Aristotle’s 10 Rules for a Good Life | Why No One Feels Like They Can Focus Anymore | Five years on, is Britain’s strategy to combat loneliness working?

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You Might Like � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium Aristotle's 10 Rules for a Good Life    Many people say they are looking for happiness. They spend a lot of time and resources searching for the secrets of well-being, like old-time miners prospecting for gold. But for some sages throughout history, this is the wrong approach. Happiness isn’t something to be found; it’s something to attract. Perhaps the most famous proponent of the second path was the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He defined happiness as eudaemonia, which means “good spirit.” To us moderns, this might sound vaporous, like the superficial happy feelings that so many people (incorrectly, in my view) chase. Instead, the philosopher meant that happiness was a divine state that would visit each of us as it pleased. Our only responsibility was to open the door to it. And we do so by living well. To live well, we should practice specific virtues and make them into habits. As Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics, “If it is better to be happy as a result of one’s own exertions than by the gift of fortune, it is reasonable to suppose that this is how happiness is won.” Here are 10 of the virtues he recommends—which, as modern research shows, do generally attract the good spirit. Continued here Why No One Feels Like They Can Focus Anymore    It’s hard to blame them for worrying. ADHD diagnostic rates are on the rise in the U.S. and posts on TikTok and other social media platforms have convinced even more people that they have attention issues. There’s a shortage of medications to treat ADHD, largely driven by rising demand. And even among people who haven’t sought medical care, there seems to be a sense—probably enhanced by regular studies about shrinking attention spans—that focusing is getting harder. A recent U.K. survey found that about half of adults think their attention spans are getting shorter, and plenty of teachers say the same thing is happening with kids. Adam Brown, co-director of the Center for Attention, Learning, and Memory at St. Bonaventure University in New York, says there’s good reason for concern: in his view, inattention has reached “epidemic” levels. But there’s good news too, he says. It’s an epidemic we have the power to reverse. “At a neurological level, I wouldn’t guess there’s this massive thing happening…such that people have shorter attention spans,” Brown says. It’s “the environment we live in. It’s the phones.” Continued here You Might Like � � � � � � � � � Five years on, is Britain's strategy to combat loneliness working?    “Where do they all come from?” wondered Paul McCartney in 1966. Britain’s government has taken a more analytical approach to lonely people. Five years ago it launched a “loneliness strategy”, to tackle “one of the greatest public-health challenges of our time.” The Office for National Statistics (ons) developed measures to test it. The government provided funds for research. It told doctors to try “social prescribing”, sending patients to social events rather than to the pharmacy. And it appointed a loneliness minister. Loneliness is one of many briefs that Stuart Andrew, mp for Pudsey, West Yorkshire, has at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Yet it is tempting to scoff. Stephen Colbert, a comedian, joked that “Minister for Loneliness” sounded like “a Victorian euphemism for ‘gigolo’”. Loneliness is hard to pin down: the government defines it as “a subjective, unwelcome feeling of lack or loss of companionship.” Like all emotions, it is difficult to measure. So is the success of interventions designed to tackle it. It has probably become more common. Some 8.3m people lived alone in 2022, a 16% increase in two decades. Many Britons have less cash for going out than before. And socialising online is no substitute for the real thing. Continued here

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