The Professor on Happiness

There is a critique of Walker Percy that I've been wanting to write (although possibly I should read more than the two of his novels that I've read to do that), and it has something to do with Percy's understanding of the human situation as too alienated for my taste. But, of course, the Professor is always wise (from his recent essay on happiness):

Human happiness may depend on being “at home with our homelessness.” Then we are best able to experience the many and varied good things of this world for what they are, not expecting too much or too little from them. We’re able to discover and fulfill the purposes given to members of our species alone. Right now, the Americans most at home with their homelessness seem to be our evangelical and orthodox believers. They are our most familial and political or patriotic beings, the Americans most reliably doing what Darwinians say members of our social species should do. They’re most at home in the world because they’ve most come to terms with it and have a clear explanation for their experiences of homelessness, their experiences of freedom not shared by the other animals. They’re best at subordinating the “how” of modern technology to the “why” of a purpose-driven life.


I can handle being at home with homelessness as a prerequisite for happiness, but not so much as an end in itself. Oh my goodness--he ends with "a purpose-driven life." Lawler has a true (and wonderful) respect for evangelical America.