Tags: happiness | socialism | utopia

Extrajudicial and arbitrary executions, rape, torture, inhuman treatment, mass arrests, forced labor, forced relocation and denial of freedoms of expression, assembly, consumption, association and movement.

It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast. That is why the conception of Heaven or Utopia varies from age to age. In pre-industrial society Heaven was described as a place of endless rest, and as being paved with gold, because the experience of the average human being was overwork and poverty.

The houris of the Muslim Paradise reflected a polygamous society where most of the women disappeared into the harems of the rich. But these pictures of 'eternal bliss' always failed because as the bliss became eternal (eternity being thought of as endless time), the contrast ceased to operate. Some of the conventions embedded in our literature first arose from physical conditions which have now ceased to exist.

The cult of spring is an example.

In the Middle Ages spring did not primarily mean swallows and wild flowers. It meant green vegetables, milk and fresh meat after several months of living on salt pork in smoky windowless huts. The spring songs were happy 'Do nothing but eat and make good cheer, And thank Heaven for the merry year When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily!', because there was something to be so gay about.

The winter was over, that was the great thing. Christmas itself, a pre-Christian festival, probably started because there had to be an occasional outburst of overeating and drinking to make a break in the unbearable northern winter. Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache.

They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. Be thankful for all your troubles because they illumine all the beauty around you.

Think wishes all of you a heavenly holidays.