Melancholy in Maine

I recently was up at Bates College in Maine to lecture on Against Happiness. While there, I was interviewed for a news show airing on an NBC affiliate station. The show is called "207." I enjoyed a brief but rewarding conversation on the beautiful Bates campus. Here's a link to the interview: http://www.wcsh6.com/life/programming/local/207/story.aspx?storyid=105205.

Too Much Niceness

Here's an interesting article from the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It's from the Style section, and it explores a symptom of the American addiction to happiness: an overemphasis on bland agreeableness, on rote pleasantry, on, in a word, niceness. You'll find some quotations from me in the article; you might especially like the final paragraph of the piece, mainly if you're dead weary of Tom Hanks. Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/fashion/24nice.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=eric%20wilson%20nice&st=cse.

The Most Dangerous Hobby in the World

Of course brooding over the complexities of our needs and wants is important work, but we must also now and again escape into realms of pure desire, those regions of the heart and mind that are simply beautiful for the sake of being beautiful--not useful really at all, at least in a pragmatic way. Here's my homage to such reverie, as it exists in the world of cinema-love. It's an article I recently published in The Virginia Quarterly Review: http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2009/spring/wilson-dangerous-hobby/. If you find this piece interesting, you'll also want to check out a brilliant blog on classic cinema and the wonderful ways those old films were exhibited:
http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/ The writing in this blog, all done by John McElwee, is especially strong--insightful, lucid, eloquent, at times simply exquisite.

The "Gift" of Financial Insecurity

Here's an article I recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. I think it sums up nicely many of the ideas I've been exploring in this blog. I hope you find it interesting: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i32/32b01201.htm

The Death of the American Dream

Most Americans from the outset have imagined their country as a place where dreams come true, where one can realize almost any possibility one wishes.

This comes across clearly in early representations of America. In the 17th-century, Puritans from England came to this country in hopes of establishing a religious utopia, a place where they could establish heavenly bliss here on earth. In the eighteenth-century, American capitalists translated religious dreams to economic ones, claiming that America is the sphere where one can, through efficient labor, realize happiness through wealth. Many Americas in the 19th century believed in Manifest Destiny, the idea that this nation is blessed by God and thus should spread its democratic ideologies to the ends of the earth--removing all "obstacles" (such as entire Native American tribes) along the way.

Such visions suggest that Americans should be the happiest people in the world. Many have translated this idea into a prescription: Americans, because of their fortunate status, have a responsibility to be happy.

Now, of course, the economic crisis is shattering these dreams. While this is sure to bring sorrow, it is also, at least on some level, a positive development. Why? The American Dream, despite its seductions, has for hundreds of years blinded Americans to stark realities--not only to the suffering it has inflicted on those not part of the dream but also to the intrinsic tragedies in a world that falls far short of utopia.

The recession might disillusion us in a helpful way--wake us up to vital experiences we have heretofore ignored or repressed. Maybe in place of the old American Dream, always vaguely imperialistic in its reductions of capacious facts to narrow fantasies, there can arise a new one--a robust vision more sensitive to nuance and complexity, to heterogeneity and conflict, to the brisk and exhilarating interplay between joy and sorrow. Such a dream--it need not be American--might pull us from our self-serving reveries and place us firmly on the shared land.

For a thoughtful meditation on the American Dream and its possible demise, see this recent article in Vanity Fair:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904

The Edge

There's an interesting piece in today's New York Times, an op-ed by Judith Warner. The article describes the potential blandness of mindfulness therapy and wonders if it's precisely our dark humor and sense of the absurd that make us human. Here's a link:

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/the-worst-buddhist-in-the-world/

I explore a similar possibility in Against Happiness: an urge for total contentment can result in an inhuman aloofness while an embrace of our emotional turbulence, frequently nostalgic or anxious, sometimes even angry or bitter, is essential to a fully lived, fully engaged life.

What Is Enough?

I've been thinking a lot about Thoreau lately. His book Walden is, among other things, a profound meditation on that ever-shifting and terribly vague line between wants and needs. The distinction is of course far from simple; in fact, it's probably impossible to establish it once and for all. Obviously, we need food and shelter to survive, as Thoreau makes clear. But is that all we need to live a fulfilling life? One might argue, for instance, that friendship or artistic expression is as much a need as a want--a human need, perhaps, an abiding requirement that separates us from animals.

Wherever we draw the line between needs and wants, we are more likely to brood over this all-important division in times of loss, when we feel bereft on material or psychological levels. Obviously, we never want to lose our beloved objects or our feelings of well-being. But it is perhaps precisely an experience of loss that could grant us a surprising gain: an answer to the question, at least for the moment, of what is enough.

Such is yet another way that sorrow--maybe in the form of nostalgia or regret--can, if seen in a certain light, instruct and inspire.

Anyway, here's an interesting take on bankruptcy and wisdom from Stanley Fish: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/faith-and-deficits/?hp