The pursuit of happiness

[josurac]

I'd like your thoughts on the following ... Let's take the premise that living in a state of happiness is a desirable, I'd argue separately that it's the most desirable, goal of life. From there, I'd have a few questions ... Do you think anyone is happy? Do you think everyone is happy? Does it matter if you think someone else is happy? Can someone be happy for a period of time?

What is the last thing that happens before you become happy? I already forget the circumstances, but I just came to this thought today - I think the answer is "you decide that you're happy". There is nothing else that can get you there, and it takes an active effort on your part to get there.

Maybe you are there, that's great. If you're not, maybe you can convince yourself that you're happy - if you can, you should take an hour and do that. If you're not, take ownership of that and change a few things. After you change those things, think about it again and make sure you can convince yourself that youre happy.

I could go in a lot of different directions here, but I suspect that you'd like to read a short, thought provoking post and be left to your own devices on which direction to take this.

What do you think? Am I off base? Maybe this is a well formed area of psychology/ philosophy, so feel free to send me some names of people I should read up on.

 

[skip]

Do you think anyone is happy?

Definitely.

Do you think everyone is happy?

Not at all.

Does it matter if you think someone else is happy?

Probably not.

Can someone be happy for a period of time?

Of course.

What is the last thing that happens before you become happy?

I think, "This is so cool."

 

[redbaron]

Being happy is more to do with what you're prepared to lose than what you want to gain. I don't think there is a prerequisite to happiness for anyone. If someone has the ability to "let go" so to speak, they'll be happy. That's my view anyway.

I don't really know of anyone specific, but I'm sure you'll be able to find someone from these:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_happiness.html

 

[EyeSeeCold]

What is the last thing that happens before you become happy? I already forget the circumstances, but I just came to this thought today - I think the answer is "you decide that you're happy". There is nothing else that can get you there, and it takes an active effort on your part to get there.

Maybe you are there, that's great. If you're not, maybe you can convince yourself that you're happy - if you can, you should take an hour and do that. If you're not, take ownership of that and change a few things. After you change those things, think about it again and make sure you can convince yourself that youre happy.

Happiness is a positive and idealistic emotional state. It isn't directly attainable through practical action, that's being content or satisfied.

So, sure, you can do these things and decide that you're content, though if your sense of satisfaction blankets an underlying cognitive dissonance, you will not be able to be happy until you confront the reality of your situation.

Basically, you can be satisfied, while not happy. But you can not be happy if you are not satisfied.

 

[josurac]

That's an interesting way to approach it, and I would agree that being satisfied is a necessary but not sufficient condition for happiness. I was tempted to reply and say, "who are you to say that someone's dissonance is enough to prevent them from being happy?", but that reasoning would also suggest this whole thread is pointless. While I think it's an interesting academic exercise, I think there is actually a practical, self help, sort of purpose to this and i think the world would be a better place if people first achieved satisfaction, then convince themselves that they were happy. To your point on underlying dissonance, I think that would just be someone who didn't truly convince themselves in the first place.

As I write it, this seems very Pollyanna, oh well.

 

[nedenom]

Isn't it so, that happiness is just a transition to something better than before, and thus only temporary? When you get used to the new and better, then you no longer feel happiness (but can still be content or satisfied).

Eg. if you win 10 mill. dollars you would feel happiness for a while, but after being rich for a while, money will no longer make you happy.

 

[Agent Intellect]

What we think about happiness might not be correct.

 

[snafupants]

What we think about happiness might not be correct.

That excerpted picture, under the fifth point, from Raphael's The School of Athens actually depicts Plato rather than Aristotle. Plato points up, indicating his unhinged, celestial Theory of Forms, and Aristotle levelly extends his right palm downward to connote pragmatic, terrestrial ethics. The opening point also seemed to conveniently elide Greek Epicureanism as a foil to the Greek god's supposed monopoly on happiness (see: spoiler). Perhaps that would monkeywrench their little narrative. Anyway, the last four points, moving away from historical substrates for happiness, seemed to be on relatively terra firma. The takehome point is that life involves an inordinate amount of suffering, exploitation, and delusion.

Spoiler

From the article.

Go back to ancient Greece and it's very simple: Happiness = Luck. Either the gods dribbled their joy juice on you or didn't; either way, there was nothing you could do about it. And that was it, end of conversation.

Spoiler

This made me laugh.

In 1978, a research group studied lottery winners, regular assholes and those who had suffered injuries rendering them paraplegic or quadriplegic. All groups reported a similar number of good days versus bad days, with no clear victor in the happiness race.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Isn't it so, that happiness is just a transition to something better than before, and thus only temporary? When you get used to the new and better, then you no longer feel happiness (but can still be content or satisfied).

Eg. if you win 10 mill. dollars you would feel happiness for a while, but after being rich for a while, money will no longer make you happy.

Yeah that would be related to novelty, I think it(getting used to the new and better) is less about happiness though and more about excitement and not being stimulated enough by the same stimuli; tolerance buildup.

I still think happiness is included in there somewhere though. Like, being happy is being content and excited(and maybe some other things too)?

