The Bell Tower and Beyond: Reflections on Learning and Living - Hardcover

Shi, David Emory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1570034664 ISBN 13: 9781570034664

Publisher: University of South Carolina Press, 2002

Synopsis

Noted historian-cum-university president genially shares his discoveries

When David Emory Shi, a leading historian and writer, left the classrooms of Davidson College for the president's office of Furman University in 1994, he took with him his interest in the past, in people, and in the process of becoming educated. Determined to elude the academic ivory tower and the swamp of administration, Shi continued his study of the connections between past and present, self and society. He also became a popular speaker on topics of public interest as well as a newspaper columnist and radio commentator with a loyal following throughout the country. Shi's miscellany of speeches and columns, collected in this volume, display both his desire to link academe to the real world and his infectious enthusiasm for liberal learning.

Shi's meditations reflect his ever-widening circle of interests―from Martin Luther King Jr., the Marquis de Lafayette, and the artist Cecilia Beaux to Transcendentalism and nineteenth-century reform. Shi offers innovative interpretations on topics ranging from the fate of books in the digital age and America's conflicted fascination with the simple life to George Washington's rules for civility and the Montgomery bus boycott.

Published as part of Furman University's 175th anniversary celebration, The Bell Tower and Beyond features tributes to distinguished Furman alumni, celebrations of university traditions, and black-and-white drawings by North Carolina architect and Furman alumnus Ronald Boozer that were prepared especially for this volume. The Bell Tower and Beyond also includes selections on Greenville and its citizens, the south, America's past, and contemporary culture.

About this title

About the Author

David Emory Shi is president of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. The former Frontis W. Johnston Professor of History at Davidson College, Shi is the author of several books, including The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture. He is also co-author with George B. Tindall of the popular textbook America: A Narrative History. Shi publishes columns in the Christian Science Monitor, The Greenville News, The Charlotte Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other newspapers. His columns are also heard on South Carolina Educational Radio. Shi lives in Greenville.

Ronald Boozer is an architect and artist who works in charcoal, ink and watercolors. After graduating in 1972 with a B.A. in visual arts from Furman University, where he was a classmate of David Shi, Boozer earned a M.Arch. from Clemson University. He is a principal with Odell Associates, an architecture firm in Charlotte, North Carolina. Boozer lives in Charlotte.

Judith T. Bainbridge holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa, and is a professor of English and the director of educational services at Furman University. She is the author of Academy and College: The History of the Woman's College of Furman University. Bainbridge lives in Greenville.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Is Anybody Happy?
May 27, 2001

Is everybody happy? Or rather, is anybody happy?

Ever since Thomas Jefferson asserted that the pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right, Americans have been feverishly stalking the good life. But happiness is an elusive goal. Despite our economic success and technological advances, we ache with melancholy and loneliness.

Signs of unhappiness abound. Rates of clinical depression have been doubling every ten years. Divorce has become more common than marriage. Everyone, it seems, is complaining of overwork and stress, insomnia and anxiety. Sufferers are flocking to pharmacies for relief. The three most frequently prescribed drugs are an ulcer medication, a hypertension reliever, and a tranquilizer.

We covet happiness, we yearn for it, but what is it? Is it something we find or something we create? Is it a function of what we have or what we do, or how much we earn, or what we accomplish?

Through the centuries, people have offered quite different definitions of happiness. "All you need for happiness," said Daniel Boone, "is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife" in that order. In a similar vein of male chauvinism, the satirist H. L. Mencken asserted that "the only really happy folk are married women and single men."

With the passage of time, however, the pursuit of happiness has become more focused on self-gratification. "Don t worry, be happy!" the jazz singer Bobby McFerrin crooned in 1989, and more than ten million people bought the record. Even more embraced the song s simple formula for happiness.

Every age has its illusions. Ours has been that happiness is synonymous with smiling yellow happy-face decals and "Have a nice day" greetings. Happiness is presumed to be as readily available as a prescription medicine or a do-it-yourself video. One company hawking "feel good" tapes claims that the curative cassettes will enable the purchaser to "wake up every day, completely happy, eager to live."

According to hucksters, we can also achieve happiness by eating less or eating more, by undergoing liposuction or cosmetic surgery or a hair implant. We can take Prozac or St. John s wort or rub ourselves with crystals or follow the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard or hire a personal fitness trainer.

Many people assume that more money will bring them happiness, only to discover that wealth does not bring a greater sense of well-being. A recent study of one hundred multimillionaires reveals that rich people are no happier than the rest of us. Between 1957 and 1990, per capita income in America more than doubled, yet, as psychologist David Myers notes in The Pursuit of Happiness, the number of Americans who reported being "very happy" has remained constant.

What especially complicates the pursuit of happiness is its relative nature. We don t want simply to be happy in our own right. We want to be happier than other people, which is extraordinarily difficult, since we assume they are happier than they really are.

No matter how satisfied we are with our salaries and possessions, there is always someone else who seems to be doing better. This annoying disparity goads us to earn more and buy more. Breaking the grip of such self-defeating envy is one of the keys to a happier life. "I should say," observes a character in Michael Frayn s novel A Landing on the Sun, "that happiness is being where one is and not wanting to be anywhere else."

So what is to be done? First, we need to recognize that there are no shortcuts to genuine happiness, no "quick-fix" therapies or drugs to bring lasting fulfillment.

Second, some people are naturally unhappy. Their body chemistry or doleful disposition leads them to embrace cynicism and melancholy. Brooding animates their days. They wear marks of woe and furrowed brows like badges of honor.

Third, happiness is not synonymous with pleasure. It is instead a deeper emotion that originates from within. Recent psychological studies conclude that enduring gratification cannot be gained by direct effort; instead it is a byproduct of how we live.

Happiness, like Carl Sandburg s fog, creeps into our lives on little cat feet. It results from a sense of mental and moral contentment with who we are, what we value, and how we invest our time and resources for purposes beyond ourselves. Thomas Jefferson equated happiness with the living of a socially virtuous and useful life. "It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation [meaningful work]," Jefferson said, "which give happiness."

Jefferson recognized that the happiest people are those who find joy in the commonplace nourishments of daily living. They relish their friendships, families, work, faith, pets, and hobbies. And they are not bedeviled by the urge to get something more, something new, something better. As the writer Edith Wharton insisted, "If only we d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time."

Edition details

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1570034664
• ISBN 13: 9781570034664
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 217