Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

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To the Editor:

I appreciate Carl Cederstrom’s summary of how groups down through the ages have defined happiness (“The Dangers of Happiness,” Sunday Review, July 19), but I feel that he has underestimated the power of individual responsibility in today’s Western culture to facilitate happiness, including that measured by economic means.

As a clinical social worker, I have had years of experience with extremely poor families, living in crime-ridden areas of New York City with inadequate housing and low-performing schools. Those who succeed in life do so because they avoided drugs, teenage pregnancy and crime.

They have hard-working, caring adult parents who assume responsibility for providing basic needs and seeing that their children stay in school. We even have examples of Supreme Court justices and presidents who emerged from such backgrounds.

Let’s focus beyond the economic when designing intervention strategies.

ESTELLE H. RAUCH

Forest Hills, Queens

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To the Editor:

Should we, as Lawrence Lessig suggests, place restrictions on campaign funding (“Free Our Democracy,” Op-Ed, July 21)? Well, campaigns are now no different from any other form of media advertising. Should we place restrictions on advertising campaigns for products and services?

While there are worthwhile and sensible rules that do regulate advertising (a modicum of truthfulness; nothing that harms outright like cigarettes, age-appropriate branding), our most effective means of countering the flood of media messages is more rigorous education to make the consumer aware.

Too bad educating the public is not a political priority.

NEIL J. LISS

Salem, Ore.

Consider the following instructions:

(a) Go straight on as far as you can, and then turn left. Go on to the traffic lights and then turn right. Then keep straight on.

(b) Your general direction is north. It may be necessary sometimes to deviate, but you must use your discretion about how to get back on your course.

(c) People say that your best direction is north. But this is not known with certainty. Better make inquiries all the time.

With instructions of the first type life would not always be easy, but our task would be plain. With instructions of the second type we should know where our destination was, but not precisely how to reach it. I believe that the third type represents more closely our actual situation, and that the task which confronts us includes that of discovering the ideal as well as of finding out how to reach it.

(Leonard J. Russell, "Ideals and Practice (I)," Philosophy 17 [April 1942]: 99-116, at 103)

Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants (1979).

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