By: Pascal Levensohn

Pascal Levensohn — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:59:43 +0000

Thanks Chris for your thoughtful comment– your suggestion that real change may require a traumatic cultural shock is, in my view, on point. Our generation and, for those of you with teenage children, our children are rapidly approaching a ‘crucible’ for American society– it may come in one of many forms, but it IS coming– and from it we will generate a sense of purpose and the will to self-sacrifice that is so painfully absent from America today. Barack Obama has successfully tapped in to the alienation in our society in a positive way– let’s hope that he gets the chance to lead this country in a time where fresh, inspired, and positive leadership is so despertely needed.

By: Chris Borland

Chris Borland — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:52:11 +0000

I enjoyed your post, Pascal, and appreciate the reminder you’ve given us about the critical importance of posterity, the “eternal perspective,” and spending God’s gift of time wisely.
60 minutes did an interesting piece recently called The Keys to Happiness, in which Morley Schafer interviews an Israeli soldier turned Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar (who teaches the most popular course at Harvard, Psych 1504, “Positive Phychology: The Science of Happiness,” known as “Happiness 101″ to the nearly 1000 students who take his course in the science of happiness). Professor Shahar agrees with you, as do I, that we Americans have taken our eye off the ball … unlike those in Denmark, for example, who have an entirely different focus on life, who are less driven, more contented, with time to remember what’s truly important, and what’s actually meaningful, fulfilling, and consistent with our purpose as human beings.
What indeed ARE we going to do to get Americans to break out of the collective hedonistic hypnosis that keeps us asleep to all but the most basic levels of reality? The odds seem to be drastically slanted against the success of such a project. We must remember that, nevertheless, miracles do happen … many times every day, in fact (pessimism, like consumerism, is another increasingly ubiquitous form of reality distortion afflicting American culture, these days).
At this point, I fear that real change may require a traumatic cultural shock, such is the magnitude of the problem; perhaps it will be an economic or environmental one, that finally succeeds (like the last Great Depression did) in getting us to recenter our priorities a bit. We may need to be forced into saving ourselves, so deep is the denial of the depth of our problem in this regard.
Thanks for reminding us of the need to put first things first.
(Links to articles: http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/140/happiness; http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/01/the-science-of-happiness.html)

Comments on: “We are Robbing Posterity to Live Today.”

By: Pascal Levensohn

By: Chris Borland