Question #6: Which theory in your
opinion is most helpful to the world and which is least?
I
think Aristotle’s theory on happiness is most helpful to the world today. He believed happiness was the purpose for
which we lived, that it wasn’t a moment-to-moment experience. It was living and having lived a good
life. If one decides what makes life
good, including the highest possible of good, then that leaves nothing else to
be desired. I see that statement as once
you learn how to be happy, you won’t accept anything that would make you feel
anything less. Many people in this world
today think that if they experience one small moment of sadness or despair,
their life has lost all hope of happiness, which isn’t true. Aristotle also reasons his theory with reason and virtue, how we can best live.
According to this theory, life is good
for one who is good. In other words, a good life is a happy life; but not terms
of feeling happiness or joy, but life was full enough to meet one’s pleasure or
needs to make life feel whole. And in order to do that, the decisions you make
now, in the present will be the result of it, because you cannot undo what you
decided in the past. It’s what can you do now to feel as if that is the right
way to be happy.
The
theory that I think is least helpful to the world today is stoicism. Though stoicism has a “coping” and/or “rationalization”
trait to it, I don’t think that is something that would help the world function
in a positive way. I think that there is
always something you can do that change your state of mind or where your life
is now, but you have to work for it. It
isn’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter when you are at your
lowest. Stoicism is to accept one’s
fate, but if they are in a place where they believe coping is doing nothing,
they rationalize it and think that happiness won’t come unless it just happens
to suddenly appear.
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