A while back, I was reading a book by Hannah Arendt for a course that I’m doing and she had a comment on happiness that really wormed its way into my brain. It’s in a section she is writing on labour, a realm of human action that she describes as being distinct from work and related to the cyclical nature of our survival. She writes,

“There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, and whatever throws this cycle out of balance — poverty and misery where exhaustion is followed by wretchedness instead of regeneration, or great riches and an entirely effortless life where boredom takes the place of exhaustion and where the mills of necessity, of consumption and digestion, grind an impotent human body mercilessly and barrenly to death — ruins the elemental happiness that comes from being alive.”

Read it a few times.

Arendt describes real, lasting happiness as being rooted in this cyclical aspect of labour; a pattern she refers to as painful exhaustion and then pleasurable regeneration. At first read, I had a hard time with that. How does exhaustion have anything to do with happiness? The pleasurable part of it made sense to me, but not pain. However, the more I (re)read and reflected, I think I started to get it. She’s talking about a fundamental balance in human behaviour. Look at how she describes the things that throw that cycle off: poverty and misery on one side and great riches and effortlessness on the other. Arendt suggests we need the balance of both to feel truly alive.

I had a prof who used to say ‘you can’t understand what it means to feast unless you understand what it means to fast.’

What’s fascinating to me is the relationship between happiness and sustainability. As capitalism has promised us a better life through the endless pursuit of more, our planet has struggled to keep up with our consumption rates. What’s even worse is that current studies suggest that beyond the meeting of essential needs there is no actual correlation between increased income and a country’s wellbeing rising together. The point is, current research is confirming what the wisest amongst us have been saying throughout human history: that the satisfaction of our desires is not the way to lasting happiness.

The world itself is dependant on that same cycle of exhaustion and regeneration. Resources are not infinite and need time to replenish. Capitalism’s insistence that there is always more to be taken has stripped the earth of what it has left to give, breaking the balance of the cycle, and threatening our very survival.

Are we happy yet?

There is a way forward for us. Arendt’s definition of happiness echoes the very patterns needed for a sustainable future. It’s a cycle that invites us to resist the myth of endless growth and embrace the wisdom of limitations and moderation, patterns that are found all over the natural world. It’s a path connected to the core experience of simply being alive on this planet: painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration.

I believe in the possibility of change rippling out as people show others a different way. As I once heard in a podcast, “everything large is made up of small parts.” We can affect the big picture by creating new patterns in the smaller areas within our reach. Maybe by changing the way we think about and pursue happiness in our own lives, our families, our friend groups and neighbours, our workplaces, schools, and communities, we might begin to challenge the hold that capitalism has on our culture.

Note, this is a piece I wrote for an environmental activism newsletter a couple years ago that I thought was a fitting reflection on Earth Day today.

Yesterday I wrote that the church is a political structure. Today I'd like to dwell on that idea a bit more in conversation with another writer, William Stringfellow, a lawyer and theologian working in America in the mid 20th C.

In an essay titled, The Orthodoxy of Radical Involvement, he writes,

"There is no such thing as neutrality about any public issue... Every citizen and every institution is involved in one way or another, either by intention or default. Those who suppose they can withdraw only deceive themselves, because deliberate abstinence or asserted neutrality are themselves forms of involvement in politics."

The Church, as a part of society, has a responsibility to confront the social issues of its day. Attempts to stay out of them are still, as Stringfellow notes, a form of involvement. This why there is no such thing as being apolitical.

In another essay, Poverty, Property, and People, he writes,

“The beginning of conscience, in a Christian sense, is realizing that every action or omission, even those which seem routine and trivial, is consequentially related to the lives of all other human beings on the face of the earth.”

Politics gets at this interconnection of all things and what it means to try and form a shared life together. As an institution, the church is gathering people and forming them with values and purpose that will play a role in forging their relationship to the world around them. These things have political consequences—whether we recognize it or not.

A Good Friday reflection.

It's been a while since I've attended a church service. Usually this isn't something that I think about but today it weighs a bit more heavily. My reasons for distancing myself from the structural church are complicated. They're also not special. I respect those who stay in it as much as I understand those who leave and I don't think either choice makes someone better or worse. My feelings about it are my own and I also don't claim any sort of finality to them.

What I can say is that my convictions and my faith have tended to lead me on the path of societal progressive change. I try to follow that, wherever it leads—and for the moment that has led me outside the church(†). Christianity has always rung most true for me as a socio-economic and political project working in solidarity with the poor and oppressed. And I guess this is the thing for me. The church is a political structure and it's naive to suggest it isn't. Attempts to try and frame it as a-political or somehow existing outside of that are lazy at best and disingenuous at worst, perpetuating the suffering we should be working against. What I see in the church (at least in much of the current North American expression of it) has been a commitment to a politic I simply do not find resonance with.

So today, as the Church gathers to remember and reflect upon the death of Jesus, I call to mind the writing of Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lanken priest and theologian who struggled deeply with the role of the church in relation to the suffering of people.

"The Eucharist is spiritual food insofar as it leads to greater love, self-unity, and communion among persons and groups. Today this requires love among persons and effective action for justice. The Eucharist must also lead us to a response to the suffering of the masses, often caused by people who take a prominent part in the Eucharist. Unless there is this twofold dimension of personal love and societal action, the Eucharist can be a sacrilege."

(from the Eucharist and Human Liberation)

† I am talking about being outside the structural or institutional church as opposed to the traditions and community.

Postman makes an interesting observation around the way political consciousness changed with the tv.

“In the television age, political judgement is transformed from an intellectual assessment of propositions to an intuitive and emotional response to the totality of an image. In the television age, people do not so much as agree or disagree with politicians as like or dislike them.”

He then makes this suggestion that the democratic system was built around the idea that political judgement was something that was learned over time. This is why voting was restricted to a certain age. Political engagement also existed in the world of print—in newspapers, pamphlets, and books. Then tv came and flattened it and then everyone had access to the same political process and in doing so our judgement of political figures was reduced to image.

It's a bit of a cynical take, and perhaps a bit idealistic in its conception of the past, but I think it fits. I remember talking to a former MPP turned campaign manager on the political process and they more or less confirmed that voting comes down how likeable people feel the candidates are. And with tv, the likeability of politicians became the main point.

Of course, I'm always fascinated to consider how this trajectory has continued into the digital age.

In The Disappearance of Childhood, Postman discusses the emergence of childhood as a legally protected class in England in the late 18th C and into the 19th. He notes that up until 1780, children could still be prosecuted for over 200 crimes where the punishment was a public hanging, including stealing a coat and participating in a riot. Laws were soon passed that prohibited such extreme offences against children as well as protecting them from crimes committed against them. For example, in 1814 a law was passed that made it a criminal offence to steal a child. For the first time.

The idea here is that up until this point, there was no government protection on kids. They were left to the responsibility of whatever adult they were in the care of. As capitalism and industrialization emerged, kids being raised in lower classes were basically just cheap labour. However, as the government began to step in, the rights of children began to matter. Postman writes,

"In the 18th C, the idea that the state had the right to act as a protector of children was both novel and radical. Nonetheless, gradually the total authority of parents was humanely modified so that all social classes were forced into partnership with government in taking responsibility for child nurturing."

Here's what I find interesting. Today there is a growing sentiment, particularly among more conservative families, that the government should be hands off when it comes to the raising of kids. And this is why a broader view of history matters. When kids were left to the sole protection of parents and caregivers, they were frequently exploited, abused, and generally seen as property for them to do with as they pleased.

It's just important to remember that the things we often think of as constant, the rights of children for example, are not as immutable as might think.