How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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The great majority of human beings to-day look at life
as if it were a business. Their basic philosophy is one of
aggressive competition and personal efficiency. Our sky¬
scrapers, our “ rush hours ”, our super-motor-cars and our
“ high-pressure ” salesmanship are all the laudable results
of personal competition. So also are slavery, war, class
conflicts, despotism, serfdom, and the exploitation of
smaller nations by their more powerful neighbours. The
belief that might is right is the direct result of a “ strictly
business ” attitude toward life. The aggressive egoism of
the “ might is right ” school leads to a variety of “ nervous
breakdowns ” which preclude happiness, and anyone
who has watched the struggle for personal prestige and
power in a family or in a business office knows how
disastrous the business attitude is in the private lives of
men and women. And anyone who has read the history of
the world must likewise be impressed with the failure of
the “ What do we get out of it ? ” school of national
politics.
We are too prone to overlook the terrific costs of the
wrecks of the competitive system to individual and to
State. The competitive system in life does not kill
outright, as in the animal world, where its success is
greater. Applied to human life it maims, it cripples, it
makes dependent. It breeds crime, perversion, and
insanity, the costs of which weigh heavily on victor and
victim alike. Any attitude toward life which has such an
impressive list of titanic failures to its credit in the history
of the world, is hardly likely to lead to individual
happiness when applied to the lives of individuals. If
we would be happy in being human, we must look at our
lives neither with the placid eyes of the human turnip
nor with the greedy eyes of the aggressive, self-seeking
business man.
The third attitude toward life is the approach of the
artist. Here the underlying philosophy is “ What can
I put into it ? and the basic relation of the individual to
his fellow-men, one of cooperation and common sense.
If we have recourse to history again as a test of the validity