Happiness does have its degree. At least that is what I got from the reading “The Degree of Happiness” by Betrand Russell. I was blur myself when I first read the article. It is because, in all conscience I’ve never assume such things. For me back then, happiness is fair among everyone. Happiness is for everyone, no matter how young they are, how old they are, how poor they are, and how rich they are. But this article has open my mentality a bit more by parting the degree of “happiness”.
The article tells that it has two sorts of happiness. The first one is an example of the happiness of a farmer. In other view, the story seemingly represents the happiness that can be reached by the normal-living-level of people, a farmer. It tells about how a farmer could reach his happiness. For this kind of group of people, even the things that they do is just a little, like farming for example, but it can totally made their day and cheer them up. Why? It is because the happiness and pleasure that they might get is from their own hardships. For instance, they harvest, and the outcome they got is from their own work, so that’s why they appreciate it to the max and get happily easily with it.
But in contradict, let’s see the happiness that the higher level of people might get. Like in the article, they listed artists and literary men as their examples. Yes, it’s possible for them to reach their happiness, but in a different way. They are actually depending on other people’s reaction and acceptance towards their work of arts. Because if the people out there like their work, of course they’ll get happy, but what about if the results turn out to be the opposite? It could knock them down to the ground until reaching a state of having a mental illness. Basically, the article did open my eyes about how happiness being described from different point of views.
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