Introduction

- Life has a two-mountain shape.

o 1st Mt: Normal goals
o DOWN the Valley of bewilderment and suffering (can happen at any age):
 Unsatisfied with life on the top of 1st Mt  there is a deeper journey
 Knocked down to valley by failure  life takes on a different and more
disappointing shape (not the 1 mountain shape it is believed to be)
 Knocked down by unexpected events: death of a closed one, a fatal
disease scare, struggle with addiction, etc. (life-altering tragedy)

 Challenge perception of self and expose the deepest parts of ourselves. They
are not just the parts of themselves that they put on display.

 Some shrivel in the face of suffering  more afraid, more resentful 

lives become smaller and lonelier
o UP the 2nd Mt:
 Some grows from it. Suffering interrupts superficial flow of everyday life
 see deeper into themselves  find yearning to transcend the self and
care for others (life is defined by reaction to moment of great adversity)
 2 stages of rebellion:
 Rebel against ego ideal: lose interest in ego ideal (some vision of
prominence, pleasure, and success) // may still succumb to selfish
desires sometimes, but realize they do not satisfy deep regions
inside themselves
 Rebel against mainstream culture: Not interested in what OTHER
people (society) tells them to want (money, power, fame) 
interested in things WORTH wanting
o Consumer  consumed by moral cause
o Independence  Interdependence (cultivate intimate
relationships)
o Freedom  intimacy, responsibility, commitment
o Pursue success  Be there for others
 SELF-centered  OTHER-centered (radical changes in
lifestyle/ changes in the mind)
 o 1st vs 2nd Mt ppl:
 1st Mt:
 cheerful, interesting, fun to be around
 have impressive jobs
 take you to enjoy amazing restaurants
 2nd Mt:
 not averse to pleasures of the world
 pursue moral joy, ultimate good
 exhausted (devote life to other people) The load, or weight, or
burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a
load so heavy hat only humility can carry it, and the backs of the
proud will be broken. – C. S. Lewis
- Purpose of book:
o Show how individuals move from 1st to 2nd Mt
o Show how societies move from 1st to 2nd Mt
o Book layout:
 1st half: how two-mountain life happens, how a life lived for self does not
satisfy
 2nd half: how people live with a second-mountain mentality (1st Mt: mobile
and lightly attached, 2nd Mt: committed life to vocation/spouse and
family/ philosophy or faith/ community)
- Changes from “Road to Character”:
o Character build mostly on your own, through reflection and willpower 
Character is a by-product of giving yourself away to a community or cause
o Cultural and moral structures of our society (hyper-individualism) are fine, only
need individual fix  rampant individualism of current culture is
catastrophe (self-preoccupation  division and alienation)
- Joy and levels of joy
o Definition of a good life is muddled: happy life?
o Joy is motivated by a real and genuine force
o 1st Mt cannot see what 2nd Mt has to offer
o 6 level of joys:
 Physical joy: experience (collective) flow and in rhythm with others
  Collective effervescence, celebratory dance
 Emotional joy: intimate and powerful, comes from family or romantic
relationship
 Spiritual joy: from an unexpected contact with something that seems
boundaryless, pure spirit
 Transcendent joy: feeling at one with nature, the universe, or God
 Moral joy: Highest layer, permanent (occurs some moment when hey
brought delight to another)

