Happiness Is For Everyone Of Any Age

10:00 AM - August 8, 2014 by Jonathan Burch

Happiness is for every individual no matter how young or old the individual is.  Why are we living in a new age of individualism?  It is because of pluralism.  There are so many different new and old things to do now, both good and bad, that the old institutions cannot tell us so well what to do anymore.  What do you do with social media?  Who do you talk to?  What do you say and not say?  What pictures do you post and not post?  Who can you trust? What kind of smart phone or tablet should you buy, or should you buy the wearable ones?  Who can your friends be?  Can they only be on the Internet, or do you need some friends in person?  What do you do about exercise and earning money?  What do you do about drugs and alcohol? Should you bother reading books anymore? Do you still need a formal education?  Can you start your own business on the Internet?  Should you?  How?

For some of these questions the old institutions have some ideas.  For some they do not have a clue, but you must answer them everyday.

The other problem that leads to an age of individualism is that different people need different things to be happy.  The large cultural answers where one size answer fits all, do not work for many people anymore.  They expect answers that work for them personally.  This is a version of a lot size of one in clothing manufacture.  Each person wants a different kind pif suit, so the manufacturer makes only one suit of that kind and sells it to that customer.  The next customer will specify a different kind of suit.  The manufacturer will make that one suit for that unique customer.  No longer can a manufacturer of knockoff clothes produce “1,000 First Lady Dresses” and expect to sell them.  The mass market has turned into the individual market.  More precisely the vast global marketplace has so many different small niches in it with people with similar tastes, that one can find a market for almost anything.  This makes individual creation and marketing possible.  This environment encourages the individual to be himself or herself.

However this puts additional pressure on the individual to decide what to do to be happy.  First the individual must decide, without much help today, what to do in life to be happy.  Second there are so many more choices today, and many more created everyday (who ever thought about deciding what app to use next?), that the individual has a much larger basket of options to choose from.  It is just a bigger, more complicated job with less help.

This puts more individual responsibility on each person, on each man and each woman, to decide for himself or herself what to do to be happy.  This increased individual responsibility and the huge increase in opportunity of things to do to be happy in the new global economy, with its explosion of new knowledge and new ways to do things, makes this an age of individualism.

It is as though all people used to be riding on a train with one engineer directing it along the common track for everyone.   This was a stable era.  We all knew what life was about, and what we were to do at each age.  We got on the train and we did it.  This was an age of collectivism, where the individual gained his or her identity from the group or someone else.

Now it is as though all the people are riding on bicycles, with each individual going in a different direction.  Each one is on his or her own bike, going in a different direction along his or her unique Golden Path to that individual’s unique personal happiness.  This world looks entirely different from what we experienced growing up as children.

Now even elderly people have to learn how to get along as individuals.  Now even elderly couples have to learn how to maintain their marriages and relationships in the midst of all this change.  Those who are true to each other succeed, help each other find their new way, and smile at elderly life.  

The human spirit is unconquerable and beautiful.  Just look at those smiling faces.

There is good news in all this change, and cause for optimism.  In this new era of life plus machines, the machines have made possible an explosion of new knowledge of how to cause change and many new gadgets to make life more enjoyable and exciting.  The new knowledge and machines have connected all people in the world together into one global marketplace and one global community.  The new global marketplace has spawned a knowledge economy,the most powerful economy the world has ever known, which may create enough new knowledge, existence and new value to life all people above the poverty line into the happiness zone, where people all over the world report about the same level of happiness no matter how much money they have.  Happiness is not about money or things. Happiness is about fulfilling relationships.

The new economy is helping there too.  It does not run on mass human labor, as human progress had for the last 5,000 years.  The new economy ruins on m ass creativity of billions of individual creators and consumers.  Mass human labor controlled by the few at the top requires vertical social organization, where men dominate women and the elite dominate the men and control all the labor.   It works best for economies based on mass human labor.

The machines, such as the Internet and the computer have changed all that.  The new global knowledge market economy is based on mass creativity, which requires the equality of men and women so all can be creative in the economy.  This means the new economy is molding a new global culture that is a partnership culture where men and women are equal.

One of the benefits of this is the the gender roles are not so rigid anymore.  Women are learning to be comfortable as competent, educated successful career managers and earners, and men are learning the joys of home life and children and grand children.  Both genders have more well rounded lives in this new culture, so they can be more fulfilled as whole persons, and not have to leave major parts of themselves unfulfilled.  This makes them happier.

Elderly people are working longer, often at something new, they would rather do.  This too open the way for more happiness.  Happiness, fulfillment as a whole person is available to you at any age.  You just use the talents and abilities you have at the time to respond as well as you can to be fulfilled as a whole person.  Since happiness is in relationships, not things, anyone can be happy by having fulfilling relationships at any age.

What you want is to make righteous responses for who you are and what you can do at the time.  Fortunately, for every individual of every age, there is a way to receive the wise guidance to make those righteous responses.  The answer is inner friendship, where you receive the wise guidance of your inner voices through your inner friend.

Everyone can have an inner friendship, and you can begin at any time in life.  Once you develop your inner friendship, you will keep it warm, loving and guiding all your life.

On this site an eBook is available that show you how to take the nine steps to develop your personal inner friendship.  The eBook is entitled "Inner Friendship For Everyone".  Get it, read it, apply the nine steps to develop your inner friendship, and be happy at any age.