He seems to have a good bead on what makes one happy, happy, happy.
Emerson, as I understand, was a theist who rejected a personal God.
One wonders if the young people making the content decisions for these tv programs REALLY know the history and implications of their worldview....Whether the answer is yes or no, it is disturbing.
Friedrich Nietzsche always struck me as being one seriously miserable SOB.
He is one of the last people who ever existed from whom I would take advice on how to be happy.
Any such list without Bob Marley is worthless.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya’
‘Bout the raising of the wrist.
SOCRATES, HIMSELF, WAS PERMANENTLY PISSED...
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: “I drink, therefore I am”
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed!
They should have quoted Conan the Barbarian.
Being a broken, fatherless, lost and wandering culture, we seek the counsel of those who also were. And, being dead, the lost and wandering thinkers are now beatified.
What was the advice? What were the quotes?
If it’s from an atheist, are his lips moving? (dead atheists, “were his lips moving?”)
Happy, happy, happy.
This is at least debatable. The Fascists and Nazis made very selective use of his philosophy. If applied in full neither ideology will be able to hold up.
Among other things, he was notably anti-anti-Semitic.
I am not a fan, but his ideas are a great deal more complex and nuanced than the common notion that he was merely a pre-Nazi.
Why not quote Alister Crowley who’s motto because law for the Church of Satan? “Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
Why not quote Saul Alinsky (who dedicated his book to Satan)?
What makes ME happy is my conscious contact with the God of my understanding. Wonder if NBC would like me on that panel?
Funny, the two atheists were miserable people. They would have been better off with Viktor Frankl,
The original term, the one that our Founders understood, did not equate happiness with self-gratification.
"Pursuit of Happiness" as used by our Founders meant living a virtuous life whose final goal is to be with God.
WHAT REALLY MAKES YOU HAPPY? from a true philosopher.
FASTER HORSES
He was an old-time cowboy, don’t you understand his eyes were sharp as razor blades his face was leather tan his toes were pointed inward from a-hangin’ on a horse he was an old philosopher, of course.
He was so thin i swear you could have used him for a whip he had to drink a beer to keep his britches on his hips i knew i had to ask him about the mysteries of life he spit between his boots and he replied
“it’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, and more money”
He smiled and all his teeth were covered with tobacco stains he said, “it don’t do men no good to pray for peace and rain. peace and rain is just a way to say prosperity, and buffalo chips is all it means to me.”
I told him i was a poet, i was lookin’ for the truth i do not care for horses, whiskey, women or the loot i said i was a writer, my soul was all on fire he looked at me an’ he said, “you are a liar.”
“it’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, and more money”
Well, i was disillusioned, if i say the least i grabbed him by the collar and i jerked him to his feet there was something cold and shiny layin’ by my head so i started to believe the things he said
Well, my poet days are over and i’m back to being me as i enjoy the peace and comfort of reality. if my boy ever asks me what it is that i have learned i think that i will readily affirm
“it’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, and more money” (repeat 2x)
In those late hours of the night when you awake and gather your senses, maybe wanting to tell someone, maybe who’s passed, about something or another, the awful finality of believing in atheism - there is no God, no afterlife or heaven, no way to ever revisit or update, must be one real let-down.
I can’t think of going through life thinking there is no recourse, redemption or higher purpose. Why would these people even contemplate continuing to exist if there is nothing. It has to be a pretty empty and lonely existence IMO.
“Jean-Paul Sartre”
Asking an existentialist how to be happy is like asking a bum how to get rich.
More Thomas Reid, less Nietzsche.