Letter #260: Common Happiness

The Path of Least "Resistance."

Spengler.

Here’s something interesting. I posted Monday on what I see as widespread instances of mental illness, certainly in the United States but really, it seems, throughout the West. I politicized the observation because it’s the left that has such a stranglehold on the means of information, education and entertainment and thus has greater power to spread the loony fantasies in which so many Westerners seem to be living. Plus, as I mentioned, marriage and faith and patriotism, more common on the right, are all conducive to mental health and happiness. I ended by asking if anyone had suggestions on how to stem the tide of crazy.

What immediately caught my attention in the comments was that the responses from several commenters — ladies — advised not programs or widespread action but individual practices. “Eat together around a table with beautiful music playing at least once a day,” said Michelle. “Go outside, listen to the birds and the wind rustle the leaves on the trees,” said Melanie. “Move to a Midwest city,” said Mary Lou. All of which I took as evidence that women whose names begin with M tend to be very wise.

But this is a phenomenon I’ve noticed before: the best suggested responses to widespread cultural problems seem always to be small-scale individual behaviors. I don’t mean to turn everything into a plug for my book (although when you really think about it, isn’t everything already kind of a plug for my book?), but I took the same approach in Kingdom of Cain, confronting cultural evil with individual praxis: perform holy rituals, go to therapy, engage with art.

Even the aforementioned behaviors that tend toward happiness — marriage, faith, patriotism — are generally expressed on a small scale — home-building, church-going, flag-waving and so on — whereas craziness seems to be drawn to group aims and actions — protests, mass communication of grandiose ideas, passing laws that affect thousands.

I’ve sometimes thought the trick to being free is to be individualistic without being an individualist. Go your own way but with others. It’s not that all happy families are alike, as Tolstoy said, it’s that all happy families do the same things: eat together, pray and play together. Likewise, you can forge a unique, personal relationship with God, but also go to church with others who are doing the same. You can build your own political philosophy, but build it within the customs and practices of your nation. And so on.

I think it was Gustave Flaubert — author of Madame Bovary — whose letters express the idea that a conformist, bourgeois life creates the stability necessary to do original, even radical work. Kierkegaard, Kant and Kafka provided examples, midwifing profound and pioneering ideas while living in quiet, regimented routines.

It occurred to me too late in life that the beaten path is beaten for a reason. Some things work and some things don’t. Yet on that path, you can travel almost anywhere, and do it with a sound mind.

Love, Dad