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The GRID study was conducted in Pune, India, using the Hindi language. 122 participants filled out questionnaires containing 144 questions on the GRID questionnaire. Results revealed a general distinction on the VALENCE dimension between positive and negative emotions. New evidence on compassion and contentment revealed these as distinctive in terms of evaluation and social relevance. Finer distinctions were not found; possible causes relating to participant characteristics of unfamiliarity and lack of understanding are discussed in the chapter. Methodological issues in administration such as technicalities and translation are mentioned. These will be useful directives to future researchers in the field.

This chapter examines the two remaining threats to the age of contentment: unpopular military action and a revolt of the underclass. Any military venture almost receives strong popular approval in the short run, with the citizenry rallying to the flag and to the soldiers who engaged in combat. More widespread wars, such as World War I and World War II, have had adverse consequences. The chapter first considers how military power could be a threat to the culture of contentment in the future before discussing the threat posed by the underclass in the urban slums, along with the possibility of an underclass revolt. It then looks at the reaction of the community of contentment to the miseries and violence of the urban slums and the probable reaction if the violence becomes more extreme. Finally, it explains how recession and depression could exacerbate the culture of contentment.

Foot considers the view that practical rationality is nothing but the pursuit of happiness, which constitutes an objection to the account of practical rationality developed in the preceding chapters. Foot considers the different ways happiness is predicated of human beings, distinguishing happiness as humanity's good from enjoyment and contentment. She argues that the common view that happiness is a state of mind, detachable from beliefs about special objects, is in error because happiness does not have the same logical grammar as words like excitement or pleasure. Foot concludes that happiness is a protean concept, appearing in many different forms; however, happiness may be thought of as humanity's good in such a way that combining happiness with wickedness is ruled out a priori. This understanding of happiness as humanity's good is close to Aristotle's eudaimonia, insofar as it means operation in conformity with the virtues; as Foot understands the term, happiness is the enjoyment of good things, meaning the pursuit and attainment of right ends.

This chapter examines the connection between living well and an individual's assessment of his achievements. To understand living well, you need to distinguish between a person's achievements and his assessment of those achievements. Emphasizing this distinction goes back in the history of ideas most famously to the Greek thinker Epicurus, who believes that happiness is found in pleasure. The ultimate aim of philosophy is to provide a guide to living well, maximizing pleasures and minimizing pains, but accepting such pains as lead to greater pleasures and rejecting such pleasures as lead to greater pains. The result is a tranquil life that avoids extravagance. Virtues such as temperance or courage are prized, because they lead to pleasure. Central to Epicurus's thought is the distinction between a successful life and a satisfying life. He recognizes the erroneous reasoning that success implies satisfaction, known as “the Richard Cory fallacy.” This chapter suggests that anyone, regardless of wealth or fame, can obtain the contentment crucial to living well by seeking pleasure with prudence.

This chapter examines the connection between satisfaction and happiness. Satisfied people are content with their lot. They have a favorable impression of their lives and do not suffer excessively from anxiety, alienation, frustration, disappointment, or depression. They may face problems but overall see more positives than negatives. The crucial point is that how one achieves satisfaction differs from person to person. Satisfaction does not necessarily depend on achieving one's goals, but finding satisfaction is not easy. Epicurus and Koheleth agree that the key to satisfaction lies within yourself, because you cannot control the events outside you. Contentment and success may sometimes go together, but, given the choice, would you rather die unhappy with many credits, or happy without much acclaim? Both Epicurus and Koheleth make the case for choosing the latter option.

This chapter examines the role of large corporations in financial devastation that has become especially severe in the years of contentment. Central to the economics of contentment is the general commitment to laissez faire. This is an attitude, the belief that it is in the nature of things, and especially of economic life, that all works out for the best in the end. However, there are forces under the broad and benign cover of laissez faire and the specific license of the market that ruin the very institutions comprising the system, such as the business firms. The chapter considers how large corporations contribute to financial devastation, focusing on the adverse effects of mergers and acquisitions. More specifically, it explores how mergers and acquisitions lead to self-destruction of the culture of contentment. It also discusses the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s as an exercise in financial devastation.

The author tells of the new friendship he made during the new semester with a boy called Jerome McGill, a black boy. He describes Jerome's life as well as his attitude. He also tells of their adventures together particularly their experience of disco. He describes his feelings and how he perceived himself during this time when he met new friends at the disco. He explains his realizations that with Jerome's help, he could be who he wanted to be, that Jerome was an aid in this process, and through Jerome, he had a feeling of contentment.

Chapter 2 explores Jim Crow-era New Orleans in The Little Foxes. Bette Davis plays Regina, the grasping white matriarch who allows her husband to die rather than to suffer financial stasis. The actress embellished her character’s facial pallor against the wishes of director William Wyler. Davis’s Kabuki persona evoked the white supremacist regime afoot in the film’s Redemption-era setting. Two brief all-Black cast scenes illuminate the film’s political context. The first depicts the workings of Regina’s family cotton business. Hiding underneath the factory loading dock, a Black child snatches tufts of cotton as they float past. The Black foreman screams at the boy, who dashes out from the platform, runs off screen, and then rushes back to grab the dropped bag of pilfered cotton. The second encounter features Regina’s servants, interrupted from dinner by a band of Black children. Showcasing Delores Hurlic (see also Chapter 3), this unsung child star conveys a menacing quality as she demands that the African American housekeeper distribute to her fellow waifs leftovers from Regina’s “high-toned” party for a visiting northern industrialist. The scene exposes white phantasmagoria about so-called “contented” Black lives at the turn of the century.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main theme of the book and details the contents of the chapters contained in it. It presents data from research on the connection between having a sense of well-being and economic growth, both for individuals and the society as a whole. The general consensus that a sense of well-being does not arise from objective material possessions but from subjective resources and social comparisons is highlighted in this chapter, including the disillusionment of people with capitalism and people's increased concern over the damage that excessive consumption is causing to society and the environment. This chapter discusses as well the move of societies and individuals to a post-consumer ethos that emerged against the backdrop of inequality. As part of this simplifying movement, individuals sought means of improving the quality of their own lives, and of those around them, through adopting alternative methods to those espoused by the economic system.

