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Sunday, December 4, 2022

William James on Healthy Mindedness


Savannah Spann #7
    

    What is human life's main concern? This is one of the biggest questions in the world of philosophy. Often the answer to this question is happiness, how to achieve and maintain it​. Most people seek persistent enjoyment, which produces a sort of religion based around the gift of a happy existence​. William James coined the phrase, "the religion of healthy mindedness" to describe somewhat of a pursuit of happiness and refusal to feel otherwise. This religious belief system is not Biblical, although some writers and philosophers may claim that it is. It is a practice of positive thinking and disregards teachings of sin.​ The idea is that these positive thoughts can actualize positive events in the life of the believer. 

   This lecture came from James' Varieties of Religious experience where he expands upon his study in human nature on spirituality. He analyzes the concept of religious belief, being that one's salvation depends on their belief in a god before having any proof that it exists. In his lectures, James infers that individual religious experiences are far more important than the precepts of organized religions as a whole. 

    The Religion of Healthy Mindedness  is the fourth lecture in the series. It expands upon this theory and suggests that people use religion and spirituality, especially in Christianity, to justify the blatant disregard for the fact that life is not all rainbows and sunshine. They think as if all is good if the follow their beliefs and vice versa. When opposing facts are presented to suggest that life is not 'happy" such people use blindness as a weapon to protect against anything that may change the emotion​. To an actively happy person, evil is outside of their beliefs​.

    He divides the healthy minded view from Whitman into voluntary and involuntary types​. Involuntary describes the immediate sensation of happiness one gets from what is right in front of them​. Voluntary describes the belief that good is the essential and universal aspect of being and deliberately excluding any evil from view​. James uses Walt Whitman as the prime example of the voluntary view. Whitman refused to express negativity and saw everything as good, "his optimism is too voluntary and defiant"​. Some may define his optimism as
"quasi-pathalogical"​.  James even questions his motives to the extent of a theory that his forced positivity is a scheme to convince people that harsh consequences of the Industrial Revolution were a good thing.​

    Being "healthy minded" as WJ puts it, is almost like an intentional ignorance. This begs the question can you really speak things into existence. I believe that the mind is very powerful, but it can not guarantee anything. You can believe that you will have a wonderful day all you want, and if you do it is indeed more likely to happen. However, some things in life are just completely out of our control. 

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