Aristotle reading 1

Admittedly I'm kind of tired, so I didn't always grasp what was going on in this reading, but I'm hoping to have understood enough to be able to about it. I wasn't crazy about the style either, maybe it was the reading that was making me sleepy. I kept having to double back and re-read many things because I didn't seem to grasp them the first time around.

I'm going to start with the passage that I found puzzling. Actually, what I found the most interesting and the most puzzling are in the same section, so bare with me.

"(I. 10) Is it the case, then, that we should not count anyone else happy, either, so long as he is alive? Must we agree with Solon, and look towards a man's end? And if we should posit that view, is it then that one is really happy-when one is dead?" I found this most intriquing because it seems so true. It seems that everything mankind does in life is only a cumulation towards their end. Even in my last post I said something to that effect: "Do what you can with the time that you have, that is all anyone can do, and you can die fulfilled." Why must it be necessary to stockpile for the end, to judge one's life by where they stood at that moment? Why can't we think of happiness as where we stand here and now, our happiness, unhappiness or ambivalence being subject to the moment? Overall happiness is definitley a good long term goal.

What I found puzzling was the passage between 1100a20 and 1100a30, which was basically how the dead is affected by their descendants and how those descendants would benefit from the happiness and good fortune of their ancestor. This passage is probably not relevant to the class and I realize that it is an ancient cultural belief being discussed, but when I read it it there was this huge resounding "What?" The idea that the happiness one had attained or earned in their lifetime would somehow rub off onto their descendants based solely on the fact that they are that person's descendants and vice versa just seems very ridiculous and alien to me.