Ursula K. Le Guin on happiness
Sophisticates think it's stupid
Until the election, we’ll be mostly running quotes relating to politics — not on the concerns of the moment but the deeper matters. But not always. Normal life goes on even in an intense political season.
Known most for her Earthsea fantasy series, the second of which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Ursula K. Le Guin also wrote speculative science fiction, literary criticism, poetry, and children’s books, many with cultural and political concerns. She is said to have influenced writers like Salman Rushdie and Neil Gaiman. This is taken from her story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” and in the context of the story somewhat ironic.
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it.
But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. . . .
Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.
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