Thrive | The Pursuit of Happiness: Introduction | Shaykh Usman Qamar

[00:00:07]Uh for tonight's series inshallah, we or the start of the series tonight, we are going to um spend a lot of time on this title, The Pursuit of Happiness.

[00:00:21]And in advance, I wanted to kind of give you a just a little heads-up.

[00:00:28]In order for us to talk in any meaningful way about happiness and and pursuing it, we have to have clarity about what it is that we're talking about.

[00:00:40]And so to a lot of or pretty much all of today's session will be dissecting this title and what we're really trying to talk about in the series.

[00:00:51]The remaining lectures inshallah will be a lot more accessible.

[00:00:55]Tonight's will be a little bit technical.

[00:00:58]And so I'm going to give you that heads-up so you can lean in inshallah and really, you know, try to try to grasp the broader ideas of what we're talking about today. Because, you know, I'm not trying to be technical for the sake of being technical, but I I was thinking about how am I going to talk about the pursuit of happiness?

[00:01:17]How am I going to talk about it?

[00:01:19]In a way that's authentic to what our religion teaches, but doesn't get lost in modern understandings, contemporary understandings of happiness. That's always the danger is we can use a word, but it's not clear.

[00:01:37]So, today we're going to try to like unpack that a little bit.

[00:01:41]I want to start with a verse from the Quran in Surat an-Nahl. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes or he uses a description for life.

[00:01:50]He says, whether they are male or female and they have Iman.

[00:02:01]So any human, male or female, that does good and is a believer. Allah says what?

[00:02:10]Hayatan tayyibah.

[00:02:12]We will surely bless them with a good life.

[00:02:16]I checked maybe five translations to see if anybody translates Hayatan tayyibah differently.

[00:02:22]Consistently all of them translated it as a good life.

[00:02:28]And I'm using that I'm using the verse here almost like synonymous with the idea of living a good life or sometimes called the the good life.

[00:02:39]Now, scholars have their opinions about what that means. What is a good life?

[00:02:47]But I think before we even turn to what they've said, we have to ask ourselves, when we think about happiness, we think about a good life.

[00:02:58]What comes to mind?

[00:02:59]What is it that we understand?

[00:03:02]What I don't want to happen is that we spend 10 lectures talking about happiness, happiness, happiness and the whole time your understanding is, you know, vastly different than what I'm trying to convey.

[00:03:17]That's the idea of coming to terms.

[00:03:20]So when we use a word in language, so I'm going to draw upon language theory here. A very basic point. Whenever we use a word, a word is merely a symbol.

[00:03:31]It's a representation of what?

[00:03:35]Of a concept.

[00:03:38]So right now in my head for example, I'm picturing an object that's called a concept. I have a concept in my head.

[00:03:45]You don't know what it is. Right now I'm picturing it. You don't know what it is.

[00:03:50]As humans we've come up with words to represent the concepts.

[00:03:56]And then what I can do with the word is say it to you, and the same concept in my head should pop up in your head.

[00:04:03]That's language.

[00:04:05]Language is the translator of what it is that we have within ourselves that we want to convey to the other person.

[00:04:14]And to some degree, language is a little arbitrary.

[00:04:18]We just come up with a sound.

[00:04:20]Right? We come up with a sound, and now So, what does it mean to cook?

[00:04:27]All of you will think about something related to cooking.

[00:04:32]But then what if someone says, "Man, as a generation, we're cooked."

[00:04:39]Hopefully, that initial concept didn't come to mind.

[00:04:43]Right? Because if you understand how the language works, you'll recognize that by saying we're cooked, we're not talking about a stove and, you know, ingredients.

[00:04:54]There's a very different meaning.

[00:04:57]So, the term the term it is the concept that's communicated, and when two people share the same concept for a word, they have come to terms.

[00:05:13]Does that make sense?

[00:05:16]So, um sometimes, you know, when someone uses a word that we're not familiar with.

[00:05:26]Um So, I'll give you an example.

[00:05:32]To overlook something.

[00:05:36]What does it mean to overlook?

[00:05:39]Cuz overlook is different than oversee.

[00:05:42]Right?

[00:05:44]To overlook is different than to oversee.

[00:05:48]What happens if someone mixes them up?

[00:05:51]And someone says, you know, I overlooked the project.

[00:05:57]I said I overlooked the project. What does that mean? What popped up in your head?

[00:06:02]Did I manage the project? I was overseeing it? Is that what you understood? Maybe that's what you understood.

[00:06:07]Or did you understand it to mean I kind of saw it, I considered it, and I just kind of passed by and said, "No, no, not this project. Different project." I overlooked it.

[00:06:17]Sometimes we misuse words.

[00:06:20]So, when two of us are using the same word for the same concept, now we've come to terms.

[00:06:30]So many arguments that we have in life with people actually hinge upon having not come to terms.

[00:06:39]A husband says, "I just want to be respected."

[00:06:42]She's like, "I do respect you."

[00:06:45]Often both of them have very different concepts of what respect means. They're both using the word, but the concepts that they each have in their minds are different, so they've not come to terms.

[00:06:59]Which is why when someone uses a word, we ask, "What do you mean by that word?"

[00:07:05]Does that make sense? We ask for I heard the word, but when you say, "What do you mean?" What's the concept in your mind that you're trying to convey through this word?