Chapter One: Moral Ecologies

- Moral ecology: a system of belief and behavior that lives on after one die
- It is one of the greatest legacies a person can leave
- Subtly guide how you dress, how you talk, what you admire or disdain, and how you
define your ultimate purpose
- Moral ecologies: collective responses to the big problems of a specific moment
o Pattern: ratchet, hatchet, pivot; ratchet
 people create a moral ecology that helps them solve the problems of their
moment
 that ecology works, and society ratchets upward
 over time the ecology becomes less relevant to new problems; old culture
grows rigid
 members of counterculture (moral activists and cultural pioneers) take a
hatchet to it (update an old moral ecology)
 turmoil and competition to see which new cultural will prevail
…
o Middle 3rd of 20th century (great depression and world war): “We’re All in This
Together” // 1950s Chicago  rich and community life many people desire today:
that moral ecology had a lot virtues; emphasized humility, reticence, and self-
effacement
-//- Failings: tolerated racism and anti-Semitism; professional women faced
daunting barriers and emotionally cold definition of masculinity; people felt
imprisoned by pressure of group conformity and tortured by the intolerant
tyranny of local opinion  numb, joyless lives
 o 1960s: young people on communes and hippie communities – bohemian culture,
reject anything bourgeois  emphasis: individual and personal freedom
“We’re All in This Together”  “I’m Free to Be Myself”
- Current moral ecology impact:
o Positive - necessary:
 Broke chains that held down women and oppressed minorities
 Loosened the bond of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia
 Foundation for Silicon Valley and information age economy
o Negative – taken to the extreme:
 Individualism (esp. in the US) becomes dominant  extreme  hyper-
individualism  humans relationship dissolve in the face of maximum
freedom
 Buffered self: The ideal society is one which people live
unencumbered but together, each doing their own thing
 The God within: Life goal is to climb Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs and achieve self-fulfillment; he ultimate sources of authority
is found inside, not outside
 The privatization of meaning: You have to interpret the ideas
around you in your own way and no one is to judge it
 The dream of total freedom: The best life is the freest life.
Spiritual formation happens in freedom, not within obligation
 The centrality of accomplishment: People are measured by
what they have individually achieved; take care of and promoting
the self is the prime mission
 Consumerism, a therapeutic mindset, the preference for
technology over intimacy
 Harder to live bonded, communal lives
o There is always a tension between self and society:
 If things are too tightly bound  rebellion
 If things are too free  individuals are lonely and loosely attached 
loneliness (esp. for young adults, who are throw into a world that is
unstructured, uncertain, with few authorities and guardrails except those
they are expected to build on their own  phenomenally hard to launch
yourself into life)
Chapter Two: The Instagram Life

- Values are passed down to young people, but the current values are given total,
overwhelming freedom and possibilities, instead of what they need: direction (what is
freedom for, how to find my path, what will give me inspiration and meaning to my life)
- Current state: Most structured and supervised childhood in human history (education
from station to station, no independent play, children are to grow up a certain way, etc.)
 least structured young adulthood in human history (before, people usually take on
parents’ jobs, faiths, towns, and identities)
o Average American: 7 jobs in 20s
o 1/3 recent college graduates: unemployed, underemployed, <$30,000/year
o ½ no plans for life
o ½ no sexual partner in last year
o Peak years: alcoholism and drug addiction
o Move every 3 years (40% move back in with parents at least once)
o Much less likely to attend religious services/ join a political party
o Dementedly optimistic about long-term future
- Approach 1: The Aesthetic Life
o College graduates: mindset of daring adventurers: Time for fun before real life
(marriage/ real job) settles in. Time for experiences
o Advantages:
 1st job = suck anyways  use this time to widen horizon of risk instead
(forever know that you have handled things crazier than this  more
courageous)
 Build “identity capital”  experiences will distinguish you from the rest
 Excellent way to begin 20s
o Disadvantages:
 If not settled down into 1 thing in a few years, say yes to everything (cool
Instagram feed, hence the chapter title “The Instagram Life”), life does
not add up to anything
 Life = possibilities to experience >< projects to be fulfilled and ideals to be
lived out
 If you spend tour days merely consuming random experiences, you will
begin to feel like a scattered consumer. – Annie Dillard
  Lead to living in a state of diversion: not actually interested in things, just
bored at a more frenetic pace.
 Also lead to comparison (other people are surely doing life better) 
comparison is he robber of joy  lose thread of the meaning of life and
have trouble staying focused on asking what your life meaning is
 Entertained but not progressing
o Solution (David Foster Wallace): have iron willpower to derive meaning from
each experience
 Unrealistic: when distracted, focusing is impossible. Do not flatter
yourself in thinking that you’re brave enough or capable enough to see
into the deepest and most important parts of yourself. One of the reasons
you are rushing about is because you are running away from yourself.
o Political freedom is great, but personal, social, and emotional freedom = ultimate
ends sucks

Chapter Three: The Insecure Overachiever

- 2nd Approach
- Treat life like a continuation of school: Competitive colleges  get into high-status
companies and organizations  This is the insecure overachiever: no stable or solid
foundation to build upon; never fully wills anything and thus is never fully satisfied
- Pragmatists: Good at solving problems
o Facing ambiguity as a college junior/ senior  flock to companies
- This route does NOT spare you from the ditch
o “How do I succeed?” quickly becomes “Why am I doing this?”
- Company life molds you into a shrewd animal, not to help you live a fulfilling life
o Suddenly, it occurs to you that you have become your own boss and your own
exploiter. You begin to view yourself not as a soul to be uplifted but as a set of
skills to be maximized.
- It is easy to let drop spiritual questions to become a professional person
- Workaholism is an effective distraction from emotional and spiritual problem
emotionally avoidant and morally decoupled.
- The meritocracy brings economic concepts into the noneconomic life. Everything
revolves around the workplace, achievements and success. Meritocracy gives someone a
 brand to attach to, but not an identity, the urgent need of which is drowned out by the
former.
- Acedia: the quieting of passion: living a life that doesn’t arouse strong passions and
therefore instills a sluggishness of the soul. >< Desire makes you adhesive by pushing
you to get close and commit to something.

