So I wrote this and published this, and then, defying the traditional New Year’s resolution to be more organized, forgot to publish it. But now it’s relevant again, so with a little updating, here it is with best wishes for 2007.<\/p>\n
Darrin McMahon writes in Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\ntoday’s<\/del> the 12.29.2005 <\/ins>New York Times that you can’t just decide to be happy<\/a>. He notes that happiness as a commendable and morally acceptable end in itself is a concept invented only in the past few centuries and cites the 19th-century philosophers Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill on the subject — now there’s research<\/a> to back them up, but really, Mill’s common sense could be more common without the blessing of social science:<\/p>\n