[00:07:18]When we understand that, we realize that today when we say happiness, a lot of us will have very different understandings of happiness.

[00:07:29]I just want to be happy.

[00:07:31]What does it take?

[00:07:33]Number one, what does that look like?

[00:07:35]Number two, what does it take to be happy?

[00:07:40]And we have I realized cuz I you know, recently I was walking around and I don't do this all the time, but I was walking around asking people, are you happy? It was some field study for this talk.

[00:07:51]So, I was like, hey.

[00:07:52]There's a lot of prep that goes into this. I got to do like research in the hallways here at ISNA. I'm like, hey, are you happy?

[00:07:59]Thrive is coming up. People start avoiding me. They're like, oh, he's going to ask me weird questions. I'm like, are you happy? And people say, yeah. And I'm like, how do you know?

[00:08:09]And they say, well, and they give me explanations of it. And it's funny because the happiness that I'm going to try to explain towards the end of this series is very different than what they were telling me.

[00:08:24]And I'm like, oh, that's so interesting that you think about happiness like that cuz I don't.

[00:08:29]In fact, when I read in the Quran, the understanding of happiness there is very different than what you're talking about.

[00:08:36]And so, that's where in this first lecture I realized we're going to have to spend time talking about happiness.

[00:08:42]How are we thinking about it?

[00:08:45]So, I want to give a little example here.

[00:08:49]I want to read something out to you.

[00:08:51]And it's taken from a really prominent uh virtue ethicist by the name of Alasdair MacIntyre.

[00:09:01]And he wrote a really good book.

[00:09:02]Honestly, if you're into this type of stuff, it's called After Virtue on virtue ethics.

[00:09:09]Um he has a passage and I'll read it to you.

[00:09:13]He says it's a thought experiment. He says, imagine that the natural sciences today were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe.

[00:09:25]A know-nothing political movement takes power and they successfully abolish science from schools and universities imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists.

[00:09:39]Later, there is a reaction against this movement and some enlightened people seek to revive science.

[00:09:50]Although they've largely forgotten what it was, all they possess are fragments.

[00:09:56]They have a knowledge of experiment They have a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance.

[00:10:07]Nobody or almost nobody realizes that what they're doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all.

[00:10:15]So, what does he say then?

[00:10:17]He says the hypothesis which I wish to advance is that the actual world which we inhabit that that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described.

[00:10:38]That today we have a lot of concepts we talk about moral concepts. Be good.

[00:10:43]Be kind.

[00:10:45]I just want to be happy.

[00:10:47]You know, I want to be successful.

[00:10:50]But we don't really have common understandings of these terms. What we possess, if this view is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme.

[00:11:01]We possess indeed simulacra of morality.

[00:11:05]We continue to use many of the key expressions, but we have very largely, if not entirely, lost our comprehension of morality.

[00:11:14]We don't have an agreed-upon understanding.

[00:11:17]And happiness is one example of this.

[00:11:20]Because when you read early writers and what they say about happiness, it's so different than the way we talk about happiness. Truly.

[00:11:28]Um So, I want to share some different usages of how the word happiness might be used.

[00:11:36]One way we could think about it is what's known as hedonism.

[00:11:40]This means what?

[00:11:42]The experience and the pursuit of pleasure.

[00:11:47]Meaning what?

[00:11:48]I just want to feel good.

[00:11:52]This is a very common modern conception of happiness.

[00:11:57]When someone says, "I'm happy." it means I feel good.

[00:12:01]I don't I'm not in any pain.

[00:12:04]I don't have any discomfort.

[00:12:06]So, I'm happy.

[00:12:09]Right? And now there's a reason why we we uh often describe ourselves in this sense of happy. There's a reason. I'll explain it later on.

[00:12:18]Another meaning for when we say happy, it's based on desire theories. I say I'm happy when what I wanted out of life, I have achieved.

[00:12:32]So, here we might say "Are you happy with your life?"

[00:12:38]There, you don't mean, "Oh yeah, I'm feeling good and I don't have pain." You might say, "Yeah, I'm happy with my life. I've I graduated. I got a job."

[00:12:45]You get it? There's a difference there.

[00:12:47]You're not talking about how you feel when it comes to pain and pleasure. No, you're talking about whether or not you're satisfied with what you've been able to accomplish in life. "I'm happy with how the project went." Huh? "I'm happy with how this has played out."

[00:13:05]Not It's not about pain and pleasure.

[00:13:08]Really, it's just about my expectations were met and fulfilled.

[00:13:13]That's another way we use the word.

[00:13:17]Now, one thing to note, these first two that we just talked about, hedonism, the idea of being pain and pleasure is what determines happy or unhappy, and the idea of getting what want, both of these are subjective.

[00:13:31]They hinge upon how you feel.

[00:13:36]Do I feel pain? Do I feel pleasure?

[00:13:39]Do I feel satisfied? Do I not feel satisfied? This is subjective.

[00:13:44]Okay?

[00:13:45]But you have a third meaning of happiness.

[00:13:49]This is something that I think most of us don't think about as really constituting happiness.

[00:13:58]Cuz the word doesn't seem to fit according to this our understanding of this third idea here.

[00:14:05]And the interesting thing is is the Quran speaks about happiness in this third expression.

