Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent.
Each of us owes it to our spouse, our children, our friends, to be as happy as we can be. And if you don’t believe me, ask a child what it’s like to grow up with an unhappy parent, or ask parents what they suffer if they have an unhappy child...
If there is no God, we know there is no ultimate meaning or purpose to life: that all existence – including, of course, our own – is the result of random chance.
If you go through life cheating others, you will go through life expecting others to cheat you. Liars expect to be lied to; cheaters expect to be cheated; and so on.
To be an atheist is to believe the universe came about by itself, life came from non-life by itself, and consciousness came about by itself.
We measure morality by what happens. Not what is intended.
Unless there is a God, all morality is just opinion and belief. And virtually every atheist philosopher has acknowledged this.
Left-wing ideas are predicated on Marx’s materialist understanding. Whether or not an individual who espouses Left-wing ideas considers himself a Marxist – and few have since the fall of the Soviet Union – Left-wing ideas are predicated on Marx’s materialist understanding of life. In popular jargon, ‘materialism’ means an excessive love of material things. But philosophically, ‘materialism’ means that only matter is real; there is no reality beyond the material world.
Universities are the most anti-Israel mainstream institutions in America. And Westerns journalists nearly always use militant or gunman to describe Islamist terrorists. For Reuters, BBC, the Associated Press, CNN, and nearly all newspapers, it violates moral neutrality to label even a man attempting to smash a bomb-laden car into a nightclub a terrorist.
A father and a mother who are not honored are essentially adult peers of their children. They are not parents. No generation knows better than ours the terrible consequences of growing up without a father. Fatherless boys are far more likely to grow up and commit violent crime, mistreat women, and act out against society in every other way. Girls who do not have a father to honor – and, hopefully, to love as well – are more likely to seek the wrong men and to be promiscuous at an early age.
According to just about every poll on happiness, people on the Left are generally less happy than conservatives.
Most people know there is no country in the world more accepting of strangers than is America. After three generations, people who have emigrated to Germany or France or Sweden do not feel – and are not regarded as – fully German, French, or Swedish. Yet anyone of any background from any country is regarded as fully American the moment he or she becomes one. The country that the Left routinely calls ‘xenophobic’ and ‘racist’ is, in fact, the least racist and xenophobic in the world.
The left regards murderers, rapists, thieves and other violent criminals more as victims than as contemptible. Violent criminals do what they do because of poverty, racism and inequality, progressives argue.
A lack of empathy is a defining characteristic of the sociopath.
Nevertheless, whatever road you choose, I would be surprised if Happiness Is a Serious Problem did not help you on that road.
Raise children who are grateful in general, and grateful to be an American in particular, or grateful to be the citizen of any decent country, who don’t complain much, who learn to handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.
None of the Ten Commandments concern what humans must do “for” God;.
All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.
The only happy people I know are people I don’t know well.
Everything worthwhile in life is attained through hard work. Happiness is not an exception.
Most people, like the Israelites, complain far more often than they express gratitude. People frequently register a complaint with a manufacturer or service provider, but they rarely write a note of thanks for a job well done. We would all do well to consider writing a thank you note each time we write a letter of complaint. Similarly, and more importantly, too many people criticize their spouses more often than they compliment them. That is the road to an unhappy marriage.