14.5.09

happiness is love

some time during my mid twenties I realized that the quality of my life was based on the personal relationships I had with my family and friends. it was evident then as it is now that as a social being, my ability to give and receive respect and love and to share ideas was what gave me a sense of fulfillment.

these guys at Harvard took 72 years to figure this out but I guess any time is a good time. this is a great video if you have six minutes.

2 comments:

David J. Hirsh said...

Think about it. You could do years of researched study, publish, get famous, and get granted for many more years of researched study. Or you could just listen to about ten minutes of what the Dalai Lama has to say about human emotional interaction. Frankly I choose the latter (ten minutes and then some), but I don't have a huge social studies department to fund.

There's an anecdote that back in the 1960's, both the USSR's space agency and NASA had to develop a writing implement that could write on paper in zero gravity for their respective space programs. NASA spent over a million dollars creating the gas pressurized ink pen that was a fabulous success. The USSR used a pencil.

Sometimes we really tend to overlook and overthink the obvious in our search for understanding.

ras said...

I think in boils down to our culture's blind faith in the scientific method coupled with our need for money. those two funds lots of studies which don't move humanity along in any way -in the contrary we can almost blame the scientific method for the last 50 years of degradation of our ecosystem. but hey it's all just navel gazing I guess. we are here now.