[00:14:16]Are you with me?

[00:14:18]The Quran, when it speaks of happiness, the pursuit of happiness, it's talking about this.

[00:14:25]But the problem is we don't use happiness like this today.

[00:14:28]So, according to this usage, which is not a usage for us today, but in the past, happiness meant flourishing. It meant having accomplished not what you wanted to accomplish, but what was expected of you.

[00:14:52]What you were expected of you.

[00:14:55]So, that already assumes there is an expectation of you.

[00:14:59]And that when you fulfill that expectation, you lived a happy life. It sounds weird, right? Cuz we don't use the word happy that way. So, the idea that you would fulfill what was asked of you, and that would be described as happy sounds strange. And that's why we have to dissect this.

[00:15:19]Do you You agree it sounds strange to describe having fulfilled what you were meant to do as being happy or that's a happy life?

[00:15:30]Cuz what if that person went through a lot of difficulty in that life?

[00:15:35]Did the prophet have a happy life?

[00:15:40]According to the first two ideas, we might say not always. In fact, he went through a lot of pain.

[00:15:47]And maybe sometimes there were things he wanted, but they didn't play out that way. He wanted his uncle to accept Islam. His uncle did not accept Islam, Abu Talib.

[00:15:56]But did he fulfill what he was sent for and his purpose 100%?

[00:16:01]In that sense, of course, the prophet lived a happy life.

[00:16:06]Okay.

[00:16:07]So far, are you guys clear with me?

[00:16:09]I want to I want to I want to keep you with me. I don't want I don't want you to get lost.

[00:16:13]Okay.

[00:16:16]And so to further clarify what I just explained, when we say, "What is happiness?"

[00:16:22]either we're asking a value question.

[00:16:24]We're saying, "What type of life is meaningful and would benefit you or would fulfill your purpose?"

[00:16:33]That's an ethical conversation.

[00:16:36]Or when we say, "What is happiness?"

[00:16:38]we're talking about a mental state.

[00:16:41]"Happiness is when I feel pleasure or I feel excited." See, now we're describing a mental state. Now that's Now that's psychology.

[00:16:53]Now you're engaging in psychology.

[00:16:56]You know what's interesting? As lay people, when we often speak about, you know, "What is happiness?" and we answer the question, we say, "Happiness is being with good friends."

[00:17:07]We're not actually using any of these two answers.

[00:17:11]We're just talking about what tends to make us happy, the causes of happiness.

[00:17:15]We're not actually talking about what happiness is. Do you get it?

[00:17:19]That's how we usually talk anyways. It's just a point to note here.

[00:17:25]Okay.

[00:17:27]Let's pivot here for a moment and consider if we say somebody is happy, that's very different than living a happy life.

[00:17:38]Huh?

[00:17:39]When you use happy to describe a person, it has often a very different meaning than when you use happy to describe a life.

[00:17:49]Cuz when we say someone is happy, we usually mean what?

[00:17:53]A description of their inner state.

[00:17:56]A feeling.

[00:17:58]Right?

[00:17:59]That's subjective.

[00:18:02]But when we say somebody leads a happy life, life is not a feeling.

[00:18:10]Your 70 years, 80 years life that maybe God gives you, that's not a feeling.

[00:18:15]It's a whole life. It's a collection of events.

[00:18:18]That whole life cannot It's not a feeling. So then what does it mean to say it's a happy life?

[00:18:25]We mean either it was a life well lived, that's another way we talk about this. A life well lived, or perhaps we might say somebody wasted their life.

[00:18:37]What does that mean?

[00:18:39]It means that there was a standard of expectation from how they were meant to live their life and they didn't do it.

[00:18:45]They wasted it.

[00:18:47]And if they met the expectation, life well lived, a happy life.

[00:18:52]The good life.

[00:18:55]Are y'all with me on this point?

[00:18:57]And that's objective, right? Because if there's a standard that a human is meant to meet to say that they fulfilled their purpose and lived a meaningfully, well that standard is objective.

[00:19:08]I don't get to come up with it.

[00:19:10]If I do come up with it, then it's subjective again and it's not it's not an objective theory.

[00:19:18]So now, I don't really want to spend time talking about happiness as a feeling.

[00:19:25]Cuz that's not the Quranic usage. We're going to spend probably the next six to seven lectures talking about ways in which today we chase happiness as a feeling in the form of hedonism, in the form of life satisfaction, subjective notions of happiness, and how to merely understand happiness as that is deficient.

[00:19:54]To merely understand happiness as pursuing pleasure or getting what you want in life fulfilled, that that is a deficient understanding of pursuing happiness.

[00:20:13]What we really want to end up talking about at the end though is a an Islamic understanding of happiness.

[00:20:18]And that is an objective an objective description of happiness.

[00:20:24]So when we want to call a life objectively happy, we want to call a life objectively good, you need to have a measure that's fixed outside of the individual.

[00:20:36]A standard that the person cannot simply invent invent or redefine to suit themselves.

[00:20:46]And there used to be a measure.

[00:20:48]In religion there is a measure.

[00:20:50]There are expectations of how we're meant to live our lives in religion.

[00:20:56]And the early, you know, classical writers and philosophers, they also had a they adopted mainly an an objective standard.

