AN EVENT such as the Gala for Music Suppressed by the Third Reich is an activity essential to enriching student life. At such an event, a student can learn the values upon which a fulfilling life is founded. When we are forced to contemplate the suffering of others, and how life abounded in concentration camps despite hardship and censorship, we see that we are happiest when we focus outside of our own wants and needs. It is not that selflessness is not a value in our society, but in everyday life it unfortunately must compete for our time with our other goals and desires. Students can find joy in their lives by de-emphasizing their own pursuit of material wealth and applying lessons learned from the Gala.
The inward focus that most distracts people from others' needs is the desire to show material prosperity, or pursuing money, goods or symbols of wealth not for comfort or enjoyment, but for an outward demonstration meant to attract acknowledgement of one's success.
Students must avoid a narrow view of mere self-interest. If students only lived to be happy, they would share their privileges with the disadvantaged, investing in the true source of joy - other people. The truth is that some children are born into the world with less opportunity for a high quality education. Some adult role models don't place importance on knowledge and advancement. The wealth we spend purely for the show of our own success would better be spent on spreading the comfort that belongings afford. In giving this way, the privileged can share their happiness in order to be happy themselves.
Those honored at Saturday's Gala embodied the quality of shared happiness. By continuing to create art in concentration camps, the Jewish composers communicated their joy by sharing their talents, without knowing that their work would ever reach the outside world. The composers' works prove how the nearness of death intensified the essence of life. They poured their talents onto the score to share the joy of music with the community.
The concentration camp is an isolated microcosm community from which we can draw life lessons. Looking at sample groups can make ideas more personal and therefore more practical.
For instance, some economics professors refer to an island economy to make abstract economic theories clearer. An understanding of common principles, such as fairness, rationality and profit maximization helps people learn how to use money for the end of happiness.
In the transformation to the larger world, the principles have been misapplied and people have lost the concept of true happiness. Over time, material success has ceased to be a means to happiness; it is not even co-equal with happiness. Instead, personal wealth has been elevated at the expense of happiness. Many Americans are less likely to help out their neighbors than to seize an opportunity to show their wealth. Some people would use pay raises to install backyard pools, when a poor child in the city becomes a restaurant dishwasher because he can't afford college. People don't make this decision in pursuit of happiness, but in a bitter attempt to hold on to their prestigious image.
People's behavior is inconsistent because they value those with whom they have relationships over strangers. Parents don't typically leave sons or daughters behind because they are less productive than other young people they know. Love and charity are the backbone of happiness within the small community of family. When those in concentration camps were nearing an end to their lives, efficiency and rationality were not top priorities; love and devotion to one another were. Somewhere in human reason, priorities changed to include caring for the whole society.
People's lives would be drastically different if they knew they lived on an island separated from the audience called society. They would act to maximize their happiness by investing much more time in other people, not in their own show of wealth. The things that they owned would be for practical use or comfort, and anything else would be shared to make those around them feel that same comfort.
Sometimes it takes an event as drastic as the Holocaust to make individuals justify the way they achieve happiness. Attending the Gala, reading about the plight of the poor and studying and the needs of the world are only the first steps in promoting awareness. For true happiness, students must change their lives by focusing their priorities outside of themselves.
(Matt West is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
Read More
PARTING SHOT: No man is an island
By Ava MacBlane | 2 days agoRetirement, as you can tell, has been treating me well. When people ask me now if I miss it, I laugh and tell them some things I definitely don't miss. But I don't always get to tell them about the things I really do miss.
PARTING SHOT: You never know unless you try
By Lexi Baker | 2 days agoMy time at the University was shaped by the people who showed me grace and kindness and by those who had confidence in me, even when I struggled to have it in myself.
PARTING SHOT: A love letter to Cav Daily and Connection
By Ava Proehl | 3 days agoMy time here taught me to look for the genuine, human connection in every moment.
