Success Happy

Can happiness be found during the ongoing collapse of Western civilization?

Can happiness be found even during the worst of times?

Public Comments

1. There is more chance of finding real happiness in the worst of times than in the most comfortable of times.
2. Thinking your happiness depends on the world will bring unhappiness. You are the master of your life.
3. yes. as happiness is not limited to fulfilling one's needs (which civilization guarantees (to varying degrees) to the members of its society) alone.
4. Seems to me it's possible in theory, but probably a tough job of work to pull it off. A person would have difficulties keeping emotional distance from, say, starving kids that wandered into his life, trying to keep them alive and well, but not becoming influenced by the futility of a losing battle. Most folk wouldn't be able to pull it off, though the Ayn Rand cult and talk radio dittoheads probably wouldn't be brought down by it.
5. Yes. There is usually an accompanying paradigm shift in focus on wealth and family and values during difficult times. In the worst of times, we can still find love and beauty and happiness. Often it is the worst times that give us the contrast against which we may take pleasure in the small things previously unnoticed.
6. Come up with something better?
7. I believe there is more humour but less happiness. There is a quote by Mel Brooks that I feel applies to your question. "tragedy is when I cut my finger , comedy is when I walk into an open sewer and die" Look at the funny people you know they are funny because they are dealing with some sort of pain or trauma. The basis of humour is pain. We look at the immense crap and instead of crying about it we laugh. No one wants to hear the story about how you scored the winning touchdown just after nailing half the cheerleaders ....no they want the story of how when you finally got the courage to ask the hot girl out you threw up all over her. That's the story we all want to here, because its human and real.( Never trust anyone who is the hero of their own story.) Happiness can be found but only briefly. Those people who are happy all the time are a little sociopathic (You'd have to be inured to the pain of others to be cheerful all the time and happy people can't be funny they just don't know how) I've known people in the medical field, they deal with life and death every day and as a result have developed amazing senses of humour. But they are not really happy, never trust anyone who is. They sure are funny though.
8. Western civilization has been collapsing since its inception. The trick is in knowing that happiness really is possible and it doesn't have anything to do with Western civilization. It's all inside you. http://www.soulsastray.com/