[00:21:07]It's interesting cuz for it was virtue.

[00:21:11]The problem for a lot of them, especially the Stoics, they said that virtue is what constitutes a good life.

[00:21:20]Why?

[00:21:22]They didn't really have an argument for why.

[00:21:25]Cuz they didn't believe in God.

[00:21:27]So, they couldn't argue that God told us a virtuous life is a good life.

[00:21:33]So, they just stated it as a matter of principle.

[00:21:36]That, you know, you want to live a good life, be virtuous.

[00:21:40]And you'll find this across the writings of the Stoics. Aristotle has a similar idea.

[00:21:45]But again, Aristotle did not believe in God.

[00:21:48]But he believed in the idea that you want to live a good life, live a life of virtue.

[00:21:54]And he used a term eudaimonia, which is not happiness as a feeling.

[00:21:59]It's happiness as having lived your life in accordance with virtue. That was his understanding.

[00:22:08]What happened though? How is it that today when we talk about a happy life or a good life, we don't really talk about it in in objective terms? Most of us, whenever we talk about happiness, we talk about it almost strictly in terms of what?

[00:22:23]Feeling.

[00:22:25]How did that happen? I think it's important as Muslims to understand this.

[00:22:29]This was not by accident.

[00:22:32]We lost that standard.

[00:22:36]We lost that.

[00:22:38]And it's a relatively recent loss.

[00:22:41]What Nietzsche described as the the death of God.

[00:22:45]God is dead. Meaning what?

[00:22:47]Widespread, people don't believe in God anymore.

[00:22:50]Prior to that, especially for religious people, and if you go back about 600, 700 years ago, atheism was a really fringe idea.

[00:23:01]The vast majority of people at some level subscribed to organized religion.

[00:23:08]And this is well documented. Charles Taylor in a secular age, he talks about it.

[00:23:13]But with the enlightenment, the rejection of religion, the secular the secularization of our society, we moved away from an objective standard. The idea that there are expectations of you in life, that you're meant to fulfill a certain purpose. We moved away from that.

[00:23:34]We no longer believed in God. And that's that's the default that's the state of our our society today, right? When you meet some random stranger, you don't by default assume that they're Muslim, or sorry, religious at all.

[00:23:46]Forget Muslim. We don't you don't assume that they're religious necessarily.

[00:23:51]That's not the case in the East in many places. In the East in many countries, you might walk through the country and assume that most people here, right, believe in God.

[00:24:01]They might be Muslim, or they might be Christian, but they probably believe in God.

[00:24:05]Nowadays, you still have, you know, atheism there, too, but it's not a it's not a unreasonable assumption to make that probably, if I was to talk to somebody, they're Muslim. Probably.

[00:24:16]Here, though, that's not the case, and we know that.

[00:24:20]So, when people no longer believe in God, who previously was the standard and defined for us what a happy and good and a well-lived life looks like, when we no longer have God, we don't have that standard.

[00:24:38]So, then what do you do?

[00:24:40]You don't stop talking about happiness, right? We still believe in the idea of happiness. Our society's a testament to that. People till today will talk about happiness. I just want to be happy. I'm going to go for therapy. Just want to be happy.

[00:24:54]We're going for counseling. We just want to be happy. I want my kids to be happy.

[00:24:58]It's all around us.

[00:25:01]Right? The unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. It's built into constitutions.

[00:25:10]We talk about this all the time.

[00:25:13]But now you don't have a standard by which you can measure a happy life.

[00:25:19]And if it's no longer anchored in any transcendent, you know, transcendent purpose, then who determines what happiness is?

[00:25:29]It falls back onto the only beings left.

[00:25:32]That's us.

[00:25:33]If God is not here to decide, who decides?

[00:25:36]You and I.

[00:25:39]You and I decide. It's the will to power. We come up with it.

[00:25:44]So no one can tell me what a good life is.

[00:25:47]A good life, a happy life is simply whatever feels good to me. We don't have objective standards that we can impose.

[00:25:56]So we're left to be subjective about it.

[00:25:58]And the most subjective thing for us is how we feel.

[00:26:02]Are you with me?

[00:26:05]Um And so that's why the modern age is by necessity an age of subjective happiness.

[00:26:12]This is why all of us use happiness in a very subjective way referring to feelings.

[00:26:18]That's why we do it. That's why when you ask someone, "Are you happy?" they look at how they feel and they answer.

[00:26:24]They don't consider their life and whether or not they're living their life the way they should be and it's fulfilling its purpose or not. They don't do that.

[00:26:33]That question does not even come up.

[00:26:36]So what are we left with then?

[00:26:39]What's known as emotivism.

[00:26:42]It's the doctrine that all evaluative judgments, and more specifically all moral judgments, are nothing but expressions of preference.

[00:26:51]If I say something is good, what does that mean?

[00:26:59]See, in Islam, if we say something is good, what do we mean?

[00:27:05]It means Allah has told us this is something good.

[00:27:09]But today, if we say something is good, I think it's good that you do this. What is that What are we doing?

[00:27:15]We're just expressing a preference. It's my subjective preference.

[00:27:21]I think it's good that you know, men do X Y Z and women do X Y Z. Okay, fine. You think that. That's your opinion. That's your subjective feeling.

[00:27:33]That's your That's your morality.

