happiness as a stable state has died with the Ancient Greeks (hmm i didn't mean they were more happy than modern humans but at least they could theorize happiness as a stable state more easily) and more marginally with the Romans. Why? =>happiness was always defined as another face of wisdom and wisdom was the understanding of the World as a global unit ("cosmos"). So it was more easy to give recipes for being happy (epicurian recipes, stoician recipes... for the best known). These recipes were never "be healthy" or "having a lot of friends"... the wise so the happy man was a lone one... and both epicurians and sttoicians (and others) teached to deprease wealth goods (and health is one of them in a way).
but this view was related to a world's understanding as a global unit. and this understanding we have no more. The 'moderns' (i mean since XVI° Century at least) understanding of the world is very fragmented, complex, and actually unreachable). Wisdom is no more the understanding of the world that will make a human happy as everybody ignore what wisdom is. So we have to define happiness as subjective, unstable, ephemeric, maybe as something like the sum of the moments where we're happy, anyway there is no more recipes. the only one who gave recipes for being happy are sects (in the pejorative meaning not in the original's) because for the sects the world is still simple... But is it possible to be happy in a sect? well that's another questions... the distance with the complex thing that is real world is probably not a good way to be happy.
Last edited by MASTER_GUROTH; 11/11/0409:25 PM.
MG!!! The most infamous member these forums have ever got!
