Diary, Astute Observations

Happiness Through the Ages

14 January 2006

image What makes it so difficult to interpret how people in former times have thought about the human condition is that words change their meanings over time, sometimes morphing into the exact opposite of what they originally meant. As I just learned by reading in ‘The Economist’ a review of “Happiness: A History, ” the word “happiness” has changed its meaning considerably. I didn’t quite realize until today that if God wants speaks directly to people or at least their prophets, he or she has to master the idiom of a given age. To come across as really cool, God could walk up to a woman today and say, “Hey man, what’s up.” If God had done this two thousand years ago, a woman would likely have replied: “Almighty, I am sorry,  but you are mistaken. I am a woman and not a man!”

Happiness: A strangely newfangled idea
Jan 12th 2006
From The Economist print edition


IT WAS 1963 and the atmosphere at the State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, was tense. Workers fretted about an approaching merger with another company. Who would stay and who would get the heave-ho? So the management commissioned an advertising man by the name of Harvey R. Ball to come up with something cheerful to smooth wrinkled brows and make the whole merger process a little more bearable for everyone.

Ball’s brilliantly simple solution

Author

Peter

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