48 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
48 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
**Happiness** is a description of mental or emotional states, including
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positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
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It is also used in the context of life satisfaction, subjective
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well-being, eudaimonia, flourishing and well-being.
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## Happiness and Libertarian Socialism
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Happiness is largely dependent on both negative and positive freedom.
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Whether or not a libertarian socialist society would make people more
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happy is unknown, however, data and testimony provide some clues, for
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example, [George Orwell](George_Orwell "wikilink") said of
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[Revolutionary Spain](Revolutionary_Spain "wikilink"):
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> I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any
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> size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in
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> capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragón
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> one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely
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> of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on
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> terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in
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> practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be
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> true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by
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> which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of
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> Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness,
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> money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist.
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> The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent
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> that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there
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> was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned
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> anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not
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> last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game
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> that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it
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> lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it.
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> However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one
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> had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been
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> in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism,
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> where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most
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> countries, for humbug... Human beings were behaving as human beings
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> and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.\[1\]
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The anthropologist Colin Turnbull, after living with a
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[Mbuti](Mbuti "wikilink") band, remarked, "They were a people who had
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found in the forest something that made life more than just worth
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living, something that made it, with all its hardships and problems and
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tragedies, a wonderful thing full of joy and happiness and free of
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care."\[2\]
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1. [George Orwell](George_Orwell "wikilink") - [Homage to
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Catalonia](Homage_to_Catalonia "wikilink")
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2. Colin Turnbull - ''The Forest People, ''page 28 |