[00:27:36]That's what we're left to do. Everyone just states what they feel.

[00:27:39]See, with factual judgments, if if you have a standard, you can always take the the statement and and compare it. Does it meet the standard? Right? Like And if it doesn't meet the standard of what good is, you say this is not good.

[00:27:52]Why is this not good? It doesn't meet the standard. If there's no standard, I don't know how to judge this.

[00:27:58]So, the only way I can judge this is looking at how I feel.

[00:28:02]I don't like it. Since I don't like it, it's bad.

[00:28:07]That's how children are, by the way, right?

[00:28:10]That's how children are.

[00:28:12]You try to tell children, you should do this. It's good for you. Eat your vegetables. No.

[00:28:19]No, vegetables are good for you, nutrition-wise. They don't care about that standard. For them, the judge of what is good and bad is what tastes good.

[00:28:28]All right?

[00:28:29]How many of us have not graduated from that perspective?

[00:28:33]We're still operating from good in the world is what feels good.

[00:28:37]And bad in the world, evil in the world, is what feels bad.

[00:28:42]Interesting thing is is as you mature, you start to realize how how this idea is.

[00:28:47]Cuz so much of what we desire requires us to experience and tolerate what?

[00:28:53]Some degree of discomfort.

[00:28:56]And so we can't we can't really continue to operate with this morality of pleasure equals good and pain equals bad. You can't.

[00:29:06]But again, without a standard, you're left to to judge everything by that.

[00:29:14]So then what what what what comes up out as a result?

[00:29:18]We have a few descriptions I want to share with you. I find this really interesting.

[00:29:23]We become very expressive individualists.

[00:29:28]What does this mean?

[00:29:30]We often believe that each of us will find our meaning by giving expression to our feelings and desires.

[00:29:38]That for me to be happy, I need to live an authentic life that's true to me.

[00:29:45]And that's why we have expressions like, you know, your truth, speak your truth, live your truth.

[00:29:51]The idea of like your truth would be considered an oxymoron in the past. How could like No, there's al haq. There is the truth with a capital T.

[00:30:02]But today, you don't have truth with a capital T, speak your truth means speak your preference.

[00:30:10]Whatever you feel. That's the that's the logical consequence and what follows from a rejection of any standard.

[00:30:18]So even happiness, if you think about it, without a standard, happiness is whatever you want it to be.

[00:30:27]Happiness is for me to express my life in accordance with what I feel.

[00:30:31]And that's why if anything inhibits it, I'm unhappy.

[00:30:36]Man, and Islam feels very, you know, inhibiting. What, I just can't eat what I want? Ugh.

[00:30:43]Man, it's so it's so miserable. How could you be religious and be and be happy?

[00:30:48]This is constant constraints. Can't do this, can't talk to them, can't go there, you know, can't look at that.

[00:30:54]Like, bro.

[00:30:58]Because we are expressive individualists. We We believe our happiness lies in maximizing our expression of what we want and feel.

[00:31:08]We also have what's described as the psychological human, the psychological man. Meaning what?

[00:31:15]That we find identity not in our outward duties, what's expected of us.

[00:31:21]Cuz anyway, who's anybody to expect anything of us?

[00:31:25]Right?

[00:31:26]Who is anybody to expect anything from us? They're just a human being. Why should I do what they want? Instead, I'm going to turn inwards and seek my own personal happiness, psychological happiness.

[00:31:42]Right?

[00:31:43]Eat, pray, love, right? Do your thing.

[00:31:47]Turn inwards.

[00:31:49]This is a reflection of that idea.

[00:31:52]To be happy is not to adhere to any standard. It's turn inwards.

[00:31:56]What do I want? Put yourself first. What do I want? And if I could do what I want, I'll be happy.

[00:32:05]Then you have the therapeutic self.

[00:32:08]The culture where the only moral criterion is whether or not it increases your feeling of well-being.

[00:32:16]Anything that increases your feeling of well-being is good.

[00:32:22]Anything that takes away from that is evil.

[00:32:26]And that's where we start to you know, therapize and we start to re- completely re- reject any responsibility or or duty towards anyone outside.

[00:32:40]Oh, you you're bothering me? Cut you off.

[00:32:43]Therapeutic self.

[00:32:45]Right? You caused this for me? Get out of here, out of my life.

[00:32:48]And we just cut people off, get rid of people, we get rid of this I it's causing me you know salah it's causing me anxiety I'm not praying.

[00:32:54]Everything that cause any discomfort get rid of it.

[00:32:57]Cuz the goal becomes happiness is reduced to what? Feeling better.

[00:33:04]That is the moral kind of compass.

[00:33:07]Whatever guides me to feeling better.

[00:33:10]Um Charles Taylor he gives two examples that we might look at the world uh from these two examples. One is that we might look at the at the world as a place that has a given order and a given meaning and our job is just to discover what that order and meaning is.

[00:33:30]Religious people of of today and of the past always have viewed the world from this lens.

[00:33:35]That there's a God who created the world.

[00:33:38]Since he created the world, he determines what the best way to live in this world is. He sends down guidance.

[00:33:45]We got to figure out what that is and then live according to it. And if we do, we lived a good life.

[00:33:52]And if not, we lived a poor life no matter how good it felt.

