Tyranny of the joykin

Dear oh dear oh dear. Superstar undergraduate philosophy student, 'Matches' has gone all Ayn Rand on me: "I spent the summer reading up on ethical egoism; it's really great!"

Now I know that these post-vacation discussions need to be gotten out of the way, but it doesn't make them any less painful.

In the pub, Matches was holding forth on moral decision-making and the beauty of the utilitarian calculus. (Did you know a joykin is a unit of happiness: how cool is that, huh?)
Dutifully, I objected to such ridiculous notions. Our debate meandered along, resting finally on the question of the meaning of life, no less. His view seemed to consist of lots of self-evident propositions (as most analytic philosophy seems to do).
"Everyone wants to be happy. Obviously."

I, on the other hand, was trying to put forward an ill-conceived argument about how a good life is an interesting life - something I think my father once told me. Not such an easy task, considering that I haven't yet read Nietzsche.
As you can imagine, we were talking at cross purposes. Matches kept talking about probabilities, as a way of guiding one's actions within the framework of a consequentialist ethics. Maximising happiness and all that. For him, a world where everyone is happy is, in whatever sense, a good world.
I said that I relate to strangers with a feeling of melancholy, at once hoping that people confound 'their probabilities', but aware that my action might very well be mistaken. At this point, his eyes widened in extreme bewilderment and philosophic discomfort. This wasn't helped when I proposed that a rejection of reason - and the embracing of illogic - might be necessary for an interesting life.
In the end, he was muttering about "poetry" and how I "should join the English department or something" while I just kept repeating, louder and louder: "You live in an ugly world, and I don't want any part of your theories." Marvellous.