This Introduction sets up the basic tension with regard to the limiting-transcending feature of human life: it is part of our potential greatness, since it is how we can realize what is best in our humanity, but it is also part of our potential downfall, as it can lead to dehumanization and failure to attain important human goods and to prevent human evils. It then introduces the idea of “limiting virtues,” which recognize the proper place of limits in human life, and it identifies the limiting virtues that are the focus—namely, humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty—and states that they will be explored in relation to four kinds of limits: existential limits, moral limits, political limits, and economic limits. It also states that this account of the limiting virtues is meant as a counter to autonomy-centered and consequentialist approaches to ethics. Finally, a brief description of each of the limiting virtues is provided, which also functions as an overview of the book.

This chapter offers a re-appropriation for Christianity of the concept of God’s erotic yearning prevalent in early theological works by interweaving in an unconventional manner a dialog held primarily between Denys the Areopagite on the God who desires and St. Thomas Aquinas on the God who enjoys creation. The figure of an ecstatic lover who seeks enjoyment with creation in amorous ways serves as an initial sketch of the Beloved Lover whose enjoyment stems from stirring all things toward greater forms of enjoyment. Challenging the classical model of divine happiness which contentment is solely of Godself, this chapter’s notion of divine yearning begins to break free from the self-encircling motions of absolute per se subsistence by offering the start of the possibility of a God-cosmos relationship that is intimately and mutually enjoyable.

The GRID paradigm was employed to compare the differences between the conceptualizations of American English terms contentment and happiness with those of their respective Polish counterparts, zadowolenie and szczęście. Consistent with the prediction that the basic emotion status of happiness would restrict cross-linguistic variation, the sole difference between szczęście and happiness was the higher ratings of the former over the latter on the AROUSAL features. As expected, there were more cross-linguistic differences between zadowolenie and contentment, with zadowolenie being more associated with relatively more positive VALENCE, and higher POWER, AROUSAL and NOVELTY than contentment. This pattern of results is consistent with dictionary definitions showing that zadowolenie is characterized by elements of satisfaction and pleasure. The relatively closer proximity of zadowolenie to pleasure is supported by further analyses on the GRID data showing higher correlations between zadowolenie and szczęście than between contentment and happiness.

This book examines what it calls the political economy of contentment. It argues that the fortunate and the favored do not contemplate and respond to their own longer-run well-being. Rather, they respond to immediate comfort and contentment. In the so-called capitalist countries, the controlling contentment and resulting belief is now that of the many, not just of the few. It operates under the guise of democracy, albeit a democracy not of all citizens but of those who, in defense of their social and economic advantage, actually go to the polls. This chapter discusses how economic life undergoes a constant process of change, and, in consequence, the same action or event occurring at different times can lead to very different results. It considers some examples throughout history, such as the economic ideas of the Physiocrats in France, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

This chapter discusses the social dimensions of contentment. In the past, many people in the United States experienced a certain sense of unease, of troubled conscience and associated discomfort when contemplating those who did not share the good fortune of the fortunate. During the time of Ronald Reagan, Americans were being rewarded as they so richly deserved. The chapter first considers the role of the government in subsidizing the well-being of Americans before exploring how the economically and socially fortunate who used to be a small minority have become a majority, not of all citizens but of those who actually vote. It suggests that self-regard is the dominant—indeed the controlling— mood of the Contented Majority. It also examines the most important characteristics of the contented majority, including its attitude toward time, a highly selective view of the role of government, and tolerance of pronounced differences in incomes.

This chapter examines the role of taxation in the culture of contentment. In the age of contentment, macroeconomic policy has come to center not on tax policy but on monetary policy. Higher interest rates, it is hoped, will curb inflation without posing a threat to people of good fortune. Those with money to lend, the economically well-endowed rentier class, will thus be rewarded. The chapter first considers the role of monetary policy in the entirely plausible and powerfully adverse attitude toward taxation in the community of contentment before discussing the relationship between taxation and public services, and between taxation and public expenditures. It shows that public services and taxation have disparate effects on the Contented Electoral Majority on the one hand, and on the less affluent underclass on the other.

This chapter examines how the bureaucratic syndrome is influenced by the pursuit of contentment. One of the most ubiquitous features of life in the late twentieth century is the complicated and multilayered organization. As economic and public operations become more complex, it is necessary to unite varying skills, different experience, different education, resulting specialization and different degrees of intelligence. The chapter first provides an overview of the bureaucratic syndrome before discussing how modern organization cultivates acceptance of what comfortably exists in the age of contentment. It then explores how the role of thought is diminished in the bureaucratic syndrome and goes on to describe a large organization's sense of common purpose. It also looks at the immunity of corporations to the adverse impact of bureaucracy and concludes with an assessment of the private sector as a form of escape from the bureaucratic syndrome.

This chapter examines the ability of economics to accommodate its view of economic process, instruction and recommended public action to contentment. It begins with a discussion of the broad commitment to the doctrine of laissez faire as economic accommodation, arguing that it is general but not a confining force in the culture of contentment. It then considers how the most serious general threat to contentment arises from the intrinsic tendency of capitalism to instability—to recession or depression. It also explores three lines of government intervention in economics: fiscal policy, monetary policy, and direct restraint on costs. The chapter distinguishes between monetary policy and monetarism, the latter of which used to have a prominent role in the political economy of contentment.