A plea for lives built on ethics
The cult of the individual
It seems like our Western society today is obsessed with being happy. Not only do we have to be successful in our professional lives and build a family as well, at the same time, we have to do all of that while being happy. Advertisements left, right and center are promising us hundreds of different ways that we can reach happiness, certified by models with toothpaste smiles and unrealistic bodies promoting the next best consumer product that will change our lives forever. Social media is rife with successful happy people doing only amazing things in their lives, and is bringing the happiness cult to another level. And if none of that works, we still have yoga, wellness and mindfulness, to overcome the overstimulation and find happiness within. In consumer culture, happiness is just a purchase or an app away.
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| Yoga, meditation and wellness promise beauty and happiness for all! |
There are many reasons for this unhappiness, but one of them, I think, is probably the very fact that we are so obsessed with happiness. Just look at the most popular 'influencers' on Instagram and other social media. Who can possibly compete with them in terms of beauty, excitement, personal achievement and all the other things that make up our perception of happiness? This happiness obsession seems to me to be part and parcel of the deeper lying issue of individualism that pervades our modern way of thinking and that has often been cited as one of the major reasons of many of the ills of our society.
This individualism implies a disconnection from the world around us and the multitude of relationships that we are part of and - one could rightly say - define who we are ('I am because I belong', to quote Desmond Tutu). So paradoxically, this focus on ourselves estranges us from ourselves. It leads us to live lives that we do not really believe in, that we do not find meaningful, and that just do not feel 'right'. This, I believe, is a major cause of our unhappiness. We need to have professional success, but deep down, maybe even subconsciously, we are doubting whether the work we have is really that meaningful. We indulge in consumer and influencer culture, but at the same time, there is a nagging part of us that knows, that - regardless of what the advertisements are trying to sell us - these consumer products do not define us at all. We post selfies of ourselves with outstanding gourmet dinners and breathtaking views, but there is a part of us that wonders whether this is truly what life is about. And then we go on shushing that nagging voice inside by doing more of the same - What else is the point of 'influencing' other than trying to bring you 'under influence'? - On and on goes the merry-go-round of individualism.
Built on injustice
So, our unhappiness is caused by our most fundamental relationships to the world around us being severed. It does not just stem from our personal wishes not being fulfilled. Deep down below, our conscience is not at ease with all this. The crisis of the individual is not merely a personal matter, it is a moral problem. Behind the surface there is so much pain and violence we have to ignore in order to be able to carry on like this.
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| Behind the lens of the influencer, everything looks swell! |
There is so much injustice in today's world, that it becomes hard to function without turning a blind eye. If we have the privilege to live in the West and belong to most majority groups, we live in a world that looks quite safe, peaceful and just. Yet this apparent well-being is constructed on an iceberg of violence which is hidden out of view and obstructed by the picture perfect advertisement models and social media influencers of consumer culture. In times past our society was visibly much more cruel, but now this violence has become much more subtle. Yet it is undeniably there and constantly trying to creep into our picture perfect worlds - literally - in the form of refugees, immigrants, protests, activism and the news - many people's biggest enemy in a world of 'fake news'.
Beneath the glamour and glitter of modern Western society there lies cruelty, destruction and exploitation. Our society is built on oppressive and discriminatory power structures: (neo-)colonialism, racism, sexism, classism, inequality (both locally and globally), speciesism (the horrible abuse of animals in factory farming), ageism, adultism (the deprivation of our children's freedom by making them a cog in the machine of institutionalized mass education) and the ruining of our living natural environment. And there are probably many -isms i am forgetting here.
This violence is embedded in the systems that we are part of, so it is nearly impossible not to contribute to it. With almost all of our daily acts - the products we buy, the jobs we have - we are contributing to this violence in one way or another. No matter how many selfies we post or wellness retreats we do, part of us knows, that what many of our acts are not contributing to making this world a better place. This cognitive dissonance is the cause of a lot of depression and despair, as Joanna Macy points out.
Finding our moral compass
I believe our society is lacking a moral compass.* By making ethics central again to our lives, we can build a much stronger foundation not only for our own well-being, but for the well-being of our entire society. By aspiring to live lives of virtue - as the ancient Greek philosophers did - we can achieve 'eudaimonia', a collective state of 'blessedness', to use the Greek word.
Let's return for a moment to yoga and mindfulness. In the beginning of this essay, I seemed to address them as part of the problem. Do not get me wrong, i do not have anything against these practices, in fact, i am a dedicated practitioner of them since many years. However, what seems to be forgotten in our contemporary Western practice of them, is that both in Buddhism (where 'mindfulness' originates from) and in yoga, the basis of the practice is moral behavior. In Buddhism, 'sila', the precepts, or ethical behavior is the foundation of practice, just like in yoga - according to Patanjali's yoga sutras, the 'Bible' of yoga you could say - the 'yamas' (moral discipline) and 'niyamas' (observances), are the prerequisite for practicing yoga. Without an ethical foundation, these practices are empty, and can be used for 'spiritual bypassing', making us 'feel good' when actually our situation is not 'good' at all and quite concerning from an ethical and a mental health perspective.
True happiness is not an individual matter. It comes from living in harmony with those around us and realizing our innate 'inter-being', to use a term coined by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. We cannot be truly happy while those around us are suffering, and while we are directly or indirectly contributing to their suffering. True fulfillment can come about only when we become aware of the suffering around us - another Buddhist insight - and when we realize our well-being is connected to that of all beings around. To have real peace, we need to be at peace with our conscience.
What does that mean concretely? How to put this into practice? If we choose a life of good-ness, of 'eudaimonia', it may require us to make some radical changes in our lives. We may want to start and volunteer, get involved in activism or community building work. We may want to study, meditate very deeply on our own aspiration or contemplate the state of the world. In the long run, we may have to change our jobs and choose a life with less income (but more meaning!). To be truly happy, we have to live a life that is fully aligned with our values and our deepest wishes for the world: beauty, community, justice and true inner well-being. This may seem like a daunting task. Do not worry about being perfect and doing everything 'right' from the first time. This is a journey, not a destination. It is about the direction where we are going, even if it may just be with baby steps at the beginning. Eventually, you may well find it to be truly rewarding!
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* Have a look at our celebrity culture. The people we worship today are no longer the sages and saints of old, revered for their exemplary moral behavior, rather they are singers, actors and businessmen, who are revered for having achieved highly on the scale of individualistic success. We have a need for 'moral' superheroes, which is exemplified by the fact that we then take these celebrities and bombard them into 'Goodwill Ambassadors' and the like. But when one of these celebrities gets involved in a scandal, as happens from time to time, society is very shocked. This shows that we cannot really rely on them for moral guidance.
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