If Everything Is So Amazing, Why’s Nobody Happy? Lessons from Plato and Louis CK

By Published on October 12, 2015

I often start the school year teaching Plato’s Republic to first-year students at the University of Virginia. We then go on to read Homer, the New Testament, and Confucius and Buddha and Shakespeare. But as we move through the class I always have the option and the pleasure of asking a very smart group of students a revealing question: “What would Plato say?”

I thought of this question not long ago when I encountered an inspired riff by the comic Louis C.K. on our current condition.

The riff got a lot of attention when it came out and continues to circulate vigorously on the internet. It goes under the title “Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy.”

We have everything, Louis says. We have magnificent cell phones that can dial anywhere in the world in a flash; we have computers that function in midair, when we’re in flight. And flying! Are the seats uncomfortable, are the planes often late? Well okay, but think about it for a moment. You’re doing what people have dreamed of for thousands of years. You’re up in the air. You’re borne aloft heading for the destination you choose, anywhere on the planet. You’re flying!

And yet no one is happy, says Louis C.K. Everything is amazing and nobody is happy. Why not? The answer that Louis suggests is that we’re unhappy because we’re a bunch of ungrateful little snips. If we looked around at what we had (at least those of us who are rich enough to own computers and fly on planes), if we counted our techno-blessings, we’d become more equable. We’d become grateful. We might even manage to be — whisper this; don’t say it too loud — something like happy.

Really? Are you sure?

Well, let us ask an authority, maybe the ultimate philosophical authority on the subject of happiness. So: What would Plato say?

It’s a little strange to put the greatest of philosophers in dialogue with Louis C.K., admire Louis as I do. But I take Louis to be honestly looking for an answer to his question. And it’s a question that has occurred to others, too. Many of us seem to have access to products and pleasures that would have thrilled an emperor a couple of hundred years ago. And yet things aren’t quite right for us. Matters are out of joint. If everything is so amazing, why aren’t we happy?

Read the article “If Everything Is So Amazing, Why’s Nobody Happy? Lessons from Plato and Louis CK” on vqronline.org.

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