Do we have a moral obligation to act happy toward people even if we feel terrible, or are in a bad mood? By happiness, I don’t mean the bubbly, bouncy, person with the smile always plastered on his or her face. I am thinking more along the lines of acting content and positive toward others regardless of how we feel. What do you think? Try to give reasons to justify your answers.
Interestingly, in a sub-discipline of philosophy called virtue ethics, happiness signifies living a (morally) good life, or flourishing in life, so happiness is not just an emotion in virtue ethics but rather a life. Unfortunately, happiness has been reduced to mere emotion in modernity…but that is a topic for another post.
I don't see why we would have an OBLIGATION to be happy towards others. We each feel our own emotions, and we shouldn't have to fake them for others' sake. If anything, I believe it is MORE moral to express your own emotions. By setting that example, you allow others to express their emotions freely as well.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with kyle, I also think acting positive when you are miserable or not feeling as well as you think that you should will lighten your and another person's mood as well. There is no obligation to smile and wave at each other when we pass but by acting positive towards one another is definitely something that more people should practice in their daily communications
ReplyDeleteWell, if someone is in a horrible mood, that would probably be the effect of the people that they are surrounded by. Therefore, it is whoever put the person into the bad mood's fault, and not the actual person. So, stating this, it is not required that you be in a good mood around people always. End point being that your feelings are not something that has to be shaped because of the situation, but are shaped because of many different things, and some of those things are uncontrollable factors that can't be controlled by you, and so it is not your fault that you are in a bad mood. Ben
ReplyDeleteBen:
ReplyDeleteBut if, say, you are by yourself practicing kicking the soccer ball into the goal, and you miss every time and fall in the mud, you will probably go home in a bad mood, and you have nobody to blame but yourself. In this case, I think that it is better not to mask your feelings (this will just make you feel worse), but to genuinely try to cheer yourself up. Think about the good things that happened - maybe you got better, or maybe you learned what you should do to avoid a mud puddle. If you try to cheer yourself up, you will be in a better mood, and so will everyone around you.
Mr. Sewell needs to stop being lazy and RESPOND TO OUR COMMENTS!
ReplyDeleteKyle,
ReplyDeleteYou believe we should not have to fake our emotions for anyone and that it is moral to express them honestly. You further believe expressing them sets an example for other people who may need to see a role model for expressing emotion. Did I get that basically correct? If not, please correct me.
In a sense, I can’t disagree with you because you do not really address the question. The morality in question does not require people to fake their emotions or not express them. It only asks about the obligation when it comes to acting upon them. Would you like to fine tune your comments and perhaps provide an example?
"I am thinking more along the lines of acting content and positive toward others regardless of how we feel"
ReplyDeleteIs that not faking your emotions?
I'm a bit confused on YOUR question.
Kyle,
ReplyDeleteYou presuppose that when we are disposed toward a certain feeling, we MUST act that way. So, for you, it follows naturally, and circularly, that one is faking one's emotions by not acting upon them.
This is based on a philosophy by AJ Ayer (one of the "big" four British philosophers of the 20th C. ) called Emotivism. Of course, like all other philosophies, it had its roots long before in other philosophies. Emotivism, at least as far as I know, can be found seminally in writings as early as Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan".
I believe that we have no obligation to act any way other than the way we feel. However it is courteous to do it to a certain extent. If somebody comes into a room very happy and excited about something I don't believe you have to be ecstatic along with them, but I don't think it is fair to that person to act miserable, even if that's how you feel, because that would ruin the experience for that person as well as you. So though I don't beleive we have an obligation I do believe that it is one of the courtesies that allows society to be what it is.
ReplyDelete