Chapter Four: The Valley

- Leo Tolstoy
o Faith in perfecting himself in all areas of life: moral  intellectual, physical and
overall
o Blow: death of brother Nicholas at 37 years old  prestige and perfection <
absolute truth
o Lose faith: the enlightenment project, reason, progress, intellectuals, public
approval, and progress
o This is the VALLEY
- Wealth and fame and accomplishment do not spare anybody from the valley
- Everyone has had bad times in their life and have to ask ourselves the fundamental
questions (dramatic crisis/ creeping malaise, gradual loss of enthusiasm)
- “I always sought to win whatever the game was, and only now do I realize how much I
have been played by the game.” – James Hollis
- People go through a familiar process before they can acknowledge how comprehensive
their problem is: Denial  intensify efforts to follow the old failing plan  treat with
new thrill (affair, drinking, drugs, etc.)  new thrill fails  admit that they need to
change perception on life.
- Telos crisis: people in telos crisis don’t know their purpose
o “You are neither here nor there, / A hurry through which known and strange
things pass.” Seamus Heaney
o Two forms: walking and sleeping
 Walking: keep trudging along because don’t know what they want, how
they should change
 Sleeping: shut down and retreats, confidence lost, paralyzed by self-focus
(it is too late to change)
o “This is a generation that has an inheritance of absolutely nothing as far sa
meaningful moral values.” – David Foster Wallace
 o Hard to identify people suffering in telos crisis because of good masking
- Four social crises are the result of hyper-individualism:
o Loneliness crisis: chronically lonely, single-person household, etc.  symptoms
of a general detachment
 Cause psychological, social, and moral toll: Increase suicide rate, opioid
addiction (slow-motion suicide), life span declines
 Shorter lives due to the increase in “deaths of despair”, which is caused by
the social isolation
o Distrust: alienation, faith in giving-getting compact has broken down  self-
sacrifice does not make sense, other will take advantage if you give, there is no
reciprocity  detached from neighbors and disgusted by institutions of public life
 Every age group in America is less trusting than the previous one
 Perception is not changing; actual behavior is changing  distrust breeds
distrust
o Meaning crisis: people have lost a sense of purpose (also because of the
smartphone)
 People lost faith in the great causes and institutions that earlier
generations relied on to give life a sense of purpose and meaning.
o Tribalism: (reaction to extreme individualism) binds people together through
mutual hatred, instead of mutual affection because it provides meaning
 Once something becomes your identity, then any kind of contesting is a
struggle from existential survival, everything is permitted
 Tribalism threatens to take the detached individual and turn him into a
monster.
- The valley = suffering: soul-crushing anguish/ most precious seasons of your life
- Suffering is not intrinsically noble, sometimes it is just grief that needs to be gotten
through. If connectable to a larger narrative: we can suffer our way to wisdom (teach us
we are not who we thought we were and gratitude)
- Suffering is unavoidable, but we can choose our response: most people respond to pain
by practicing generosity
- After suffering: desires of the ego = small desires, we should not organize our lives
around them

Chapter Five: The Wilderness

 - The right thing to do in moments of suffering is to stand erect: Wait and see what it has
to teach you
- Three-step process to change ourselves: suffering  wisdom  service
- Pick yourself up and go out alone into the wilderness: a different physical place can
create a lot of changes
o In the wilderness: feel a different way
o of being, stripped of distractions  reduces compulsive achiever to something
little and ordinary
o Move at kairos time (>< synchronous time: moment after moment)  prepares
for intimacy with self
o Bring that pain (linked to earlier wounds) home. Suffering that is not
transformed is transmitted
- Learn to receive and review their life: I must listen to my life and try to understand what
it is truly about – quite apart from what I would like it to be about. – Paker Palmer

Joy is especially relevant because in an era of hyper-individualism, people have swung to the one
end of the spectrum, where people are invested in personal freedom and self-oriented values to
not have to answer the fundamental questions about their identity and purpose. The author
talked about how joy is created through a life of service and committing to something in life. It is
interesting because to commit, you have to let go, let go of your old self, let go of what you know
and kind of surrender to a cause. And committing is important because it allows you to really
derive meaning from it, otherwise, we would be leading what the author refers to as an aesthetic
life, jumping from one thing to the next.

