YARDSTICKS FOR HAPPINESS
Meyer, Ernest L.
Yardsticks For Happiness By ERNEST L MEYER IN AN ARTICLE in one of those tabloid how-to-im-prove-yourself magazines, I came upon this poser: "Are the intellectuals really intelligent?" The writer...
...The history of modern mechanized culture seems to be this: half of man's energy is used in creating gadgets and luxuries that contribute little to contentment, and the other half is wasted in inventing cures for the ailments that the habitual use of these luxuries bring into being...
...We could ticket, docket, describe the complex world around us, but we could not wring contentment out of that world for lack of real intelligence...
...For almost all men, whether scholar, scientist, or slave, are cursed with the common fate of inheriting the world's great welter of things, yet finding therein no more peace or joy than the primitives found in their jungles, plains, and coral islands...
...What is a caisson...
...It is wrought within us, and has no relation whatever to turret lathes, warranty deeds, and a rise in the stock market...
...The writer then seeks to prove that the "intellectuals" are really dumb oysters by stating that they wouldn't rate a grade of 40 per cent in answering a questionnaire on business, finance, and mechanics...
...Especially in times of depressions and wars, when many sit crushed and empty, lacking the hothouse delights of the lush years...
...Not in the least...
...For real intelligence is more than "the power to know or understand...
...Turret lathes...
...Diesels and dynamos may be related to comfort, but not to contentment...
...How is a stereotyping done...
...And he asks: '"Have the intellectuals as a group ever been right about anything...
...And for that real intelligence, no man, not even the editor of a how-to-improve-yourself magazine, can devise a questionnaire...
...Our modern dish is too highly spiced, but so used are we to the excitation that our palates balk at plain fare...
...It is no more a guarantee of happiness to know the innards of a gasoline engine than it is to know the rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet or the educational theories of Rousseau...
...Nor could he find the true answers, pat and neat, to set down in the end of the book...
...Sadly one is forced to the admission that both plumber and pedant are alike in their capacity to blunder blindly along the same highway...
...In the attainment of happiness our "intelligence" as defined by the author of the tabloid questionnaire failed us...
...The author of the questionnaire defines intelligence as "the capacity to know or understand...
...What is the difference between a gasoline and a Diesel motor...
...What is the difference between Bessemer and open-hearth steel...
...To prove it, he submits a sample questionnaire which includes these queries: What is a compensating engine...
...Joy Isn't Manufactured It is curious that those who ponder the problem of contentment with much labored reasoning arrive at the same goal that is reached by the higher type of savage without "any conscious reasoning at all...
...Sometimes far less...
...Real intelligence is the art of adjusting oneself to one's environment so as to extract from it a maximum of well-being and a minimum of pain...
...Has his mastery of the names and uses of the machines around him given h*m an insight into the real impact of these machines upon his happiness and destiny...
...Always we believed that joy might be manufactured for us, like breakfast food and vitamin pills, and that we had but to open our mouths to inherit paradise...
...Happiness, we thought, is something handed to us...
...All the rest is excess baggage...
...What Good Will It Do...
...It is the rare gift of doing something with that knowledge to make the life of the individual and of the race more fruitful and more happy...
...That is, given health, food, family, reasonable security, and the pastimes of ritual and simple art, the human animal can gambol through life quite pleasantly...
...What are reamers...
...One might ask with equal impertinence: "Have the plumbers, the manufacturers of Diesel engines, and the title abstractors ever been right about anything...
...Even in the seasons of peace and plenty, when all our glorious machines were going full blast, we had along with prosperity our full quota of insanity and suicide, of drunkenness and divorce, of phobias and follies, and of mad music and mad games into which to hurl ourselves to forget the world of Diesels and dyamos which somehow brought us plenty, but no peace...
...How are half-tones made...
...What in thunder good will it do a man who knows all about Bessemer steel, caissons, and warranty deeds if these alleged blessings turn into bludgeons, enslave him to a smelly factory or bookkeeper's bench, and in the end blow up in cycles of hunger known as depressions and periods of universal slaughter known as war...
...A coffer-dam...
...Has the author of the article ever been right about anything, even though he can leap to his feet and tell you instantly the difference between a dynamo and a dispossess notice...
...It is not...
...What is an abstract of title...
...What are options, binders, amortization, warranty deeds...
...I know a backwoods trapper in Canada who (for the record is written in his face) has drawn more joy from life than many a business baron playing golf in Florida to reduce his paunch—even though the latter can define brilliantly options, rebates, and cartels...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 52
