts, uncles, and cousins. The closest store was a 45 minute drive. My grandparents pulled all vegetables out of the garden. My grandfather had cows, horses, pigs and chickens that helped provide food for us. They also had a catfish farm if we wanted fish for dinner. We rarely went to town for anything. For the life of me I could not believe how happy these people were. I was used to like electronics and TVs so, to me, it looked like they had nothing. I was very wrong for believing that. We shortly learned all about this simple farm life and being outside was our new playground. Life was so simple and, even though we did not have much, we were happy.

As I child, I felt so poor for living this lifestyle but, as I grew up, I realized having my family around me and working for what I want was more satisfying and made me happy than any electronic could make me feel. I was only happy with the materialistic things if I got what I wanted but then there was always something else I would want. It's an endless cycle of wanting, getting, being happy, then wanting again.


So I ask again is it things that make us happy? I truly agree with Pierre Hadot. Now, I feel I can buy things to provide for my children and travel. I have a family of my own that I can teach to know that you have to happy just living life than giving them all these materialistic things that society tells them will make them happy. I feel so happy with my life and now I get to share that with my family. I focus to continue to find that simple life in our society now; to have internal happiness is key.

Are my choices to do right driven by sentiment and not just because it is the right thing to do? What makes reason play such a big role in making moral judgments? Hume insisted that morality is grounded in sentiment, not reason. His devastating attack on any “metaphysic of morals” has had an enormous influence on modern and postmodern conceptions of morality, value judgments, and the possibility of moral knowledge. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume asserts that “reason alone” can never provide a motive for any action; Hume did not deny that reason plays a role in making moral judgments (Soccio, Section 10-8). Morality is defined as “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior” ("morality: definition of morality", 2016). Hume thought “morality is grounded in sentiment”(Soccio, Section 10-8). One can define sentiment as being “a view of or attitude toward a situation or event; an opinion;a feeling or emotion”("sentiment: definition of sentiment", 2016). Personally, I would like to think that we all do the right thing because we define ourselves by good morale. Would we do the right thing because of the reasons showing us it is the better option or do we base it upon our personal attitude of the situation? For example, I took in an adolescent who was brought to the US by a close friend of his family back in Nigeria. Unfortunately, he was abandoned by those same people. They no longer wanted to help him anymore or take responsibility for him so I decided to take over that role. I did this because he is under the age of 18 and still in need of guardianship. They were the only individuals he knew besides my family. What hurt me the most was how they could just abandon him with no support. I wanted to take him in because it felt like it was the right (moral) thing to do. So was I doing the morally right thing because I was driven by sentiment or by reason? Hume’s argument is that we do the moral thing because of sentiment. Simply put, we choose to do the moral thing based upon how we feel about the situation. I agree with Hume but I do believe there is reason involved as well. In my example above, I certainly made my decision largely based on sentiment. This child became friends with the family and felt like a child of mine. I let my feelings of love for him drive my decision to take him into our home. However, I believe making the right choice is driven by both sentiment and reason; sometimes one more than the other. This decision was driven by more sentiment than anything because I felt so strongly emotionally but reason was still involved. I reasoned that it was good for him to have a home to go to compared to being left to fend for himself. It is a simple reason but a reason enough to help me make the moral choice. Reason plays such a large role because it gives us an objective way to make a decision. Reason drives us to push to the moral decision because there is more positive than negatives that can come from it. Sometimes our feelings may feel different from reason or we instinctively go off sentiment without thinking of both choices. If there are more pros than cons to a decision, then I would say we are make the moral choice. We are choosing the moral choice based on which one will give us the more positive outcome. We are emotional individuals who value our own sentiment but I believe balancing it with reason will make us choose the truly moral decision. References morality: definition of morality. (2016). Oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved 21 March 2016, from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/morality sentiment: definition of sentiment. (2016). Oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved 21 March 2016, from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/sentiment

Why, like so many others, do I lack knowledge and discipline in everyday life choices?

What has made us so focused on making emotional, typically selfish, choices?

Plato concluded that most people are unfit by training and ability to make the difficult and necessary decisions that would result in a just society. The “average person” lacks wisdom and self-restraint to serve the needs of society. As Plato viewed the world, most people make emotional responses based on personal desire and sentiment rather than on rational considerations stemming from an objective view of what is genuinely good for the individual (Soccio, Section 5-1b).

I feel so many of us including myself lack discipline and knowledge to make choices that are efficient for society while staying morally correct. We allow our emotions to completely drive the choices we make. So many times we are emotionally wrapped in our feelings and mind that we do not realize the consequences to the choices we make. I find that we are naturally selfish beings .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

A recent example is the school shooting that occurred in Arizona. In this particular situation,a student killed a peer that she had a romantic  relationship with.Than she killed herself making this situation what was considered to be a murder suicide. Obviously, many questions may be left unanswered but we can suspect what drove this student toward their actions...emotions. Her emotions,lack of knowledge most likely made her feel like she was making a wise decision.It was what she wanted to do, having zero regards for the future,her life idea of taking the life of another. She made a selfish decision to somehow “benefit” her and harm the life of others. This is a more influential example of how our choices in everyday life can affect us just as strongly.

Time, age, and general maturity can play a key part in our decision-making skills. Perhaps she felt this other person wronged her in some way or that ending her life would benefit her. Regardless of the real reasons, having no discipline in morality or knowledge of life prevent us from making choices that could positively influence our society altogether.Similar to the past, people are still making choices that benefit themselves on a personal level. We are people who emotionally respond in the moment and not thinking of the long-term results. This has caused many of us to make some good and some bad choice; ultimately, just selfish choices.

I feel that most of us lack discipline and wisdom on every day life choices; myself included, I am a diabetic. I often find it difficult to resist sugar or sweets knowing that they are not beneficial for my health. I find myself ignoring the warnings and advisements of my medical prescriber because of my own selfish wants. We simply have those physical cravings that I find difficult to fight against.

These selfish tendencies can cause individuals to be blinded by their desires. I have witnessed a person in the car smoking, while their are children in the car. Would that not be considered satisfying one's own personal wants without thinking about those around us, whether it be strangers or our own children (including disregarding one’s health conditions)?

Bibliography

Soccio, Douglas. PAC LMS INTG MT PHILOSOPHYARCH/Archetypes Of Wisdom, 9 Th Ed., Mindtap. 9th ed. Cenage Learning, 2016. Print

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