Despre Viata Fericita aka On The Happy Life by Seneca, one of the greatest philosophers of all time http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-tao-of-seneca-happiness-and.html 10 out of 10

 Despre Viata Fericita aka On The Happy Life by Seneca, one of the greatest philosophers of all time http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-tao-of-seneca-happiness-and.html

10 out of 10

 

 

There are plenty of reasons to read Seneca, and in particular his thoughts on happiness – after all, ‘To summarize from Pursuit of Happiness (2018), according to Aristotle, the purpose and ultimate goal in life is to achieve eudaimonia ('happiness')…He believed that eudaimonia was not simply virtue, nor pleasure, but rather it was the exercise of virtue, we are what we do repeatedly, excellence is not an act, it is a habit’ – hence if we get the secrets, we could rest easy, albeit there are more recent studies and august, magical works on happiness, such as The How of Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html by Sonja Lyubomirsky, which confirms some of the Stoic precepts

 

Studies in Positive Psychology have shown that we can change our level of Subjective Well Being aka SWB, we have about half of our life satisfaction inherited, the genetic material will predispose us to be negative or positive, then about ten percent depends on the place where we are born, live now (think Ukraine, invaded by Putin’s ghouls, Myanmar and other such places) and we can work with the remaining forty percent.

Seneca and the Stoics in general have emphasized millennia ago that Gratitude is paramount, indeed, one of their most important precepts was  ‘wish for what you already have’ and we find in the new works of the experts on happiness that research confirms this ancient wisdom…Martin Seligman http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/11/flourish-by-martin-seligman-part-1.html is the co-founder of Positive Psychology and the author of important books in the field, he has also identified the Character Strengths, one of which covers Transcendence, and in that department, Gratitude is key, an essential component…

 

Buddhists and other philosophies http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/08/le-doigt-et-la-lune-aka-finger-and-moon.html insist on the fact that cravings represent suffering, indeed, Nirvana, the ultimate state of grace is reached when one has no cravings left, desires for nothing, which is evidently untenable in the world of today, when it would be a fantastic achievement if we could consume somewhat less…there is the threat of an economic apocalypse though, what will happen if millions, billions will stop buying things, jobs will disappear, markets will tumble, Armageddon as we saw it in 2008

On the other hand, Seneca and the other Stoics do offer a doctrine that could save the world (as some insist rightly, the world would actually be humanity, the planet will stay on for some millions of years, even once humans will have disappeared from it) for if stopping consumption, shopping, will have disastrous effects, a Temperate attitude will do wonders in sparing resources that have been spoiled by us for centuries…

 

A classic of psychology is Flow http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-this-is.html written by the other co-founder of Positive Psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has identified the conditions necessary for Peak Experience, Being in The Zone, or Flow ‘challenge–skill balance, action/awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, intense concentration, control over the task at hand, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time, and autotelic experience’

Finding about happiness from Seneca and contemporary authors will have multiple benefits, it is not just that this could be the ultimate goal, once reached there is Eudaimonia, Ataraxia, we have entered Arcadia, Shangri La, Eden, but the effects are spiraling, happy humans live longer, have more successful private, professional lives, they get sick less often and when they do, it is for shorter periods, they support democracy more than their opposites, and more importantly, they have a wondrous effect on others.

 

‘We are the average of the five people we see most’ and that must make us stop and think about the entourage, but here, the emphasis is on the fact that just as the others influence us, we have an effect on them, and therefore, our Subjective Well Being is not just a question of selfishness (such as is on display when we see the ultimate patient, suffering from extreme  Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Trump, the one who has just had the verdict yesterday, he has to pay five million dollars for defamation and sexual abuse, Alhamdulillah) but when we are happy, we have a positive effect on those around

In The Tipping Point http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-tipping-point-by-malcolm-gladwell.html the King of Psychology Malcolm Gladwell explains a good number of phenomena, including the fact that there are people who influence up to one thousand humans, one scholar speaks of the fact that he knows he has an impact on the mother of his son’s friend…Malcolm Gladwell explains the Harding Effect, The Thin Slicing Theory in his Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

 

A majestic read is Outliers http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/outliers-by-malcolm-gladwell.html a Work of Absolute Magic, which could transform our life if you have not read it, for it explains how genius is created, and how ordinary people could find the formula to shine, by practicing, exercising for three hours every day for ten years, and then they have access to the top of the pyramid in a domain, provided of course they fulfill some elementary conditions (we cannot expect to be better than Usain Bolt, especially if we do not have the physique, say we are just 157 centimeters tall, which is no discriminatory element here, it is fine to have that or any height, it is just that it will not get the gold medal and Olympic records in running)

There is the essential Seneca to read, On Happiness and other subjects, but we also have some magnum opera to assimilate, works that will help us find happiness, radiate it to others, and some have been mentioned above… now for  a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html