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Cinthya Yanez

Pro. Shannon

Philosophy 1010

13 March 2017

Oddball Happiness

I had never been as happy as that Christmas day when I was five years old. That

Christmas I got the one present I had asked Santa for; a tiny toy replica of 102 Dalmatians

Oddball. I had loved and treasured that toy as I would do with any other living dog. And then my

younger brother decided that my little Oddball needed to swim down the toilet.

In a matter of days, I had felt happiness, sadness, uselessness, anger and resentment. It

has been fifteen years since that tragic accident happened and I am still able to recall the way I

felt when I saw my poor Oddball go down the toilet the same way a dead fish would.

Who was I to blame for the way I felt? My brother for flushing down my toy? Myself for

finding happiness in a white piece of PVC molded after a factious dog? Or myself for not being

able to realize that I had no control over the actions of my brother and that fate would eventually

separate me from my Oddball? What had really caused me to be happy then? To be unhappy?

Many wise philosophers have asked themselves this question, and the answers they have

found are unique and frankly, a bit beautiful.

Cyrenaic Hedonism

One of Socrates followers was Aristippus(c. 430350 b.c.e.) He was from Cyrene, a

town founded by Greeks in what is now Libya. Aristippus was able to open his own school in his

hometown of Cyrene and there he taught that pleasure is the principal motive for living and that

pleasure is always goodregardless of its source (Soccio, 183).

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Cyrenaic Hedonism also argues that pleasures that are physical are far better than mental

ones, and that the pleasures you are able to experience right now are better than future pleasures.

Many people today have practiced Cyrenaic hedonism in one form or another, myself

included. I have chosen to stay home and watch my favorite show over going out for a run or

doing homework. However, this type of in-the-moment gratification doesnt make people happy.

I can see where Aristippus was coming from, and understand what lead him to believe that

pleasure would lead to happiness.

However, there is a point when you realize that physical pleasures are only momentarily.

They dont last forever, and they are not as fulfilling. You must also eventually deal with the

consequences of pursuing those pleasures.

Halloween has been and still is my favorite holiday. It is more than dressing up in scary

costumes and watching horror movies with my friends and family, but it also brings out one of

my weaknesses; Candy. I love candy, especially chocolate. When I was a kid I was forced to give

up my candy to my parents so that I wouldnt eat it all in one seating. One year they made the

mistake of hiding it in their closet. I had found my hard-earned candy in a matter of hours, and I

was going to enjoy it. Unfortunately for me, my stomach didnt quite agree with eating all of my

Halloween candy in one day. I had fulfilled my pleasure, but I had to pay for the consequences.

Epicurean Hedonism

Epicurus(341270 b.c.e.) was born in Samos; an island in the Mediterranean. He was

considered an Athenian citizen since his father was a colonist of Athens. Epicurus moved to

Athens to serve in the military for two years and then started to study with the followers of Plato

and Aristotle. However, he turned away from some of their teachings and began his own school

called The Garden (Soccio, 184).

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In The Garden Epicurus welcomed everyone. It didnt matter what your gender was or

what social status you held. In his Garden Epicurus taught that the best kind of pleasure we have

shouldnt derive from physical stimuli, and we shouldnt care much about the quantity, but about

the quality.

Epicurus believed in delaying pleasure and even undergoing through pain and discomfort

in order to achieve something far more pleasant. He also taught that pain shouldnt be regarded

as evil, but that we need to feel pain in order to know happiness.

I was just in junior high when I learned that an eight of me was from a Mexican Native

American tribe. The tribe is well known for their long distance running and endurance and I

thought then that maybe that eight of me would kick in and help me win the track meets. I was so

sore after practice one day that going up a flight of stairs almost brought me to tears.

It was all worth it when the day of the meet came. My best mile record was a 6:30 min

mile. I didnt win first place, but I was happy to know that my hard work had paid off. I had put

myself through sore legs and early morning runs, I had given up my afterschool hours practicing,

and I would do it again just to know that I could improve myself.

