Happiness and Simplicity Workshop

Registration is reccomended but not required. Lunch will be provided for the first 30 registrants. 

Alyssa Crittenden (University of Las Vegas, Nevada), “The Ecology of Happiness: What Hunter-Gatherers Can Teach Us About Mood, Community, and Well-Being”

Sam Wren-Lewis (University of Nottingham), "Happiness and Simplicity: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"

What's good about the simple life? In this talk, I outline three ways in which happiness and simplicity might be connected. The first way is that "living simply" can correct for some of the distractions and biases that make us lose touch with what matters. This is the kind of good, simple life practiced by saints, monks and ascetics - a lifestyle that is fine for some, but neither available nor appropriate for most of us. The second way in which happiness and simplicity might be connected is how we often think about happiness in simple terms. We list "ingredients of happiness" and say things like, "If only I had X then I'd be happy." This misunderstands the nature of happiness and can make us lose touch with what matters. The third way - the ugly version - is, I argue, how most people should think about happiness and simplicity in their lives. A simple life is one in which we are focused on what really matters to us: our commitments of care towards ourselves and our health, our work and responsibilities, and our friends and family. This is a complex, messy and uncertain process - one that must balance our capacities for control (over what we know) and connection (with what we don't know). It is often far from happy and far from simple. And yet, I argue, within a world full of options and distractions, it is the kind of happiness and simplicity we should be aiming for.

Daniel Haybron (St. Louis University) "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out?"

Contemporary lifestyles may be hostile to a central aspect of the good life: relational attunement, a harmonization of self and world that includes appreciating what is good, like beauty and excellence.