Tiger mother rebuttals, fun is good, yada yada

Not much else is new - "they don't have fun for themselves, oh noes!" - but I rather like how pretty sounding this is (via BigThink; this is the best part so feel free to ignore the rest):

Self-celebration is bad because it corrupts an important part of public life: It says people's shared sense of reality should be distorted in the name of good feeling. But self-acceptance is different. It says you exist apart from the evaluations and opinions of others. If you don't have this feeling then you're only as good as the next test.

It's true - if you measure happiness by public success, then you'd need continued public success to maintain that happiness. If you measure happiness by pleasure, then you'd need continued pleasure to maintain that happiness. If you measure happiness with a mixture of both ... you get the idea. Rocket science, it is not. Problem is, public success depends on "doing" rather than "being," and on other people accepting our goods as, well, good. It also comes to most people in smaller intermittent doses. It takes time and effort to get people to agree with us on our 'goods,' and we love for our happiness to be imminent and easy. So what a culture that emphasizes the individual's happiness advises its members to do to achieve and sustain this ideal? Self-pleasure and entertainment! To wit:

All misfortune, said Pascal, comes from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

That's the secret to keeping a democratic, "godless" society relatively riots-free. If you can't self pleasure, you'd be a lot less happy than you are now. We sell fun because it keeps the mass in check. At least, that was the plan. But fun without a social component stagnates the group's progress, which decreases collective public successes. And then the Amy Chius complain because there's less public success to measure happiness according to her. It's a rather knee-jerk reaction, but what else do you expect in the age of Snooki?

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