Letter
from Lhasa, number 372. The Pursuit of Unhappiness
by
Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
Watzlawick, P., The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious. The
Pursuit of Unhappiness, New York, NY, USA, 1983.
(Watzlawick 1983).
Paul Watzlawick
People are basically
unable to be happy. So their efforts are focused on building their unhappiness.
They need to be unhappy and to be surrounded from unhappy people. So they
pursue not only their own unhappiness but also the unhappiness of the people
they can in some way reach.
We may observe and imagine
what can and may be doing the people of government and in office! Bigger is government,
bigger is the pursuit of other people’s unhappiness. Also Watzlawick cannot
repress himself from noticing that the growing ‘welfare’ State simply increases
people problems and unhappiness.
The more one does not accept
the world how it is and has strong convictions how it should be, the more one
purses one’s own and other people’s unhappiness. That is undisputable although
many people have strong convictions about how the world would be. However, the
more people purse specific visions of perfect worlds, the more they try
creating unhappiness. Of course, this unhappiness’ creation is variously
justified.
Many people convince
themselves to be persecuted even only from destiny. I’d like to underline that
perhaps even more people refuse to admit to be persecuted even when that really
happens. One believes destiny be conspiring against oneself. One does not
believe there really be individuals and eventually government conspiring against
oneself. Basically, people refuse to see reality, what really happens under one’s
own nose.
Watzlawick underlines
and unmasks various and currently used techniques one employs for denying
reality, for complicating it, or using it for one’s own suffering and for
making suffering other people, for persecuting other people and for inducing
other people to assimilate themselves paranoid, self-persecutory and
persecutory visions of reality, conditioned reflexes, customs and patterns.
For Watzlawick this
infernal, or negative, cycle is breakable by loyalty, trust and tolerance.
Assuming that everything be good, now Watzlawick is using Dostoevsky, would be
possible to conclude that we are unhappy because we do not know we are happy. Those
understanding that are immediately happy.
These conclusions are
certainly simplistic although they may contain elements of truth. What is surely
essential is the suggestion of removing the unhappiness we self-create.
Watzlawick, P., The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious. The
Pursuit of Unhappiness, New York, NY, USA, 1983.
