Learning in Depth with a U3A Mini Series
Several times throughout the year U3A brings in a guest lecturer to run a mini series. An example of a recent lecture series is below.
Usually, on a Monday, over a period of three or four weeks the lectures run for 90 minutes. It is a casual and friendly format with a question time at the end. Class size is limited to 35 so early registration is recommended. You must be a current U3A member to attend and there is a small registration fee.
If you would like to become a U3A member and join our mailing list to be notified when the next Mini Series is available then click the button below.
The History of Happiness - Monday 10th, 17th and 24th June 2024
A plethora of books have hit the market on the hot topic of how to be happy. It’s become a controlling objective for many in the modern world: in fact, the goal of life.
It wasn’t always so.
In the ancient world, the goal was just to keep your head down. In the Christian world, happiness was postponed till the afterlife. It wasn’t till the post Enlightenment era that the “pursuit of happiness” became enshrined in the psyche, and, paradoxically, like Homer Simpson said of Duff Beer, became the cause of and solution to, all our problems.
This 3 lecture series will track the history of happiness and how it ultimately has coloured our view of life and how to live it.
Lecture 1
For the ancient Greeks, life was nasty, brutal and short and it was fated to be that way. The gods were fickle and so was fortune. The tragic view of life was the prevailing view, expressed particularly by the playwrights. Happiness was in short supply. The best one could do was to grin and bear it.
Lecture 2
Christianity had the answer to the dearth of happiness in this life. There was a better one to come. Put up with privation now and think of the future reward, one of bliss and complete felicity. Modern Christianity subsequently massaged this message for its followers to read a little different.
Lecture 3
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was the new clarion call to modern men and women. We were no longer trapped inside a deterministic world, but free to make ourselves happy. Strangely this seems to have produced a lot of unhappy people, Americans being the largest consumers of Prozac and its equivalent.
Peter Dornauf - Lecturer
Peter Dornauf (MA, Dip Tchg) has taught in secondary schools, Wintec and Waikato University collectively for over 25 years. He is a well known Waikato artist, art critic and a writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction and general academic. Peter presents lectures on art and architecture, philosophy and literature. His talks always draw on his broad knowledge of the classics and history, legends and literature. Peter is able to make the most complex ideas accessible and his lectures are always stimulating and thought provoking.