Contemporary Hedonism or How To Stop Worrying About Others

I remember a few years back I was at a braai and, as it happens, the conversation got a bit deep. I was pleasantly surprised since the company kept was mostly light-hearted and fun; avoiding topics like religion, politics and the like. Not being a fan of small-talk, although I recognize it's importance, I was thrilled. Somehow it came down to me describing my whole outlook on life in a single sentence. I couldn't think of a word that I could sum it up in and so I said something along these lines.

"I believe everyone should have the right to do anything they want to be happy as long as it doesn't harm those around them or force others to do something they would no want to do."

I was immediately told that I was a Hedonist and was happy to accept that because now I had a word to contain all those other words in, like a neat package. Problem was, as I learnt more about Hedonists, the less I liked the word. See classical Hedonism seems to be about ego and being self-centric; almost excluding those around you from your happiness. Also, it made you look pretty stupid where you'd just do whatever made you most happy based on emotions and not thinking about it too much. So although that didn't gel with me, I still saw and understood why I might have been called one.

So that was that. Fast forward to recently where I got to watch a film called Whatever Works by Woody Allen. It's by no means a brilliant film, in fact it's quite predictable. Everything wraps itself up perfectly as they seem to do in Allen films, he is a sucker for happy endings even if it means inexplicable twists. Anyway I digress, the point is the film had it's heart in the right place...at least as far as I'm concerned. Look, I'm no genius, but I'm probably smarter than the average bear or at least more than I wish to be. The protagonist of this film was an over-the-hill egotist who saw most ritualistic behavior humans have as pointless. He didn't believe in religion, mocked children for being idiots and would have night terrors about dying; and I identified (heaven help me).

Look, just watch the trailer...it sums it up better than I can right now.

Point is, even with his over-thinking every little thing and occasional breaking of the fourth wall, he was smart enough to know that even if life is pointless (in an essential way) we should still be looking for happiness anyway we could find it. In other words, whatever works. Does eating dog food make you happy, whatever works man. You listen to dubstep (shame), whatever works man. You're involved with someone and everyone says it'll never work out, but the dysfunction makes you happy, whatever works man...no wait a minute. Bit of a hiccup now.

It seems contemporary hedonism is only going to work out for you if it makes you happy, but make sure the happiness isn't the shallow I'm-trapped-in-a-box-get-me-out kind of relief happiness. Jeremy Bentham (link) used to measure happiness as intensity times by length of happiness. Impulse happiness comes and goes like a pulse, so we should use our heads (the one that gets us into this problem in the first place) to measure and decide what is best for us.

No one ever won a race by watching the other participants in the race. Stop watching what other people are doing and make yourself happy, no one else can or is going to.