[00:33:57]But there's another idea which is a lot of what you see today. The world is your oyster. Meaning what?

[00:34:04]That this world is just raw material.

[00:34:06]And you can create your meaning and purpose.

[00:34:12]And if you could just create your meaning and purpose correctly in a way that, you know, satisfies you, you'll be happy.

[00:34:22]Do you get that?

[00:34:26]And so I remember, you know, there's somebody I know um they had bills to play pay. They had like financial obligations.

[00:34:41]But they kept turning down jobs.

[00:34:44]Cuz, you know, it's not my calling. It's not my passion.

[00:34:51]What do you say to them?

[00:34:52]Where did this notion come from? It comes from this idea that I get to determine my own happiness. So, if something doesn't align with it, I'm just going to reject it.

[00:35:03]Even if it means the failure of my obligations.

[00:35:07]Right? So, because, you know, obligations?

[00:35:11]From who?

[00:35:14]From who? Well, I have to pay my rent?

[00:35:16]No.

[00:35:17]There are people around me, Muslims around me, who can give zakat and help me and and help me pay my bills.

[00:35:24]This is what This is what their perspective.

[00:35:26]Their perspective was, I'm going to keep turning down jobs that I don't like, that I think are, you know, not aligned with me, uh because, you know, I need to pursue what makes me happy and how am I going to pay my bills? Well, people are going to pay, you know, zakat to me and I will I will survive until I find my passion and my calling.

[00:35:47]I mean, you you see there's there's there's a major disconnect here.

[00:35:53]So, we're going to talk quite a bit about ways in which today we still see happiness as something related to our feeling, how society promotes that as well, pushes us to pursue that.

[00:36:10]Um but, you know, towards the end then, you know, maybe the last two, three lectures we will focus exclusively on an Islamic conception of what a happy or a good life might look like.

[00:36:26]Now, I want I want to talk a bit about the pursuit.

[00:36:29]So far we've spoken about happiness and different ways that we use the word and different understandings of happiness.

[00:36:35]But then this idea of pursuing happiness.

[00:36:40]It's interesting because to the pursuit of happiness.

[00:36:46]Do you pursue a feeling?

[00:36:49]How do you pursue a feeling?

[00:36:52]And and and so one way to think about it and here I'm going to draw upon Aristotle.

[00:37:00]He writes and this is a translation, "Every skill and every inquiry and likewise every action and every choice is thought to aim at some good.

[00:37:11]This is why the good has been well described as that at which all things aim." What does this mean?

[00:37:17]This means everything we do in life we do it for a reason.

[00:37:23]We're trying to accomplish something by it.

[00:37:26]We could be deeply mistaken as to whether or not what we're doing will yield the result we're hoping for.

[00:37:33]We could be deeply mistaken, right?

[00:37:37]I just want to be happy. So what am I going to do?

[00:37:40]I'm going to eat some really unhealthy food.

[00:37:43]And I eat it and in the moment it feels good and afterwards I feel guilty. So now I feel terrible.

[00:37:50]It did not yield the outcome I was hoping for.

[00:37:54]So we sometimes take actions hoping for an outcome but it doesn't lead there. The point though is what?

[00:38:03]People do adopt and and and choose things because they believe that there's some outcome that's makes choosing this action worthwhile.

[00:38:14]Are you all with me?

[00:38:16]We make a decision thinking it'll be worthwhile. At the end we feel that was a terrible idea. I should never have done that. I really regret making that decision. Well, why'd you do it?

[00:38:26]It's like because when I went to do it, I I thought it would turn out differently.

[00:38:30]Everything that we do, it's aims at something.

[00:38:35]That's why in Islam we talk about intention, your niya.

[00:38:38]Why do you do Why'd you come here tonight?

[00:38:42]And everybody will have a reason that brought them here. Like you You didn't have to be here.

[00:38:49]Right? Perhaps you were in much more comfortable environment at home sitting on the couch, relaxed. But you got up.

[00:38:56]You got ready. You got in your car. You drove here. You chose to You chose You're choosing to sit here.

[00:39:02]Through philosophy 101 right here. Like, what are we doing? You chose to be here.

[00:39:07]Cuz there's some outcome you were hoping for. There's something you think that makes it worthwhile.

[00:39:13]Anyone want to share what that intention was?

[00:39:19]Yeah.

[00:39:22]To get close to Allah. Okay. Why do you want to get close to Allah?

[00:39:28]To have a good life. Why do you want a good life?

[00:39:31]You're going to go to Jannah. Why do you want to go to Jannah? You see how you could keep asking why?

[00:39:36]So, man, you went you went right to it, but like I thought people were going to say to learn.

[00:39:42]And I'd be like, okay, why do you want to learn?

[00:39:45]What do you What are you going to accomplish by learning?

[00:39:48]And you'll say, well, maybe I could be a better Muslim. Why do you want to be a better Muslim?

[00:39:53]And then it's please Allah, go to Jannah. Why do you want to go to Jannah?

[00:39:58]Cuz I want to have the ultimate good life.

[00:40:01]Which is Jannah, right? The ultimate good life. And then it's like, why do you want to have the ultimate good life?

[00:40:07]I want to feel good.

[00:40:09]Why do you want to feel good? Like at some point it stops.

[00:40:13]You can't go further. Right? That's like your core intention, your core niyah.

