Second, a meaningful life is more satisfying than a merely happy life. Happiness is about enjoying the present; meaning is about dedicating oneself to the future. Happiness is about receiving; meaningfulness is about giving. Happiness is about upbeat moods and nice experiences. People leading meaningful lives experience a deeper sense of satisfaction.
.. Meaningfulness tries to replace structures, standards and disciplines with self-regarding emotion.
.. There is no hierarchy of values that would help us select, from among all the things we might do, that activity which is highest and best to do.
.. Meaningfulness emerges when the fundamental question is, do we feel good?
Kant: The Superior Power of Parents
The will of children must not be broken, but merely bent in such a way that it may yield to natural obstacles. At the beginning, it is true, the child must obey blindly. It is unnatural that a child should command by his crying, and that the strong should obey the weak. Children should never, even in their earliest childhood, be humored because they cry, nor allowed to extort anything by crying. Parents often make a mistake in this, and then, wishing to undo the result of their overindulgence, they deny their children in later life whatever they ask for. It is, however, very wrong to refuse them without cause what they may naturally expect from the kindness of their parents merely for the sake of opposing them. They, being the weaker, should be made to feel the superior power of their parents.
Keynes: The Powerful Influence of Economists and Political Philosophers
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
Ch. 24 “Concluding Notes” p. 383-384
Ayn Rand Reviews Children’s Movies
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”
An industrious young woman neglects to charge for her housekeeping services and is rightly exploited for her naïveté. She dies without ever having sought her own happiness as the highest moral aim. I did not finish watching this movie, finding it impossible to sympathize with the main character. —No stars.