A nice Atlantic piece in the June edition asks the perennial question (thanks for the link, Amanda) and reports the results of Harvard psychological researcher George Vaillant's lifetime case-study attempts to answer it. Vaillant is the grandfather of Positive Psychology:
"Driven by a savvy, brilliant psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania named Martin Seligman, the movement to create a scientific study of the good life has spread wildly through academia and popular culture (dozens of books, a cover story in Time, attention from Oprah, etc.)."
And it's spread to me. I'll be teaching "The Philosophy of Happiness" this Fall. If I find the secret I promise to share it. In the meantime, I'll continue to operate on the assumption that happiness - perhaps occasionally punctuated by transcendence - is best pursued in ordinary ways. Bertrand Russell is a very good source on this, as is Monty Python. They were talking about the meaning of life, but it's really the same question and I like the answer: try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.
It works for me.
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