I think this just solidified my belief that a life spent pursuing many different causes and
uncommitted to the good of a community (or the other three facts that the author mentioned) or
pursuing surface-level desires (material pleasure and ego pleasure) is not sustainable. Although
it might serve as an effective distraction from having to find my purpose and serve others, it will
lead to a lot of uncertainty. It will also not provide me with joy or happiness, but fleeting bursts
of emotions and numbness.

Question 3: Why are (almost all) humans obsessed with the pursuit of happiness?

I think we, as human beings, are guided by our emotions. Although we can rationalize
something we do that goes against our feelings, we can only convince others and not ourselves.
The emotions will stick with you unless you find a way to resolve it. And as we are guided by
emotions, we seek to eliminate the uncomfortable ones and nurture the feeling-goods.
Happiness is a feeling and it makes humans feel good. As humans, we desire to be better
because happiness comes with it. It doesn’t matter what the individual’s notion of happiness is.
This happiness could be the long-lasting happiness or joy (as referred to by the author) or the
fleeting pleasure that comes with success. The individual can view happiness as a selfish
emotion or a motivating force to share it with others.

Question 4: In order to find your true happiness, you have to go through extreme pains and
suffering. Your thoughts?

I agree with this notion. Firstly, I think at least some form of discomfort or suffering will enable
us to realize the things that we have ignored. The ignorance is because either we have taken
some things for granted, or fail to recognize them as potential sources of happiness and causes
that we can truly commit to. I think when we believe we have everything that is enough for us to
survive: basic necessities and other things that makes life easy and comfortable, we could care
less about the world. We are not truly happiness, but neither are we sad or depressed. We just
sleepwalk, or even just float through life, let life does the things it needs to do and we end up
where we are supposed to. Secondly, the contrast between extreme pains and suffering and
happiness allows us to see happiness more clearly. Human’s feelings are determined by
relativity, that is in comparison with someone or something else. Therefore, being able to
recognize and better yet, experience the unfortunate themselves really makes happiness means
more than it could have been.

Question 5: In “Emile”, Jean-Jacques Rousseau said: “Our unhappiness consists in the

disproportion between our desires and our faculties. A being endowed with sense whose
faculties equaled his desires would be an absolutely happy being.” Your thoughts?

I think that this quote has its points. Certainly, we can be unhappy because our skill level does
not match that which is required of us to complete something we want to do. I think this is
especially true in the times when the notion of personal freedom and that you can do anything is
thriving. We are told that anything is possible with hard-work and practice, but in reality, many
fields are saturated. We are running out of original ideas. Therefore, being unable to do
something that we can see ourselves doing (even when we have the capabilities to do them well)
makes us unhappy. Theoretically, this is the truth. It applies to the situations where the gap
between expectation and reality to too great, almost impossible to bridge (I say almost because
sometimes it is only our perception that there is a wide gap, and our perception shapes how we
view things and feel about them). However, this argument is not holistic in reality. If our skill
level match that of which is needed, we would not be happy. Humans familiarize themselves
with a task or a duty quite quickly. If we know everything, we would quickly become bored with
what we want to do and will not derive happiness anymore. The gap between what we currently
have and our desire to achieve more is the driving force that pushes us forward and teaches us
invaluable lessons and provide meaningful experiences. These learning opportunities are exactly
where happiness comes from. True happiness comes from the process of striving for something,
not the achievement itself.

Question 6: Can there be everlasting happiness? Why (not)?

I think that everlasting happiness exists, but I like to think otherwise. FI will explain why I think
there can be everlasting happiness. When some people are committed to something, they lose
themselves in it. They do not realize that they are experiencing happiness, just feeling like they
are doing the right thing. By striving for what they want or continue helping others, they are
continuously creating more happiness for themselves. And happiness created consistently in a
timeline can result in everlasting happiness. That is in theory. In reality, consistently being
happy is almost impossible. Firstly, you cannot be happy all the time. Trying to be happy all the
time takes much effort and makes you unhappy. Secondly, happiness is intertwined with
unpleasant or undesirable emotions. Happiness is earned through overcoming personal
challenges. Or it is created through helping others through their difficulty. In an imaginary
world that we are all happy, there is no happiness, only boredom and frustration. That goes to
my last point. Thirdly, life with everlasting happiness is just boring.