high school drama (ew)
celebrities,
song lyrics,
and finally poorly used quotes as captions.
Teenage girls everywhere caption their "Insta" pictures with similar quotes: "Today I choose to be happy" or something like, "Happiness never goes out of style,"or even the cringe-worthy George Strait quote: "There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved."
It is not that those quotes or tweets are wrong; to me, it is the cliché staple our society has pinned to the idea of being happy. Happiness has a major influence on our culture and lives today– just as it always has. There is a certain fake-ness that has been attached to the word “happiness.”
Thinking back to John Stewart Mill’s Utilitarianism view of happiness:
The Greatest Happiness Principle: acts are morally good in as much as they produce the greatest amount of people.
Is it that today’s culture does not use the Utilitarian (Felicific) Calculus to determine what the greatest happiness may be? Or is it that pop-culture has demeaned the meaning of true happiness so much that the word can be used for basically anything?
I agree that a lot of those quotes lack a deep meaning; some of them don't seem to say anything at all. However, I wouldn't say that all of these represent the opinions of a significant portion of today's youths about happiness, or even the opinions of the people that share them. I know many people will simply scroll through posts, think "Ha, that's true," and reblog it. The whole process took 5 seconds; they didn't think very deeply about what they were reblogging, and if it coincided perfectly with what they believe about happiness. Deep down, I'm sure many of them have deeper ideas of happiness, many of which are probably utilitarian. If they took more time to think about it, they may find that they only partially agree with the quote, or disagree completely.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I wouldn't make any assumptions about the average gender of the person who posts these types of empty quotes. Remember that confirmation bias (http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html) is always in effect, and it justifies our preexisting beliefs. So, if someone believes that women are stupider than men, and they see people posting vapid quotes like these, they will remember when a woman posts one, but they will gloss over when a man posts one. Then, they will look back and remember only women posting these, and their belief that women are stupider than men will be strengthened. Even if you didn't consciously decide women are stupider than men, society beats this belief into us subconsciously, and it's difficult to exorcise. I managed to mostly get rid of it by stopping myself whenever I made some gendered statement, asking myself why I thought that was true, and seeing if it led back to a sexist belief. If it did, I'd acknowledge that I was being sexist, and try to replace the deep-seated sexist belief with a non-sexist one.
I think you provided a very interesting perspective of happiness. I agree that definitely the idea of happiness has molded by pop culture in today's world, and that it does no go along with the terms of utilitarianism, because it it is not achieved for the sake of the greater amount of people. Now it is just considered as an immediate feeling, rather than a consequence, of something for the purpose of the happiness of the most amount of people. I definitely think that the utility of the younger generation has decreased over time as well.
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