Yes, it is true that at the prestigious universities of Harvard and Yale the concept of happiness is studied today as a new subject, something that is beginning to spread to other universities around the world. In Brazil, for example, several university centers are already beginning to take an interest in what is called “positive psychology” to unravel the complex concept of happiness.
The question that arises is whether it would not be better, at this historical moment, to study more than happiness, unhappiness, universal restlessness, fear of the future, anxiety syndrome and the increase in anti-panic drugs.
It is symptomatic, in fact, that the students of these new faculties on the subject of happiness increase every day. And perhaps what is happening is that the increase in universal unrest, uncertainty about what the future will be for our children, is causing countless recipes and teachings on how to achieve happiness to flourish throughout the world.
The underlying problem is that at the same time as the interest in studying happiness grows, it is increasingly difficult to specify the coordinates of this human dimension that also affects animals.
And the curious thing in our days of frenetic search for happiness is that the new subject of positive psychology is simultaneously delving into the classics of antiquity in search of formulas against unhappiness.
Since the concept of emotional intelligence, which revolutionized the way we relate to others to alleviate our frustrations, formulas have swarmed to counteract unhappiness, sometimes at the expense of false escapism through chemistry.
It is not strange that in the frenetic search, publications multiply about the attempt to define happiness or unhappiness. In Brazil, the publishing house Sextante, the psychiatrist Daniel Martins de Barros has just published Living is better without having to be the best. This shows that in the end happiness does not consist, as has always been thought, in the race to be the first, the most intelligent, the richest, the most applauded.
That is why I believe that more than new and creative formulas on how to achieve happiness, we should study what makes humans unhappy today. It would be the best way, even if it is without shortcuts and through complex labyrinths, to discover what true happiness is, or better yet, what it is not.
And along these lines it is true that perhaps the best way to reach a possible definition of happiness, which is surely impossible, is the search for what today engenders unhappiness and restlessness, words that are very topical today.
It has been, in effect, the so-called consumer society, the sanctuary of the worst capitalism, that has injected into the veins of modernity, that restlessness that clouds any effort to acquire happiness.
If one day happiness was identified with wealth and comfort, with the accumulation of money and objects, with the ambition to possess, today we begin to understand, and this is worthy of new studies, which returns with rabid relevance, the old adage of ” less is more”. And that is the wisdom of the ancient philosophers and schools of spirituality. In fact, a place full of furniture, no matter how luxurious it may be, exudes no more beauty than the simplicity of the cells of the ancient monks who, stripped of almost everything, were the ones who lived the most in their environment and certainly the least unhappy.
I was always impressed, when I studied the Greek and Latin classics, how they were able, with the minimum of words, to embrace an entire philosophy of life that, curiously, is current again today amidst the novelty of artificial intelligence, to quote the latest madness invented by him Homo Sapiens and which perhaps one day you will regret.
Latin philosophers coined an expression with just three words that could be the heart of all university studies today: In medio virtus. Virtue, and by it the ancient philosophers understood happiness, is in the middle, not in the extremes. The center is the balance, it is balance, calm, contained joy. Also the silence that is the prelude to creativity.
In my life I have come across characters who suffered not because they lacked something, but the other way around because they had everything to spare and wanted more. It is not true that the greatest unrest, the greatest bitterness, is found among the poor, because they, unlike those who have too much of everything and are bored with having so much, know how to draw joy even from the deepest wells of their abandonment.
I am not talking about politics, but about psychology, because politics, which today, instead of imitating the Latin wise men that virtue is in the center and not at the extremes, insists on rushing more and more towards extremism and ending up thus unbalancing universal coexistence. Extremists of any color triumph, against all ancestral wisdom. Reason, calm, justice, moderation, and the fight against injustice are in crisis. Even political elections are won by stridency, extravagance, if not a return to old tyrannies, although sometimes disguised as modernity and novelty.
Nothing is older, more outdated, more discouraging, more maddening than the noise not only of old war cannons, but of the subtle disguises of modern happiness.
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