Happiness and Wisdom News!

Return to Happiness and Wisdom

Fall 2024

• Stoicism and recent happiness advice. (From Fall 2023) [1]

• Stoic adage. (See main folder)

• Potential happiness / wisdom movie. My Old Ass. [2] Try searches for "happiness themed movies" "wisdom themed movies".

• Nice, broad piece on happiness from last month. Note mention of books and themes from our course. [3]

• Are the mundane activities in your life irrelevant to your happiness? [4]

• Resilience. Characteristic of wise people. [5]

• Paralympian on happiness. [6]

• Loneliness. [7]

Fall 2023

• Neurology of trauma. [8]

• Green bubble shaming. [9]

• The Joy Project. A scaled up version of Happiness Practica. [10]

• An animator pays homage to a very old friend. [11]

• Biophobia and loneliness. [12]

• Lives of the rich. [13]

• Brazil’s Happiness Trucks. [14]

• Wisdom quotes. [15]

• Wisdom as culturally embodied. Bible (Proverbs, Job, Ecclessiastes), Koran (Hadditha), etc. But also: Ananse [16] and Coyote [17]

• Plugging the podcast: "My Unsung Hero". [18]

• New happiness book: [19]. Pop happiness books in general, compared to Happiness Studies.

• Happiness reflection: Eyeballs, plasticity, and happiness.

• The Red Pill of Humility. Arthur C. Brooks. The Atlantic. [20]

• Wisdom failure: Tupac's murderer self-incriminates. [21]

• Wisdom and Institutions. The current paralysis of governance.

• Spokane String Quartet. [22]

• Two stories about alignment:

• Mind and Body department. Simon Biles lands Yurchenko double pike. [23]
• A happy story about a scientist. [24]

• Narrative opacity in the Jann Wenner scandal. Also:

• Lauren Boebert’s big night out. [25]. Fox News’ version [26]

• Bhutan UN delegation causing local unhappiness. [27]

• Wisdom failure #2: Alabama band director tased and arrested for refusing to stop playing music at the end of a football game. [28]

• Wisdom failure #1: Jann Wenner, Board member on Rock and roll Hall of Fame, co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine, removed after sexist and racist interview comments. [29]

• Child Care funding from Covid era ending. [30]

• Happiness Note. Meditation for the inside, but how does the way we arrange our time and scheduling affect mindfulness?

• Stoicism and recent happiness advice. [31]

• Some details from the WHR 2023 on effects of the pandemic on happiness related behaviors.

• Loneliness research and a project. [32]

• Why the Finns are so happy. [33]

• Deaths of despair and American happiness. [34]

• Believe it or not this is happiness news. [35]

• Happiness and “weak ties” [36]

Fall 2021

• On aging. [37]

• Oxford, Michigan school shooting offers insights to “unwise/dysfunctional” family behaviors, but also questions about “wise culture”. Arguably, “neo-liberal individualist culture” makes it hard to intervene, to ask, “Are you alright?”.

• Addio, Rav! [38]

• Rep. Paul Gossar shares an animated video of him killing another congressperson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and then turning the weapons toward an animated figure of the president.

• Since vaccine rollout, covid deaths are disproportionately affecting Republicans. [39]

• Inflation spikes to 6.2%. An "unhappiness maker".

• Much happiness in re-opening of US borders to more international visitors.

• Happiness economics gets into Philosophy 301!

• Haiti and market failures, failures of civil society.

• Brief movie report on "After Life" [40]. While we're at it, other "after life" movies: Defending Your Life, A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven). [41]. And, since I'm on a Lubitsch kick, I just came across "Heaven Can Wait" (which does reflect the sexism of its time), but also makes a commentary on a particular path to happiness.

• Addio Mihalyi Csiksentmihalyi! ObitCsiksentmihalyi

• The Philosophy Department Undergraduate Committee is trying to increase our social media presence and they think that one of the best ways to do this is through the app TikTok. They are hoping to produce content with our majors and minors that appeal to a broad spectrum of students. To that end, they would appreciate if you could fill out this very short survey: https://forms.gle/4G8u4JuQQgmBPLB38

• Socratic Club Event tonight.

• Addio ”The Happiest Man on Earth” [42]

• H&W movie suggestion from figlio mio. [43]

• How does a whistleblower or hacker determine whether it is wise to do so? Thinking of facebook whistleblower and hack of right wing media records.

• Algorithms for wisdom? [44]

• A potential wisdom story about an outhouse.

• Some research from Ethics class on our bias toward confirmatory thought. Perkins research on IQ and ability to generate “my-side” arguments.

• Cambridge Handbook on Wisdom.

• Happiness thought for the day. Do we "perform happiness" in social media?

• Unhappy, unwise. The Gabby Petito's murder.

• Eccentric happiness practices - The guy who rides through campus on a bike with a boom box.

• Pope’s response to abortion/communion issue may be wisdom. Or, permissiveness?

• An example of a school concept that tries to incorporate wisdom

• Happiness impacted by the pandemic. [45]

• This weekend's 9/11 memorials might be thought of as a kind of cultural wisdom practice which seeks understanding for difficult events.

• Wisdom 2.0 is a group making a particular kind of wisdom initiative. See the file share directory for an example. [46]

• Popular short video about some happiness research [47]

• Child tax credit may cut child poverty in half. [48]

• Momento Mori from Sister Aletheia (Sister Truth). [49]
• Pandemic surge in drug overdoses. [50]