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Human Values & Prof. Ethics-1

Happiness And Prosperity

Happiness and Prosperity:

1. Happiness:

Happiness may be defined as being in harmony/synergy in the state/ situation that I live in. “A state or situation in which I live, if there is harmony in it then I like to be in that state / situation. The state of liking is happiness.” Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure or joy. Happiness may be described as consisting of positive emotions and positive activities. There may be three kinds of happiness: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. In other words, freedom from want and distress, consciousness of the good order of things, assurance of one’s place in the universe or society, inner peace and so forth. Happiness is the state of mind, where we feel good in most of the walk of life.

2. Prosperity:

The feeling of having or making available more than required physical facilities is prosperity. Almost all of us feel that wealth alone means prosperity and try to explain this phenomenon on this nonexistent or half fact. We are trying to achieve happiness and prosperity by maximizing accumulation and consumption of physical facilities. It is becoming anti-ecological and anti-people, and threatening the human survival itself. For prosperity, two things are required:

1. Identification of the required quantity of physical facilities.

2. Ensuring availability / production of more than required physical facilities.

We can be prosperous only if there is a limit to the need for physical facilities. If there is no limit what so ever be the availability the feeling of prosperity cannot be assured. Secondly, just assessing the need is not enough. We need to be able to produce or make available more than the perceived need.

Prosperity and Wealth:

Prosperity is a feeling of having more than required physical facilities, it is not just physical facilities. Almost all of us feel that wealth alone means prosperity and try to explain this phenomenon on this nonexistent or half fact. Wealth is a physical thing. It means having money, or having a lot of physical facilities or both. This is a very important distinction. We mostly fail to make this distinction today. We keep working for wealth, without realizing that the basic desire is for the feeling of prosperity, to have a feeling of having enough. Prosperity is more acceptable to us because wealth is just a part of prosperity. We are trying to achieve happiness and prosperity by maximizing accumulation and consumption of physical facilities. It is becoming anti-ecological and anti-people, and threatening the human survival itself. A peson have lot of money, but does not want to share even a bit of it. The person ‘has wealth’ but feels ‘deprived’. If one felt prosperous he/she would have shared what one has, since there is lot more than enough wealth anyway.

Vision of a Happy and Prosperous Life:

We are trying to achieve happiness and prosperity by maximizing accumulation and consumption of physical facilities. It is becoming anti-ecological and anti-people, and threatening the human survival itself. Some of the consequences of such trend are summarized below:

  • At the level of individual – rising problems of depression, psychological disorders, suicides, stress, insecurity, etc.
  • At the level of family – breaking of joint families, mistrust, and conflict between older and younger generations, insecurity in relationships, divorce, dowry tortures, etc.
  • At the level of society – growing incidence of terrorism and naxalism, rising communalism, spreading casteism, racial and ethnic struggle, wars between nations, etc.
  • At the level of nature – global warming, water, air, soil, noise etc. pollution, resource depletion of minerals and mineral oils, etc.

All the problems are a direct outcome of an incorrect understanding, our wrong notion about happiness and prosperity and their continuity – this is an issue for serious exploration.

Basic Human Aspirations:

To achieve our basic aspirations we need to work for right understanding as the base on which we can work for relationship and then physical facilities. Today we are not working according to this that why we can see that there are two kind of people in the world:

1. Those that do not have physical facilities/ wealth and feel unhappy and deprived. i.e. SVDD: Sadhan Viheen Dukhi Daridra – Materially Deficient, Unhappy and Deprived.

2. Those that have physical facilities/ wealth and feel unhappy and deprived. i.e. SSDD: Sadhan Sampann Dukhi Daridra – Materially Affluent, Unhappy and Deprived. But these are states we don’t want to be in. We want to move from this to third category i.e.

3. Having physical facilities and feeling happy and prosperous i.e. SSSS: Sadhan Sampann Sukhi Samriddha – Materially Adequate, Happy and Prosperous. Presently, as we look around, we find most of the people in the above two categories called SVDD and SSDD, while the natural acceptance of all human beings is to be in the category of SSSS.