A: My Name is Antonia and this is Bogdan. The play you are about to see is an adaptation of Aristophanes' "The Birds." The original play is about two Athenians, Pisthetairos and Euelpides, who leave Athens in search of a Utopia. They are dissatisfied and fed-up with the constant law suits, money troubles, and pestering by their neighbors.

B: So throughout the course of rewriting the play, which You Will See in a few minutes, we studied its relevant ideas about happiness. In doing so we also came closer to understanding what we believe happiness to be. So, without further adieu...

A: Wait... you know what man?

B: Um...what?

A: I just realized, I am so happy right now. This, this point right now, is happiness.

B: Well, yeah I feel happy, too, in this moment, but real happiness is a process, a process that is filled with obstacles and goals. Anyway, the play is supposed to start in 10 minutes we have to get ready!

A: Hold on hold on! What do you mean obstacles? How can happiness be obstacles? I thought happiness was just about pleasure and comfort...

B: For true happiness, you must face challenges and achieve goals.

A: But what if you fail?

B: Failure is part of the process of happiness, and there are many ways, including failure of course, to overcome adversities. Part of this ongoing process is the wisdom, experience, and knowledge we gain from these challenges. Wisdom and experience aid a person in pursuing further happiness.

A: Yeah, that actually makes sense. It is what separates us from animals. Consider your everyday guy, let's call him Joe, going along in his daily life. No obstacles, no challenges = Joe experiences sheer, untainted contentment. This, I would guess, is what non-human animals experience; it is, for humans, a hedonistic way of living. But what allows for humans to experience happiness as a separate state from contentment is the multitude of challenges and obstacles that we face, both large and small, in our daily lives.

B: So we should just make a ton of obstacles for ourselves to guarantee happiness?

A: It’s like Carl Jung and many others have said: that happiness will always exist balanced with challenges and more difficult experiences. You need balance. The working through of various obstacles that the universe and we ourselves provide will ultimately lead to the greatest happiness.

B: You’re right. We should make a distinction between external and internal challenges. The world puts us in certain circumstances that we have no control over. But don't we also create challenges for ourselves when we want to get something? And what about all the inhibitions we impose on ourselves, don't those also take away from our happiness?

A: That's true. Remember Pisthetairos and Euelpides are unhappy in Athens -- which impedes their happiness already -- so they create the challenge of leaving and finding a new environment to deal with that initial obstacle of dissatisfaction with Athens. They add challenges on top of challenges, hoping that by accomplishing one they will rid themselves of the other. It's like killing two birds with one stone. (haha)

B: Right. I'm not sure if I agree with how they just simply ran away from their problems. Maybe their true happiness lies within themselves. If the two heroes had tried to change their circumstances, had examined themselves for flaws, or had taken an active role to adapt to their surroundings instead, I think they may have gotten closer to true happiness.

A: By running away, they left their problems behind, but ended up creating a dystopia far from the community they had envisioned. But I also think that by leaving, they did something active to overcome the problem.

B: Well, there are different ways to face challenges and it's good that they made an active decision. Whichever path you choose, overcoming the obstacle is a process that leads to happiness. But some paths may definitely lead to More happiness than others. The most effective way, in this case, would have been to deal with the dissatisfaction from within.

A: I'm interested in what you mean by "more happiness." I mean, I'm sure that for each person there are better and worse decisions to be made at every point along his life. But how will you ever know? When I face obstacles, my first reaction is usually to shut down. I feel so overwhelmed it's hard for me to even start to consider how to overcome the challenge. When I was eleven my parents decided to move our family to London. Part of me was excited, but part felt like I was leaving half of myself behind. I struggled with loneliness and homesickness, making friends and then new friends, creating a new identity and more. The first year in London was extremely difficult, in large part because of some bad decisions I made. By the second year, however, I felt comfortable and in control, with an increased appreciation for all things new and different. Did I just get lucky that the challenge proved to work in my favor? I think that one big part of that experience was how it helped shape my identity. Not only do we choose different paths to deal with obstacles, but we must also find paths to go down based on our instincts and passions. I think you touched on something important before. There are many paths to happiness, both temporary and sustaining.

