Austin Denson
World History
The Innate Sadness Mankind
We started this course with the Argument of Desire, and I’m ending it with a look into
the innate sadness that has surrounding human beings throughout history. Sadness is one of the
first emotions human beings ever felt, and it has stuck with us forever, there is no cure, there is
no solution. It isn’t an equation or a question that can be answered, it’s not measurable, you can’t
hold it in your hand, but everyone still seems to feel it. How can that be possible? In such a big
world with so many people and no one seems to know how to stay happy.
No one is immune from this and I think the perfect example of that is a quote from our
first handout when Peter Kreeft said “ No one is truly satisfied with his or her earthly existence.
No one is really happy.” Yes, this quote is quite a downer, but for some it might be a wake-up
call, the reason I say that is hearing this quote might just spur someone to act on their sad life and
try to reach that happiness they so crave. I don’t believe Mr. Kreeft is trying to bring down
everyone who reads this quote I think he’s trying to point out that people always want more, it’s
not that we aren’t happy it’s that we aren’t satisfied. That is the beauty of human kind we are
never satisfied and whether you look at that as a curse or a gift is up to. Another astonishing
thing we do is we create, we create life, architecture, everything and anything you see besides
nature itself was created by man, who of course was created by God. This is something pointed
out to us seemingly every day, but although it is normally a good thing to be reminded of our
lord and savior there is some negative side effects. We see God as the only perfect being, as we
should, but that means we can never know perfection until we meet God. The majority of people
who believe in God would say that they would meet him when they died willing they go to
heaven, but by then you are graced with eternal happiness, so the impatient ones among us try to
reach perfection in others way. For example, the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids to be
closer to heaven, yes beautiful structures that have stood the test of time but how saddening is it
really that generations of people dedicated their life to a project just to reach perfection, and the
driving will behind reaching that perfection was desperation of something more in life, truly
troubling.
Next we look into the story of Gilgamesh, the story of the king who had everything but a
friend and was truly sad within. Gaining a friend and then losing that friend shortly after turns his
life into a single focused mission, bringing that friend back to life. Clearly this isn’t possibly but
as we saw in Gilgamesh the desperation for that single taste of friendship again drives Gilgamesh
to brink of madness. Although the story of Gilgamesh is truly saddening it is just that, a story,
when you look back into our argument of desire you can truly uncover some dark things. For
example, the entirety of musicians, first you have Tchaikovsky who claims his life was full of
regret, he hoped for each day to pass quicker then the next, and the fact that he was never
satisfied even with all of his accomplishments ultimately lead to him taking his own life by
walking into the Moscow River. Along with him went Schumann but he chose the Rhine over
the Moscow, then there was Liszt who said true happiness was death and the sooner death
greeted you the better. As we continue down the road of troubled musicians there is Chopin who
could never seem to get over the hump of sadness as he says with every success he would fall
deeper into disappointment as the feeling faded and never turned out to be what he expected. He
felt he wasted he time, energy, and life and by the end he claimed he had no strength to continue
on.
Next we stumble closer to present days dissatisfaction as we realize that the more of one
thing we acquire the less we enjoy said thing, this is troubling as the seemingly always happy top
one percent would be the most affected by this as they theoretically can have whatever they
please whenever they please so the more possessions they acquire the deeper hole they are
digging for themselves to fall into at the end of the day when they are ultimately unsatisfied. The
greatest philosophers throughout time are not immune to the sadness that follows mankind
throughout time endlessly. We see this when Confucius states that with all the things that are put
in front of us in this universe, and all the things we have yet to discover in this universe we still
have the remarkable gift of out imagining this spectrum of wonder set before us, just another gift
and curse bestowed upon mankind.
It is said that as human beings we crave a relationship with an all powerful being in our
case, God. A great example of this is when Jean Paul Sartre, a man who says he was a atheist his
whole life, states that he felt planned to be part of this world, which could only be done by
someone similar to the idea of God. So, as he doesn’t fully betray his beliefs here he does openly
admit to the thought of there being an overall creator who has had a plan for what seems to be
from the beginning of time. Another atheist Bertrand Russell claimed to have felt a ghost like
presence throughout his life trying to relay a message to him, but he can never retrieve the
message. The interesting thing to me is he openly ask the question that with all these people and
all these things in the world there must but something or someone more important behind it all,
although he never felt that way truly he often thought of the idea. So, my question would be is
idealizing a God or “something or someone more important behind it all” prove to be the same as
believing there is one. At the end of all this we have Saint Augustine who says that you can seek
whatever ay please you, in this case happiness or lack of sadness perhaps, but don’t be foolish in
where you go looking for it as only God can provide you this gift of never-ending happiness.
We seemingly come back to desire itself and how it shapes us humans, but these desires
are nothing but distractions, yes of course we have natural desires such as food and water but that
is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about fast cars, and expensive jewelry etc. These
things keep us distracted from the sadness that we would undoubtedly feel without the
accommodations that we are provided by todays society. The argument of desire reminds us as it
closes that all that man requires and truly desires is and unfailing, undying love, which again, can
only be provided by God.
Nowadays we don’t even talk about these things unless in a class such as this, or a
church, there are no open discussions without some sort of backlash that involve the unhappiness
of today’s society. The thing that makes this such a problem is that not only are we dissatisfied
with ourselves and our lives, but we are fearful to speak out about it because of how our peers
may respond. This is an irrational fear or at least should be today, we should be able to speak out
about how we will to our community or at least the people closest to us without feelings
embarrassed or second guessing the action itself. If we ever want to overcome this seemingly
never-ending cycle of despair then we need to become more open than we ever have with each
other as a whole. Only then can we one day truly erase some, not all, but some of the despair that
looms over us on a daily basis.
This is a topic that truly interest me as I’m always amazed by humanity and the small
things such as a single emotion that can have such a grand affect of an entire globe full of people.
You see we are all human so we all must suffer from the dissatisfaction of our day to day life at
some point, there has never been anyone known to be truly happy for their entire life it is just and
impossible feat by man. We are destined to live out our days this way, but this always occurring
feeling of regret and emptiness creates some of the greatest things known to man, things such as
hope, trust, and effort. Without the dissatisfaction we all feel we would never work hard to solve
it, we would never be pushed by our own psych to open up the world to new ideas. One mans
dissatisfaction may be another eye-opening experience, you never know who you may inspire so
why not keep trying? This seems to be another thing that follows man kind throughout time, we
seem to outlast despair as we seemingly never give up and always come up with new ways to
entertain, distract, and push ourselves away from the sadness that creeps closer each and every
day. Along with this annoyingly impressive day to day improvisation of mankind to keep
themselves distracted comes the another truly great attribute created by us, the ability to inspire,
this has turned common men into great leaders overnight, and men born into great power brought
down to common men.
I hope you enjoyed my outlook on what seemed to end up being the spirit and tendencies
of mankind and the ways we have always somehow provoked ourselves out of the dark abyss
that awaits us all in the end, funny isn’t that for millions of years that humans have been playing
the same game with themselves, simply to dodge their own feelings and emotions is their goal
and they always find a new way to succeed.