ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a set of human personal and social problems that spring up when the conditions on which positive life depends are lacking or undermined. A lifetime of uninteresting work is a high price to pay for economic survival and some spending cash, but many a modern worker enters into precisely the bargain with his educational qualifications and personal standards for occupational success. With some financial success struggling workers are wafted up the economic situation scale toward the level of passable living. The chapter discusses several strategies for finding ways to maximize the positive side of life while minimizing its negative sides. Positive sociology offers a solution to frictional problems in positive relationships through the mechanism of shared leisure activity. Health is a social problem that positiveness can sometimes help remedy. There is evidence demonstrating that certain non-material factors bear on the human happiness quotient, and that money may, under some conditions, actually hinder our pursuit of happiness.