B: Yeah. I mean for me personally I love cars, and I know that cars will be a crucial source of my future happiness. Just fulfilling that passion creates more happiness in my life than anything else imaginable. My friends would know because they have to put up with me talking about cars for hours and hours everyday. But when I talk to other people, I find many of them don't have such a burning passion. People Like some things, such as acting or philosophy, but they don't gawk at actors the way I do with cars. For a while this felt really strange for me, someone not having a burning passion. But now I see that there are so many ways to happiness, Both small ways and big. I mean, some people may choose to accumulate wealth in order to live a comfortable life, thereby achieving happiness. Some may choose to give to others and in so doing gain good conscience, thereby also achieving happiness. Whatever the means for achieving happiness is, it must always be balanced with the other factors of life.

A: There are some constant things that will produce longer, more sustaining happiness, such as a person's career, home, friends, family and identity.

B: But is it necessary for everyone to have all of those things to be happy?

A: Well, without a career you will lack purpose and drive. You may also be bored, poor or homeless which will produce other problems. Home and shelter is pretty explanatory, as are food and clothing. I would agree with Aristotle that man is a political animal.

B: What?! Whoa, whoa... I don’t want to be a politician, man!

A: That is to say, he needs companionship. Without friends or family I do not believe that a person can be happy--or at least the happiest he could be. These are some of the most basic, natural instincts that have made people happy throughout time. Of course, they produce sadness and difficulty as well, but I think when you weigh a life without companionship against one with it, the latter will ultimately produce the most happiness. Companionship is rooted in the necessity of love, which I believe to be the most important characteristic of happiness. For me, it is extremely important that I find a partner and eventually start a family. For others, having a family is not desirable, for others not possible. Some fashion of love, however, is necessary for happiness.

B: I don’t agree. You can’t rest your happiness on just one thing. I guess I agree you need friends and family. But you also must have education and health. All these are parts of happiness. And when we talk about happiness we shouldn't draw it too black and white. It is a process connected to so many aspects of our lives. How we manage it may be different, but we must keep our lives balanced by constantly reexamining and improving ourselves.

A: Definitely. That ties into my last necessity: identity, which I also touched on before. For happiness, I believe self-reflection and improvement are constant challenges. Once you can understand and love yourself, you have the ability to focus energy on all the other aspects of happiness that we mentioned.

B: I wonder if it was because Pisthetairos and Euelpides didn’t examine their identities that they ended up creating a dystopia and could not achieve true happiness.

***Lights Flick On and Off***

A: O man, the play's about to start we gotta get ready!!! Quick lets go!'

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Posted at Jul 25/2007 11:20PM:''
Matt Simonton: Hey y'all, this looks great. I really like the dialogue form. It seems to flow pretty naturally.

Here are my only suggestions: At the beginning, when you say, Bogdan, that "we also figured out our ideas about happiness," I think you could be a little more modest here. Like, "We got a better idea about our personal conceptions of happiness." I'd guess that neither of you have actually figured out, once and for all, your idea of happiness. :-) (Yes, that's an emoticon. I'm a nerd.)

I agree with the suggestion to insert a comment about "I thought happiness was about comfort, etc." You might also mention hedonism either there or during the section about "Joe."

Just one logical thing, Bogdan, you raise the question "Is it necessary for everyone to have all those things to be happy" as if you're skeptical that all those things are necessary, but then later you say "I agree you need friends and family. But you must also have education and health." Here you're listing your own necessities for happiness, so you either didn't have that different a position from Antonia's earlier, or you have (very quickly) been persuaded by her that things like friends and family are necessary for happiness. It works as it is, but it's a wee bit clunky.

I like Bogdan's personal experience with cars. Antonia, are you taking out your London story?

Antonia, just to tie in some of the other things we talked about in Socrates workshops, consider your section about "companionship is rooted in the necessity of love, which I believe to be the most important characteristic of happiness." You're making a strong claim for "natural" necessities for human beings, which means you might be making...dum dum dum!... "a priori" claims about what's good for people. If you are doing this, then you're implicitly arguing against "a posteriori" claims like those of John Locke, who thought we were "tabula rasa" (blank slates) with no in-born qualities. This could be mentioned somewhere...

Overall, wunderbar!