Happiness: Ayn Rand, Karl Marx and a man called Narayan

Ayn Rand must be turning in her grave. To be equated with Marx in the same context will incur her wrath and god knows she had some anger in her. But much that she would hate to hear it, she and Marx were not too different, both made an assumption, a terrible assumption! They assumed that the world would be ideal if their philosphy was followed! The mistake was that their path could be only followed in an ideal world...A paradox!!!

The foundation for their philosophy, any philosophy of life is the purpose of it. What exactly do we live for is a cliche question which has been asked my every man, woman and child(to borrow Erich Segal,excellent book I must say!) at some(many) points in life. I wont attempt to go into the futility of life or the glories of it. I am not interested in understanding the origin and purpose of life. I as always will make an assumption and work my thoughts on the basis of those assumptions.

I will assume that happiness is the purpose of life. This assumption is the easiest one and although certainly not easily defensible(as all other assumptions on the purpose of life) is an assumption that many illustrious souls have made before me. So, if happiness is the purpose of life, how best do we reach it? Is not imperitive that its purpose is always met to make a life worth living?

Of the many people from Socrates and the Greek philosophers to Confucious and Kautilya , from Voltaire and Hobbs to Marx and Ayn Rand, a whole bunch of extraordinary personalities have tried to identify the purpose of life and the ways it could be realised. Most(I am tempted to say all) assume happiness as the purpose directly or indirectly of life. Although none of their arguments are irrefutable, all of them are certainly persuasive and extra ordinary. I have however always been drawn to Rand and in this attraction have also realised how much Marx was close to Rand. I know this is a controversial statement and I will come with a separate blog to put forward my arguments in that regard.

Sticking to the issue of happiness, both Marx and Rand provide paths to reach happiness. One believes that individual happiness is more important than anything else and the other believes that in the larger happiness of the Soceity lies the happiness of every man. Ultimately both are the same. Individual happiness of every man means social happiness and vice versa. But the paradox is that both the paths would only work in an ideal world.

So how do we achieve the purpose of life? That answer is provided by an unassuming author now dead who never wrote a single book on philosophy. His works were surprisingly short and always dealt with human emotions and very human and real to life charectors. His name was R.K Narayan and his contribution to philosophy would never ever be recognised except by a small minority.
What was R.K Narayan's philosophy? His philosophy was that human happiness lies in the simplicity of the emotion. There is no purpose in life but to live and happiness comes from each and every emotion. Anger, fear, victory, defeat, laughter, tears for all makes happiness even more precious and magnified. Hence for Narayan living was a penance and a life well lived a purpose. His books often deal with charectors which are grey and very real to life. Almost all of his writings are set in the fictional city of Malgudi, and are narrowly focused on the lives of relatively humble individuals, neither extremely poor nor very rich. Through their tribulations (which to the reader seems so minor but to the charectors is the centre of their life) Narayan demonstrates the simplicity of human happiness.

While he is not the most profound or hard hitting author in history, but in his own gentle, humorous, and warm ways he demonstrates all that is simple in the world and in the emotion of happiness.

Narayan is the unlikely man who wrote about the essence and purpose of life and the path to human happiness...the sad thing is, though he wrote it...it is highly unlikely that such an unassuming man realised that in his humble and simple works lied the keys to perplexing century old questions on human happiness...

Note: The Guide and Swami and Friends are R.K.Narayan's greatest work. Graham Greene and many authors of his time thought he was the greatest author in English(between 1940-1979). Although overlooked for the Nobel in 1970 for Guide(which by all counts is a great work of literature) Narayan is recognised as a brilliant author with complete mastery over language. All his works are short(150-250 pages) at the most and written in simple but beautiful prose in the true tradition of Chekov.