What’s The Hunt for Happiness: Conversations on Truth about?

The Hunt for Happiness is a series of conversations intended to expose rudimentary world views and make us think.  Humans most often see things from three perspectives:  tops down, bottoms up, and life experiences.  The tops down view represents how we think things should be, the bottoms up view represents what we think we need to live a life as it should be, and the life experiences view represents what we learn in our daily lives.  I’ve written The Hunt for Happiness: Conversations on Truth to weave these three viewpoints into practical, albeit fictional and fantastic, discussions about these perspectives and how they collide preventing the ascendance of humanity towards utopia.

The way I see it, the world is a broken record.  Our views and desires clash creating ups and downs in a repeating cycle and every now and then a little push happens, like pushing the arm on that broken record, and we begin repeating from a different, most often better, place in the record.  And like the horrible sound that ripping of the needle makes across the record when pushed, often in the form of societal collapse or major conflicts, the human toll during those pushes is awful.  The tune, however, is the same. Yes, the instruments improve, the music becomes more symphonic, but the basic human tune has not changed since humans first left their marks on the earth.

This notion of periodic shake-ups can be seen in history and in much ancient literature, for instance the Biblical text “For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;  And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.” (Haggai 2:6-7 KJV).

What is The Hunt for Happiness about?  It is about exposing the lies that we tell ourselves to feel good and embracing the truth that our justification lies in helping each other.

Why have you written this book, and will there be more?

Over the course of a lifetime, and especially in the last decade, my views have changed dramatically as a result of both study and prayer.  It’s not so much that I’ve discovered secrets or put together pieces of information that lead to startling revelations as it is that I’ve seen patterns of behavior, mine and others, that stifle human freedom for no good reason and for plenty of bad ones.  That led to work on an enormous tome trying to prove that I had standing, that my views were right, trying to justify myself and my conclusions.

Then it finally struck me that this simply fed the narrative that the world should be a tops down place with rules created by a few and forcefully imposed on others.  I was writing to the very people who, in large measure, create the problem and who will never freely accept change.

While tops down rules and authority, such as prevention of violence and harm to others, rules for commerce, and related regulations, are indeed necessary, it is generally an absurd proposition to think that a few will control the many in minute detail and that’s really what I find.  What the world needs desperately is inspiration and determination towards helping each other rather than despotic manipulation of and depraved indifference towards those in need and those who are oppressed.  I believe that this is the call of Christ Jesus, at least the call that the Holy Spirit has placed in my heart.  That’s why I’ve written this book, and why there will be more with my next project being The Hunt for Justice.

So you write to inspire?

I write to dislodge the basket sitting atop the lamps that my fellow humans are.  I hope that, through some entertaining and thought-provoking writing, other people will be able to remove the partisan and hate filled planks from their own eyes and see this glorious sight, this inspirational species meant to be the image bearers of the Living God.   That’s the ultimate tops down view, the view of the Almighty, and I stand convinced that every one of us is the apple of His eye.  Will we never learn to love each other?