At the end of December, 2017, my mechanic discovered a crack in the frame of my bicycle, just where the cross bar meets the post that holds up the seat. In December and January the sun never rises too high in the sky over San Diego, and the wind blows gently through the arroyos and over the mesas. Perfect bike-riding weather. But while the manufacturer agreed to honor my bike's lifetime warranty, it would take weeks to ship a new extra-tall frame to the west coast and get it assembled. I wouldn't be cycling this January. I'd turned in my grades a week before, and since California State University offers its faculty an unusually long winter break, I knew how I was going to pass my days.
"Time to build that website," I said to myself.
I'm an anthropologist. For the last 20 years I've been researching and writing about life in Thailand, applying myself to practical questions – or questions that I thought were practical, at any rate: How can you be sure if someone really loves you? How can you know you're doing the right thing when the world is so full of uncertainty? Over the years, I left behind psychodynamic theory and started seeking answers in the idea that narratives shape the ways we see the world. The result of all this was a Ph. D. dissertation, a small collection of articles on karma and ghosts and the nature of belief, and a book manuscript that explains how stories shape truths, and truths shape reality.
Not a lot people read Ethos, the journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, as good as it is. I'm convinced that the tools of my particular trade could help make the world a better place, if they were plied in a way that was easy to understand, and in a place where more people could see them.
I started putting this happiness project together about two years ago, on an unusually long escalator ride between the floors of a mall in Bangkok, and it has taken me on a rather circuitous journey through American history, the philosophy of mind, pop psychology, and explorations of cultural values.
I'm not done.
Outside of reams of notes and a hard drive full of essays, to-do lists and other people's articles, <em>Impractically Happy</em> is the first product of this project.
My goal isn't to teach people how to be happy – not directly, at any rate. There are plenty of sites trying to do that already. Instead of providing those fixes – which aren't always very effective – I want to take a step back and figure out what happiness means in our society. Western societies challenge us to be happy, while also setting up roadblocks that prevent us from getting there.
This site is devoted to the exploration of what it means to be happy in our world today.
And this is just the beginning. I plan on expanding the encyclopedia in in Happiness HQ, adding to the collection of book and movie reviews, and articles on being happy in America – even after I get my bike back.
-Steve Carlisle
January 15, 2018
(I hope you found this informative. I've posted a copy of this under the "About SC" link, as I expect this will get lost at the bottom of the blog before too long.)