Our Life - Is It Always All About Happiness?

Myko, Dorota

Our Life - Is It Always All About Happiness?

Abstract

There have been many different life forms on Earth: from dinosaurs to microscopic phages that penetrate unicellular organisms.1) In the field of Schrodinger's quantum physics, we have the phenomenon of a cat that has a 50 percent chance of being alive or dead. Consequently, it is both: alive and dead - until we take it out of the box and decide it ourselves. Albert Schweitzer was the outstanding humanist of the twentieth century who in 1952 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his activity in Africa and philosophy of "ethics of reverence for life". This work expressed the idea of moral respect for all manifestations of life: not only human life but all lives in nature. For centuries people have given different values to their lives. The life of a slave was worth nothing from the point of view of its owner, and entire civilizations were based on this concept. The form of slavery was the feudal and colonial system. The latest book, Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life from 2020 by Howard Steven Friedman, a health care economist who is also a data scientist, describes how courts, businesses, and governments are currently valuing human life. It is impossible not to mention here the different meaning that has been given to a life over the millennia. There is an obvious relationship between the question of the essence, the meaning of life, and the question of a proper and well-lived life. For example, the purpose and meaning of life to be achieved in the ancient and medieval world was based on the concept of the acquisition of virtue (in another sense than in our times). The mythical Sisyphus wanted to deceive the gods and was punished by the futile, endless work of rolling a boulder uphill, which after reaching the top, rolled down again. Like most people, Albert Camus wondered if the suffering of Sisyphus made any sense. The meaning of life was also dealt with by the Austrian psychiatrist and concentration camp prisoner Victor Frankl in his work Man in Search of Meaning and considered the sense of the life in helping other inmates. Writers and specialists in various fields wonder what makes them live a long, wise, and happy life. Neurobiologist Prof. Jerzy Vetulani presented an interesting concept of proper diet and lifestyle. If the diet can also make us happier, or happiness is coded in our genes and dependent on where we live on Earth? Psychologists ask themselves if and when we are in danger of becoming addicted to searching for happiness?

Citation

Myko, Dorota. (2022). Our Life - Is It Always All About Happiness?. Preprint

URI

https://open.icm.edu.pl/handle/123456789/24516

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