[00:40:21]And so he says that Now suppose there is some end of everything that we do that we want it not for something else, we want it for its own sake.

[00:40:33]And for the sake of which we want everything else.

[00:40:37]That must be the highest good.

[00:40:42]So Aristotle was arguing that we all pursue something. When I get up and I go to work in the morning, I go to work for a reason. What's that reason?

[00:40:50]Want to earn money. Why do I want to earn money?

[00:40:54]So I can do what?

[00:40:55]Pay for things. Why do you want to pay for things? So I can I can feel good and my family can feel good. Why do you want to feel good? At some point it's like I just want to live a happy life.

[00:41:07]Why do you want to live a happy life?

[00:41:09]That's not For Aristotle, that was the highest good. You just want People wanted to be happy.

[00:41:14]And everything was done ultimately, when you trace it back, it's like it'll it'll give me happiness.

[00:41:22]He called it eudaimonia, but it happiness.

[00:41:26]And uh think about it, even revenge. Why do you take revenge?

[00:41:33]Nobody will take revenge saying they believe it's good, usually.

[00:41:38]Like it's like a moral good. They'll say what?

[00:41:42]It'll make me feel good, right? Taking revenge will make me feel good, and maybe that's my highest good. My highest good is me feeling good.

[00:41:53]And so you have to investigate this question of ultimately, what are you seeking?

[00:42:00]Through your actions. We say happiness.

[00:42:02]What does that mean?

[00:42:05]So we want to talk a little bit about virtues here for a moment. To go back to that third idea.

[00:42:11]All of us and I I the language on the slide can be a little confusing, but I want you to bear with me here.

[00:42:17]All of us as human beings, we are who we are.

[00:42:21]We're born.

[00:42:23]We have our human nature.

[00:42:25]We desire things. We don't like certain things.

[00:42:28]Uh we feel good about certain things. We don't feel good. Okay. We have certain tendencies. Some of us get angry really quick. Some of us are more patient. Some of us are very impulsive.

[00:42:38]Some of us are just really quick. We just have to constantly rush. Some of us are slower. Uh we talk more, talk less.

[00:42:45]We have all these differences. Okay.

[00:42:47]That's our untutored human nature.

[00:42:51]But then there's this I the idea that not human beings as they are, but who humans could be. And today we still use this language.

[00:43:01]We say what? The best version of yourself.

[00:43:06]The idea is you're you're not born the best version of yourself, right? You're born whoever you are.

[00:43:12]But you want to become the best version of yourself. What's the path?

[00:43:17]In the past, it was called ethics, virtue.

[00:43:20]Through adopting virtue, you would become the best version of yourself.

[00:43:27]And that makes sense when you understand how they understood a good life. A good life was lived with virtue. So if you could learn virtue and develop virtue, you would live a good life.

[00:43:39]Today, that's not really how we think about it.

[00:43:42]For you to become your best self, best version of yourself, what do you have to do?

[00:43:48]What's the understanding today, guys? I want to hear what you guys think. When people say this today, right? You are who you are, but like to become the best version of yourself, what's the path to do that today?

[00:44:04]Live your potential. Okay. Sure.

[00:44:08]What else? Yeah.

[00:44:12]Go through some struggle. Which struggle? How do you know which struggle to do?

[00:44:17]Your best version of yourself. Are y'all the best versions of yourselves?

[00:44:27]Life satisfaction. A lot of us believe, yes, that the best version of ourselves is the one it's it's the version of us that accomplishes everything that we seek to accomplish.

[00:44:39]So, when you when you say perhaps you're going to say, "No, I don't think I am the best version of myself." I would ask you, what would it take to become the best version?

[00:44:47]And usually you're going to mention a bunch of things you haven't accomplished yet. Well, I would you know, earn my first million and live in a mansion. And you're like we have a bunch of things that we're going to say.

[00:44:59]That's not how they they understood it in the past, though.

[00:45:02]It wasn't tied to materialistic possessions or, you know, uh societal expectations and standards.

[00:45:10]It was virtue.

[00:45:13]All right, so we're going to talk about that. It's important to think when we lose in the past and in in Islam, especially, your best version is what?

[00:45:24]What's the best version of a Muslim?

[00:45:28]The Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam.

[00:45:30]He is the best version of a human being.

[00:45:33]So, we get closest to the best version of ourselves, Islamically speaking, when we get close to that standard of the Prophet Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam.

[00:45:43]Do you get me?

[00:45:46]Cuz we have a standard.

[00:45:48]When you have when you remove the standard, you determine what the best version is and it's very subjective about what it takes to get there.

[00:46:01]Today, I think as as a wider society we don't have a standard that's objective.

[00:46:07]We have societally imposed standards.

[00:46:12]No?

[00:46:13]Societally imposed standards today which say you are your best ver- the best version of yourself when you graduate from this university. Oh, you didn't graduate from there?

[00:46:24]Okay, you're acceptable but you're not the best version.

[00:46:30]Right? Oh you work there and not not in those companies? Ah, you're not the best. Oh, you don't earn that much? Oh, okay, you're acceptable but you're not the best version. You still got work to do.

[00:46:40]Work harder.

[00:46:41]Right? Improve your skills and maybe you'll get to that place where you'll be the best version.

