wishful thinking; is happiness a suitable goal?

**  Just some musings on: "bird-song".

**  It's about 7:15 on a clear summer morning, and I've just come in from
walking on the cold dewy grass while hanging out the clothes. The sun's on
the trees, but it hasn't yet reached down to me at ground level yet.

**  I was noticing the tail end of the "dawn chorus", and, as I often do,
trying to interpret what was going on up there in the trees and bushes.
Most of what I heard was squabbling, and looking around I could see that
most of that was between birds of the same species; though I have often
watched blackbirds or tui_s  (male, probably) fighting to retain a foothold
against apparently- planned mynah-bird attacks.

**  In contrast with the reality I've known since mid-teenage (50 years
ago) when I started seriously criticising what I'd been told and preferring
to believe my own observations, people persist in talking of "bird-song"
(which does exist, but rarely) and other romantic notions. The impression
left is that birds are generally happy.

**  On Tue, 01 Jun 1999 10:32:06, David Orton (in his message with subject:
More on deep ecology; also at: 
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/deep-ecology/jun99/msg00019.html ) copied the
Naess/Sessions Deep Ecology Platform, which starts:
1. The well-being and flourishing of human (and nonhuman) life ...

**  I interpret that to imply that happiness, among other things, is a
major goal of at least human life. And its citizens' "pursuit of happiness"
is one of the purposes of the USA.

**  My question: Is happiness a sufficiently important goal that one should
distort the real world ("rose-tinted glasses") in order to increase one's
chance of being happy? Is wishful thinking to be encouraged? I include
romanticism as distorting in a related way.

**  Conversely, if depression and sadness are so bad, even though one sees
ignored parts of the real world when in that state, should a societal goal
be the elimination of these by any means (including drugs)?

David.
(David MacClement) d1v9d@bigfoot.com 
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html
 or better: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/
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