True Happiness and its Competitors.
Some people around us are caught by one of these two currents:
Turbocapitalism is an acceleration of capitalism whose consequences in environmental, ethical, labor, and social cohesion fields are not exactly positive. It is the capitalism of desire, of the unnecessary, that makes us dizzy or perhaps blinds us to the best. It encloses us in an extravagant lifestyle and distances us from what is truly human.
Hyper-consumerism. Accelerated hyper-consumers are people interested in making the most of the present moment, without thought, in enjoying at all costs only in the purely material plane without respite.
In the end, they find: that happiness is not pleasure.
And happiness, they realize, understood as fulfillment, is not linked to pleasure or the momentary satisfaction of hyper-consumption. The most natural pleasures have moments that should not be squeezed out. The reason is that lasting happiness is related to a life full of purpose, with an existence open to the reality of one's biography –integrating wonders and pains– but above all full of meaningful people.
Some wise researchers agree that full social relationships are the key to happiness. Family life, the life of courtship and married love, life surrounded by friends. Friends with whom you plan activities or simply contemplate the beauty of watching the hours pass together in endless reflective conversations: that is the happiness of fulfillment. Perhaps living your life in an altruistic manner –volunteering– or literary –lots of books and book clubs. Perhaps in civic associationism. Perhaps linked to gratitude for the constant gift of existence. And always in a physically active life that speaks of walking, perhaps running, and also of eating wisely, which is nothing more than eating little and healthy.
These researchers agree on the transcendent approach: happiness has to do with a meaningful life, a life with a purpose, that points to religion. Also, community life, religious participation, meditation, a sense of belonging, and commitment, are keys to human flourishing.
What about investing in leisure for human flourishing?
I do not understand, naively of course, why there is no market in this direction: products for human flourishing. (The economic returns of this industry may be slow and low). But many young people would enjoy this market to the fullest given their idealism and daring. Cultural excursions, meetings, readings, and lectures inspired by the science of human flourishing. Perhaps a more rural, communal, de-stressed life. Shared life, familiar and discreet, simple and austere and at the same time rich in reflection and wisdom, in serene experiences of beauty and in contemplation where God welcomes those who meditate and search. I know it.
But it seems that hedonistic hyper-consumption is more profitable, which besides being very unhealthy, does not provide us with happiness. Family and school have a determining role here: to educate in leisure and for life and human flourishing, which is usually very prosocial.
Some excerpts from Ignasi de Bofarull
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