[00:46:47]We've removed an objective standard that was religious, that was rooted in God, and now we allow society to impose.

[00:46:57]We have a lot of cultural standards.

[00:47:01]And when your societal standards don't align with your cultural standards, you run into a lot of issues cuz you do everything society tells you but then your culture's not happy.

[00:47:11]But you don't know how to make a round roti.

[00:47:15]You're not the best version of yourself, yo.

[00:47:18]Master's degree, who cares?

[00:47:20]Right? Like you are fighting, you know, for a a noble cause in the world and standing up for the oppressed. Yeah, but the roti's trying is a triangle.

[00:47:31]It's like, what are we doing here?

[00:47:34]Right? The standards.

[00:47:36]The standards are oppressive.

[00:47:39]So when we lose the ultimate end and purpose as to what makes a good life, we don't even know the path towards it.

[00:47:49]And ethics and virtues loses its meaning now.

[00:47:54]People don't have an any motivation to be virtuous that as much anymore.

[00:48:00]Right? People don't have it. Why why are people generous today? The government has to incentivize them. Well, there are tax benefits to giving charity. And if there weren't, what are you hoping for? As Muslims, you say, "I hope for a reward from Allah, even if there's no tax benefits, whatever." You can say that. But a non-Muslim, why give charity? I worked hard for that money.

[00:48:23]They just need to work harder. Let them get that.

[00:48:26]Are you with me? Why lower gaze? Why should you lower your gaze?

[00:48:31]If you're not Muslim, you won't understand that idea.

[00:48:33]That's like a religious concept.

[00:48:36]Don't backbite. Why not?

[00:48:39]Why can't I speak ill about people behind their backs?

[00:48:42]It's not illegal.

[00:48:44]And if there's no objective standard telling me that, it makes me feel good to sit there and vent about my co-worker, so I'm going to backbite about them for 45 minutes in the lunch break.

[00:48:55]That's fine. That's best version of me.

[00:48:58]Do you get it?

[00:49:00]We've lost this today cuz we don't have an understanding of a good life.

[00:49:07]Happiness for us is all based on feeling.

[00:49:10]And so, inshallah, in the coming weeks, we're going to be speaking a little bit about some of these ideas that surround happiness. The idea of happiness being found in pleasure, happiness being found in success, happiness being found in self-sufficiency, in comfort.

[00:49:27]We'll talk a lot about actually positive psychology.

[00:49:30]Cuz this is a very interesting idea now is today we have a movement that seeks to try to delineate what happiness is purely from a psychological approach.

[00:49:43]Right? But there cuz you have what's called the World Happiness Report.

[00:49:48]Y'all ever heard of that?

[00:49:50]Where they measure countries, which countries are the happiest countries?

[00:49:55]And so, you know, recently Finland, Denmark were rated amongst the happiest countries. But here's the question you have to ask, right?

[00:50:04]Is how do you determine?

[00:50:07]What is the standard?

[00:50:09]You best know they're not using any objective religious standard or any virtue standard.

[00:50:15]It's all self-report. How happy and satisfied are you? And people give their marking, you know, like I feel this this happy or whatever.

[00:50:24]This I this [snorts] how satisfied I am with my life.

[00:50:28]And accordingly, that's how they gauge happiness.

[00:50:32]So, we're going to talk about different theories that are around us. Um and hopefully, inshallah, we can uh we can then maybe clarify some of the maybe misconceptions we have about happiness and what we what we've been conditioned to believe is the pursuit of happiness.

[00:50:54]Inshallah. All right, jazakallahu khair.

[00:50:57]Uh wasallallahu wasallam wabarak ala sayyidina Muhammad wa alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in. Walhamdulillah rabbil alamin.

[00:51:06]Uh just a one quick announcement from Muhammad, inshallah.

[00:51:10]>> Assalam alaykum, everyone.

[00:51:12]>> Alaykum assalam.

[00:51:12]>> Um just a quick pitch. Um you know, masha Allah Ustadh Uthman Sheikh Uthman says he's not an Ustadh.

[00:51:20]Um I think he's engaged us on a lot of really important topics, and it's really shaped, I think, our youth programming here at ISNA. So, we're looking to bring this to uh the upcoming Youth X conference, which is happening this upcoming weekend. So, I just really wanted to invite you all to attend. It's going to be a two-day conference / convention, where we're going to have Sheikh Uthman, of course, uh amongst a lot of other scholars will be diving into these topics uh in topics that are not discussed enough in our community and addressing a lot of the challenges that Muslim youth are facing today.

[00:51:52]We're also going to have workshops, we're going to have film screenings, also going to have screening of the World Cup final, symposium of Muslim startups, advocacy groups, nonprofits, and a bazaar as well of Muslim youth businesses. So, this is upcoming weekend right here, so the 18th and 19th, inshallah.

[00:52:12]You can get your tickets if you go to isnacanada.com/youthx and you get a 20% off if you use the code thrive.

[00:52:20]For all of our loyal thrive attendees.

[00:52:24]So, that's it. Jazakallah khair. Really really I hope to see you there. Again, that's isnacanada.com/youthx.

[00:52:31]We hope to see you there and it will be a wonderful convention, inshallah.

[00:52:34]Jazakallah khair.

[00:52:35]>> Jazakallah khair.