David Swenson's Theory Of Happiness

Life, according to David Swenson, is not life unless it is happy. In order to achieve happiness, one’s life must be submerged with a sense of meaning, reason, and worth, thus happiness must be justified. To obtain a meaning to life, one must contribute to life to progress their talents which will, in turn, help themselves and others. But more importantly, Swenson speculates that the purpose of one’s life is to develop an instinctive view of life to achieve happiness. Swenson explains the difficulties with the idea of happiness which he believes are derived from the fixation on the material and the external world. This leads to his notion of finding happiness through satisfying one’s moral consciousness, with actions and devotion to life. With …show more content…
This view of life must be able to maintain unity and identification with itself and the complexities life throws at it. It is what gives one direction and a goal in life and this view becomes interlaced with the individual. Swenson states that a view of life is seen as the answer one gives to the questions life asks, therefore as one matures, the preparation for the external world is still essential. Every human being desires happiness; it is universal, instinctive and imperative. One who is unhappy has failed to achieve their goal in life and has not realized their true humanity. Therefore, happiness must be justified with meaning, reason, and worth, rather than satisfied with blind feeling. The majority of humans, regardless of what time period they may have lived, define happiness with similar constituents such as good health, many influential friends, wealth and fortune, good food and drink and being surrounded by beautiful things and a good environment. Despite the advancements of science and technology over the past hundreds of years with the invention of the printing press and social media, the notion of happiness has not changed very …show more content…
Though taking the theistic approach, is not universal; some may say that helping others is what makes a life meaningful, is this not a means of happiness? There is no difference between desiring a spiritual value or materialistic goods, as both are external to the one desiring them. Swenson argues against choosing material goods, as these are finite and only a few can achieve. He suggests seeking fulfillment of the moral consciousness, therefore, every human can achieve happiness. Though the desire of happiness is infinite and some non-spiritual values are also infinite, such as the satisfaction one experiences when helping others or loving a significant other, or enjoying the beauty of nature. Swenson is limited to finding the meaning in spiritual values or no meaning at all. Though the external, materialistic world, on an everyday basis plays an important role in search of one’s true happiness, which is obtainable by all humans along with one’s spiritual values and the decisions which follow those