Perhaps in your post I should have noticed that you mentioned Flash Mobbing as a break from stress to find your motivation again–to recharge your batteries. Instead, I thought you were saying we should take time out for ourselves sometimes.

Personally, I think the greatest service we can provide to the world is finding ourselves; we can most help the world by spending our time making ourselves happy, even if we accomplish fewer things in this manner.

I think the people who need flash mobs, or other random distractions, the most are the people unsatisfied with their lives. I think these same people may need new careers or new passions to pursue. However this is an idealization of the world. We cannot have everything we want and we cannot always change our careers or lives.

It is as unfortunate as it is true that people need money and cannot paint or flash-mob all day. Sometimes happiness has to be set aside in order to fit in with society.

Perhaps in your post I should have noticed that you mentioned Flash Mobbing as a break from stress to find your motivation again–to recharge your batteries. Instead, I thought you were saying we should take time out for ourselves sometimes.

Personally, I think the greatest service we can provide to the world is finding ourselves; we can most help the world by spending our time making ourselves happy, even if we accomplish fewer things in this manner.

I think the people who need flash mobs, or other random distractions, the most are the people unsatisfied with their lives. I think these same people may need new careers or new passions to pursue. However this is an idealization of the world. We cannot have everything we want and we cannot always change our careers or lives.

It is as unfortunate as it is true that people need money and cannot paint or flash-mob all day. Sometimes happiness has to be set aside in order to fit in with society.

We call a man "happy" when he has succeeded in attaining his own ends or goals. A more adequate description may be just to say he was happier than he was before. The ultimate goal of any human action is the satisfaction of some desire or to rid himself of some uneasiness that is within him.

Dancing in a flash mob would therefore only provide limited happiness to most people as that is not their main desire. If most people were to sit around and watch movies they would eventually feel a growing uneasiness and would be compelled to take action in some more productive means.

You mention sitting a room and painting for the rest of someone's life as an example. Isn't that what some of the greatest artists did? Did they not contribute to society? If that is their true source of happiness than I think they should sit in a room and paint. They will provide much more value to the world in this way than in any other.

Flash mobs, and other unconventional events, add happiness to society and to peoples' lives but do these people have any obligation to society to stop flash-mobbing at some point? Would it be okay if a person only chased happiness and sat in a room painting or watching movies for his whole life? I don't see any reason to go back to work if flash-mobbing makes people happy

It's awesome how this has turned into a new art. Right after Michael Jackson died, there was a whole mix of emotions. Some were sad and then some actually went out and danced. I think the latter is what he would have wanted.

Here is one of the Michael Jackson flash mobs that organized right after he died:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je1KOcBYGjM