I was walking by a school today, and wondering about the kids. I tried to imagine them all happy, and the whole projects succeeding admirably. This is always a useful exercise.
Then it hit me that the love you are capable of can in part be measured by how deeply and sincerely you can imagine the success of others. I’ve said this many times in many ways, but here it is again: recurring theme.
It’s easy enough to take part in the joy of your own children, and perhaps those of your nieces and nephews. But it harder for kids you don’t know, people you don’t know. This sort of greed slips in, which stipulates that the happier they are, the less there is for you. I mean, we can’t ALL be happy, can we? Somebody somewhere has to be less happy, right?
This is the same logic Leftists apply to their projects. In their view of the status quo, the rich are happy while the poor are happy. The logical inversion, then, is making the poor happy and the rich unhappy. Of course, the fact that EVERYONE is made miserable in the process, since they have made not even a rudimentary effort to understand cause and effect, is lost on them, before, during, and generally after.
The question remains: what limits ARE there on happiness? Why can’t we all be happy, or happy-ish? Is this not an empirical problem, to be solved by paying attention to social and intrapsychic cause and effect relationships? I for one think so. I see no limits at all, particularly if we admit that occasional sadness is necessary for happiness.