CameraIcon
CameraIcon
SearchIcon
MyQuestionIcon
MyQuestionIcon
1
You visited us 1 times! Enjoying our articles? Unlock Full Access!
Question

Read the passage and answer the question that follows.

The psychological causes of unhappiness, it is clear, are many and various. But all have something in common. The typical unhappy man is one who, having deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one ' kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it. There is, however, a further development which is very common in the present day. A man may feel so completely thwarted that he seeks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. He then becomes a devotee of "pleasure". This is to say, he seeks to make life bearable by becoming less alive. Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide-the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

What does "becoming less alive" imply?

A
Neglect of health
No worries! We‘ve got your back. Try BYJU‘S free classes today!
B
Decline in moral values
No worries! We‘ve got your back. Try BYJU‘S free classes today!
C
Living in a make-believe world
Right on! Give the BNAT exam to get a 100% scholarship for BYJUS courses
D
Leading a sedentary way of living
No worries! We‘ve got your back. Try BYJU‘S free classes today!
Open in App
Solution

The correct option is B Living in a make-believe world
As the author says, "A man may feel so completely thwarted that he seeks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. He then becomes a devotee of 'pleasure'. This is to say, he seeks to make life bearable by becoming less alive." So, he starts living in his own world of distractions. So, the answer is option C.

flag
Suggest Corrections
thumbs-up
0
similar_icon
Similar questions
Q. The happy man is the man who lived objectively, who has free affection and wide interest, who secures his happiness through these interests and affections and through the fact that they, in turn, make him an object of interest and affection to many others. To be the recipient of affection is a potent cause of happiness, but the man who demands affection is not the man upon whom it is bestowed. The man who receives affection is, speaking broadly, the man who gives it. But it useless to attempt to give it as a calculation, in the way in which one might lend money at interest, for a calculated affection is not genuine and is not felt to be so by the recipient.
What then can a man do who is unhappy because he is encased in self? So long as he continues to think about the cause of his unhappiness, he continues to be self-centred and therefore does not get outside, the vicious circle if he is to get outside it, it must be by genuine interests, not by simulated interest accepted merely as a medicine. Although this difficulty is real, there is nevertheless much that he can do if he has rightly diagnosed his trouble. If, for example, his trouble is due to a sense of sin, conscious or unconscious he can first persuade his conscious mind that he has no reason to feel sinful, and then proceed, to plant his rational conviction in his unconscious mind, concerning himself meanwhile with some more or less neutral activity. If he succeeds in dispelling the sense of sin, it is possible that genuine objective interests will arise spontaneously. If his trouble is self-pity, he can deal with it in the same manner after first persuading himself that there is nothing extraordinarily unfortunate in his circumstances.
If fear is his trouble, let him practice exercises designed to give courage. Courage has been recognised from time immemorial as an important virtue, and a great part of training of boys and young men has been devoted to producing a type of character capable of fearlessness in battle. But moral courage and intellectual courage have been much less studied, they also, however, have their technique, admit to yourself every day at least one painful truth, your will find his quite useful. Teach yourself to feel that life still be worth living even if you were not, as of course you are immeasurably superior to all your friends in virtue and in intelligence. Exercises of this sort prolonged through several years will at last enable you to admit facts without flinching and will, in so doing, free you from the empire of feat over a very large filed.
Q. According to the passage a happy man
View More
Join BYJU'S Learning Program
similar_icon
Related Videos
thumbnail
lock
Social Behaviour
CIVICS
Watch in App
Join BYJU'S Learning Program
CrossIcon