Cynics

Cynicism has its roots in one of Socrates followers; Antisthenes(c. 455360 b.c.e.) It is

said that he would walk 5 miles just to listen to Socrates. However, Antisthenes was more

interested in the way Socrates lived and looked than his actual philosophy. Antisthenes had been

a student to the Sophist Gorgias before turning to Socrates and learning for himself that a

sophists values like power, wealth, and status were wrong and that they wouldnt lead to

happiness.

As Giannis Stamatellos explains:

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He usually expressed his disdain for conventional values and pleasure. For Antisthenes,

desire leads to pleasure and pleasure to the misery of insufficient and temporal

happiness. Only virtue is sufficient for real happiness, that is well-being. A virtuous

person is sufficient with whatever is present and with future expectations and social

conventions (Stamatellos, web).

Another famous Cynic philosopher was Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412323 b.c.e.). He was

said to have lived inside of a clay wine jar in the streets of Athens. His other possessions were a

walking stick, an old robe and a wooden bowl which he later threw away after seeing a boy cup

up his hands and drink water from them. Diogenes had turned completely away from social

norms and ignored any kind of manners, for he believed such things made a person soft and

weak. Diogenes would later gain the nickname dog because of his dog-like lifestyle.

Cynics embraced nature, and believed that society had overcomplicated things for us.

They believed that the less you had the better off you were, because the more you had the more

you depended on. To find happiness, a cynic would advise you to leave your home, master your

desires and appetites, and learn some self-control (Soccio, 187).

Stoicism

My grandma used to say to me whenever I got really angry at something or someone:

De que te sirve que te enojes? What good is it to get angry? I would tell my grandma that it

helped me get it out of my system, but that was never a good answer. My grandma just mightve

been a stoic.

Stoics focus on controlling the things you can control and not worrying too much about

the things you cant. After all, its not like it was in your control how the bad weather cancelled
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your flight or that the car behind you was driving as if he was in a school zone. We have no

control over those things, so then why would anyone get angry at them? What good does it do?

Stoicism was started by Zenos (c. 334262 b.c.e.) in Greece but flourished in Rome.

Zenos would give his lessons in a painted porch or stoa poikile. The word stoic literally means

men of the porch (Soccio, 190). Stoicism in a way is preparing for the worst and not hoping at

all that things will be better. For hope only makes it harder on us. As the author of The School of

Life puts it:

To regain calm, what we need to do is systematically and intelligently crush every last

vestige of hope. Rather than appease ourselves with sunny tales, it is far better the

Stoics proposed to courageously come to terms with the very worst possibilities and

then make ourselves entirely at home with them.

Making ourselves at home with every possibility is what the Stoics called being one with Logos.

Logos is also known as fate, cosmic meaning, nature, or providence. Things just happen, and the

stoics believed that everything that happened had a cause, a reason, it was ordained to happen by

Logos. And we were helpless against it. The author of our book uses the analogy of being in a

play, we may not have the choice to choose our part but how we play that part is up to us.

We cannot control Logos, but we can control our minds and eventually control our

feelings. Being one with Logos is what brings one happiness. The Stoics say that our best chance

for happiness is to adopt a disinterested attitude toward our own lives, as well as toward all life

(Soccio, 197).

In conclusion, there is no right or wrong path to happiness. In a way, we are all

philosophers and what makes you happy may or may not make someone else happy. I think

thats what the Stoics, Cynics, and Hedonists are all trying to point out. There are many ways to
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find happiness; by satisfying your pleasures, living a simple live with only what is necessary, or

by mastering your mind and controlling only that which you can control. But only you can

decide for yourself what path to take, and what will really make you happy.

Works Cited
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Stamatellos, Giannis. "Cynics." Cynics. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2017

http://philosophy.gr/hellinistic/cynics.htm

"The Stoics." The Book of Life. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017. http://www.thebookoflife.org/the-

great-philosophers-the-stoics/

Soccio, D. J. (2010). Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (7 ed.).