Happiness Revisited (egoism and the happiness of others)

Growing up is a form of degradation. Innocence is the purest concept I know, in all my childish experience, and it’s also the first thing you lose when ageing, until you reach a stage of pure consciousness, total awareness of everything around; some psychologist of yore called this building a superego, das überich (or rather this is how I prefer using his concept). Therefore, when we grow up, we face the following duality: we either desperately attempt to hold on to our innocence, ignorant and in denial of the perception our senses give us, and more importantly, nostalgic of what we used to be. Although this might work for some, I believe the reflective human being, when opting for this, will necessarily feel discontent, on the one hand trapping himself in his childhood and on the other hand not wanting to give up the pleasures of being an adult, combined with a lack of taking responsibility for one’s actions. This is one of the hallmarks of western civilization, interestingly enough to be found throughout all education classes, from alcoholic university students to hustling youngsters in the slums. The other option is accepting the loss of innocence. Within this domain there are again multiple possibilities. The road to happiness is roughly divided by the decision to care or not to care about this loss of innocence. Those who don’t care have naturally, as they don’t care, chosen to live a life in which respect for others has reached a low; their non-innocence allows them to. They have a weak superego. The ultimate point is that they care about no-one other than themselves. How they have come to be like this is an altogether different albeit interesting question, which is of no particular relevance at the moment. The other option of adulthood, intrinsically more difficult to achieve than the one just described, is the only form which allows others to be happy not only regardless of but even because of another’s happiness. The strength of one’s superego plays a major role in this. It enables one to keep one’s pleasures of adulthood, whatever these may be, within certain boundaries, allowing those around him space to express themselves to a similar degree. It seeks a form of innocence incomparable to childish innocence but nonetheless valuable, I could argue even more valuable. Not only does one not harm others purposely but with the reflective capabilities one gains with adulthood one can better judge what will please another than with the childish form of innocence. It must be evident that it is this last category we must explore in order to be able to consider its usefulness as a theoretical approach. A debate on the realistic or idealistic mindset and which is the better (read: idealism is better than realism), is also very much appropriate, as the existence of the kind of innocence as described for the last category is very much dependent on an idealistic mindset, as is all improvement in life.