I received a response to my "Online amenities create utopia of idiots, curb serious thinking" (November 12, Shanghai Daily), from a "paper book" loving gentleman who hates audio books and has difficulties "reading on a screen for a long time."

His children also grew up with books and are to this day addicted to them. But it is a different story with his grandchildren, aged 10 and 13.

His question is, among others, "Are they less happy and less fulfilled (than we)?"

The question I asked myself is: Is happiness really "our being's end and aim" (Alexander Pope)?

And what is happiness in the first place?

We must confess that happiness, as it is widely seen today, is elusive, largely conceived in terms of Western "affluence" and "prosperity." The Chinese people felt more contented and grateful before they were initiated into this kind of "happiness."

We used to have a saying that "the pains of life start with literacy," because education was first of all about rituals, constraints, and obligations.

It exacted respect from us for heaven, the earth, and the Way of the world, and in so doing instilled in us a kind of humility.

Our forefathers were warned that insincerity and hubris would incur the wrath of heaven.

Even the English "happiness" has its origin in "hap," which means chance. Alas, most people missed their chance, did not get their deserts, got trapped on an endless treadmill. How then can the masses of people avoid a life of "quiet desperation" (Henry David Thoreau)?

By comparison, the life poisoned by the opiate of religion affords the consolation of hope, of an afterlife. Faith and belief is much more powerful than knowledge.

It was belief that prompted Buddhist monk Xuan Zang (Chen Yi) (600-664) to embark on a 17-year trip to India.

But on the whole, we Chinese are said to have no religion. We make up for that by having great reverence for the teachings of our forefathers.

Unlike the glory of an afterlife hinted at by major religions, we aspire to the governance by Yao, Shun, and Yu, ancient monarchs of the distant past. So the challenge of later generations is to strive to approximate the blissful conditions of the good old age of Yao, Shun, and Yu.

That's why it has been observed that all the six Confucian classics are essentially historical.

You can imagine our surprise that about 30 years ago, a scholar named Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the "end of history" by suggesting that Western liberalism is the final form of human governance and represents the ultimate phase of the human ideological evolution.

The past decades have been an unending mockery of that prophesy.

This blissfully ignorant prophet derived much of his confidence from his understanding of a proposition of French philosopher Alexandre Kojeve, who explained in his "Introduction to the Reading of Hegel" (1934) that the end of human Time or History suggests the disappearance of wars and bloody revolutions.

Philosophy would also go. Since Man himself no longer changes essentially, there is no longer any reason to change the way he understands the world and himself. So the ultimate Man would be kept in a perpetual state of bliss by art, love, play, etc.

In criticizing Hegelian philosophy, a French sinologist once observed that philosophy must be conceived in the context of history, and failing that it can easily get bogged down in the abyss of abstraction, as in the case of Hegel.

Chinese wisdom

He said that Hegelian understanding of Oriental philosophy was deeply flawed because he did not understand the glorious past of the Oriental people.

If we study human beings from a historical perspective, we would find that the species has changed very little. We Chinese have a saying that it is easier to change the rivers and mountains than the human heart.

If iPad X cannot satisfy you, can iPad X+1 be different?

The Chinese answer to counter this innate human greed is to extol the virtues of thriftiness and simplicity, by suggesting the contentment afforded by, first, the honoring of our responsibility and obligations, second, nature, and third, art.

The other day, I had a casual chat with a colleague of mine, and he ridiculed my vision of the good life as "porcine."

I quipped that one of the biggest differences between Man and Pig is that pigs know what they want, while human beings do not.

Human restlessness

This human restlessness - glorified in the drive for "success" - has grave consequences.

As Wu Guanjun, professor of philosophy from Nanjing University, observes in a recent paper on Slovenian philosopher Slovoj Zizek (1949- ), there is a great deal of uncertainty whether Fukuyama's "end of history" is really "end times."

"In our real life, the imminent ecological cataclysms and problems arising from genetic engineering are all sending this message: the current order cannot be allowed to continue," Wu states in his paper.

"If the inherent logic of capitalism be allowed to operate freely, a huge - even comprehensive - crisis will be unfolding. We must proceed with radical social reflections so as to provide cataclysm for new social change," observes Wu.

The change can only be elusive, because it is easier to manage GDP figures than the human heart. In addition, we might understand which things are good, but we simply do not put them to practice.

According to Wu, one of the reasons that the current, destructive way of life can be perpetuated is the "fetishistic disavowal," which refers to the gap between knowledge and belief: We know that climate change is leading to disasters, but many of us simply choose to ignore the writing on the wall.

We know our flirtation with nuclear secrets is releasing power beyond our control, but we are full of hope.

One most important difference is that while Western people are showing great interest in their ability to change outward circumstances, we Chinese are more introspective.

We get a clear view of ourself by reading our history.

As Chien Mu (1898-1990) observes in one of his lectures on Chinese culture in 1967, Chinese culture has been very much humanistic, with a heavy emphasis on the understanding of the human heart.

He warned that if pursuit of affluence becomes an all-consuming urge, this urge can become the greatest hazard of all.

There have been numerous instances past and present, east and west, that suggest the destructive potency of the all-out pursuit of affluence.

The enduring strength of Chinese culture lies exactly in its power to properly prioritize.

Given the inadequacy of our intellect to understand, not to say harness, the power in the universe, there is a real urgency for each individual to live responsibly, which would lead to the sound governance of the state and the world.