part two: why is morality a part of true happiness?
The fast-paced life and competition
Working in a fast-paced environment has often drained the hell out of people. Comparing your life to others is a never-ending story that leads you to feel unfulfilled with everything you’re doing. Social media has always been viewed as the idea of ideals that is used as the benchmark for our own situation.
One word that could describe working in a fast-paced city like Jakarta is competition. Of course, it is always fun to be competitive, although the enjoyment level is arguably much higher for those who are winning. However, we also heard the saying that too much of a good thing isn’t always good. We also know that moderation and balance happen to be important for success and happiness in life. But the ugly begins when competition is taken to an unhealthy level, where those would do any shortcuts to achieve anything they would measure as a success parameter.
Avoiding inferiority
One common example that we can take on shortcuts that have become a phenomenon in many nations is: the act of corruption. Corruption serves as a means to obtain happiness and avoiding inferiority through power. There is this study I read about corrupted nations, unhappy people, and their relationship with well-being. It shows that there is a very strong inversely proportional relationship between low levels of corruption and happiness in a nation’s population.
The power obtained from corrupted acts places one above another creating an illusion of happiness through wealth and control. But happiness itself is a state. Meaning, it is something that is not a long-lasting feature or a personality trait, but it is a changeable state. Happiness is something fundamental and comes from something that is perceived by one’s contentment and satisfaction with their current situation.
Can a person who acts immorally truly be happy? Or, is immorality incompatible with happiness?
In part one, I have addressed the distinction between quantitative (temporal) and qualitative (eternal) happiness. Temporal happiness (i.e., wealth, fame, reputation) depends on the opinion of others, it is fragile and they provoke fears that the responses of others throughout oneself could vanish when one’s status is no longer relevant to what it initially was.
I have learned that the full form of happiness is captured by the Greek term: eudaimonia, which means the condition of human flourishing or of living well. Therefore, when you define true happiness as eudaimonia, the form of happiness is not achieved by just having a lot of fun or merely a pleasurable experience.
This also means that people who act immorally are precluded from enjoying the integration of their lives with the goods that are defined by eudaimonia, such as:
- Having integrity,
- Relationships/friendships based on truth and trust
- Knowing that your happiness and success is a result of making moral choices, not the result of doing shortcuts/immoral actions.
When one consistently does things that are the opposite of the above definition, it will eventually become part of their moral character. Of course, we all make moral mistakes that don’t become part of our moral character. After all, we aren’t morally perfect. But when such behavior is done continuously and becomes a habit, one’s moral compass could become a blur with time.
Anchoring everything to your moral compass
Thus, how can we avoid being in a situation where immorality could further become our moral character?
Well, it is important to prevent ourselves from falling in the first place. Regardless of the competition we are facing in life —and this fast-paced life and the competitions oftentimes will challenge our values— it is best to always anchor our actions to our very own moral compass in order to have a clear sense and a guide on how to ground our identities and actions, and the rest will follow.
At the end of the day, the way people can live prosperously and feel self-fulfillment is not always answered by the religion one believes in. Regardless of one’s religion or lack of religion, staying true to our own moral compass is the ultimate justification of how society can live in the pursuit of happiness.
So, how do you define your own moral character?