 

[greyskies]

I'd like your thoughts on the following ... Let's take the premise that living in a state of happiness is a desirable, I'd argue separately that it's the most desirable, goal of life. From there, I'd have a few questions ... Do you think anyone is happy? Do you think everyone is happy? Does it matter if you think someone else is happy? Can someone be happy for a period of time?

What is the last thing that happens before you become happy? I already forget the circumstances, but I just came to this thought today - I think the answer is "you decide that you're happy". There is nothing else that can get you there, and it takes an active effort on your part to get there.

Maybe you are there, that's great. If you're not, maybe you can convince yourself that you're happy - if you can, you should take an hour and do that. If you're not, take ownership of that and change a few things. After you change those things, think about it again and make sure you can convince yourself that youre happy.

I could go in a lot of different directions here, but I suspect that you'd like to read a short, thought provoking post and be left to your own devices on which direction to take this.

What do you think? Am I off base? Maybe this is a well formed area of psychology/ philosophy, so feel free to send me some names of people I should read up on.

There are people who are happy, but not everyone experiences that state for a prolonged period of time. I want to make a differentiation here between two states of happiness, the short term emotional boost - and the longer more overarching feeling of happiness that I would call 'fulfillment'. The former is easily attainable but fades very quickly - fulfillment is what true happiness is to me. The separation of the two in my experience lies in how much a person is working in alignment with their core values and actively taking steps in accomplishing goals according to that.

To a certain extent, I believe that happiness is a state revolving around presence - and getting to that on a more consistent level is about removing all the barriers in your mind and life that has you disassociating/detaching from 'life' in order to interact with it on a more intimate level.

 

[inner_mind]

Buddhism has a lot of ideas about happiness... the whole philosophy is based around the idea of happiness - that all beings seek to increase happiness and decrease suffering.

One thing they were talking about the other day was that, okay material things are nice. Buddhists arent against having nice material conditions. But if you think that is what is going to bring you happiness, you are mistaken. And if it were the case that 'money' brings you happiness, then that would mean that rich people were necessarily happier and we know this is not the case. I do think that you need a basic level of neccessities to be happy though.

So then they were talking about states of mind that make us happy. If I am in a state of mind of, when I have a lot of patience, calmness, compassionate, etc I feel happy but when I am in a 'negative' state, say, angry, stressed etc I am not happy. And so, we do not choose to be angry, it is a habit that we go to under certain circumstances. So if we want to be happier, we should decrease the amount of time in these states, and as they are habits rather than choices, we can decrease them by firstly wanting to and secondly mediatation which makes us more stable and calm....

Anyway, another thing they reakon is that you should live in the moment which I found really difficult at first and still do most of the time really but actually I find that it can make me feel happier because I am more engaged and notice some of the little things although I still enjoy setting aside time just to wander in my thoughts...

Plus I think that if I try to do the 'right thing' then I do not later feel uncomfortable about my actions, my concious is clear...

Anyway, that is a bit of some of the things that I have lately learned about happiness, sorry if it came across as a bit prolytic I hate it when people do that to me but you asked about happiness and this is what I have been thinking about.

Also of course this is a quick summary of a couple of the ideas they have and even at that my summary was very brief and probably didn't even get the point across well.

Another thing they said was that people have a 'set' level of happiness, that although a life event can change it temporarily, such as a tradegy or winning tattslotto, after some period of time you will revert back to roughly what you were before, so you need to work on 'fulfillment' as greyskies put it.

 

[josurac]

...- fulfillment is what true happiness is to me. The separation of the two in my experience lies in how much a person is working in alignment with their core values and actively taking steps in accomplishing goals according to that.

Good points. Back to my Socratic method ... Do you think people know what their core values are? Do they actively seek out fulfillment, or are your core values whatever is left over when you separate out all the other distractions (if that's a fair reading of he recent buddhism points)? At the extremes, I'm sure you don't have to do a statistical analysis to determine your values - and consequently goals to achieve them ... but is there some level of conscious thought to convince yourself that what your doing is on the right path?

 

[Architect]

Sustained happiness isn't possible, by observation. Either from wiring or from the nature of life we can achieve sustained contentment, and/or 'flow', or any form of depression (mild to severe), but happiness clearly isn't possible, except for in short bursts.

This is a good thing in my estimation. If it were possible we'd still be sitting in the trees knocking coconuts together.

 

[Da Blob]

I'd like your thoughts on the following ... Let's take the premise that living in a state of happiness is a desirable, I'd argue separately that it's the most desirable, goal of life. From there, I'd have a few questions ... Do you think anyone is happy? Do you think everyone is happy? Does it matter if you think someone else is happy? Can someone be happy for a period of time?

What is the last thing that happens before you become happy? I already forget the circumstances, but I just came to this thought today - I think the answer is "you decide that you're happy". There is nothing else that can get you there, and it takes an active effort on your part to get there.

Maybe you are there, that's great. If you're not, maybe you can convince yourself that you're happy - if you can, you should take an hour and do that. If you're not, take ownership of that and change a few things. After you change those things, think about it again and make sure you can convince yourself that youre happy.

I could go in a lot of different directions here, but I suspect that you'd like to read a short, thought provoking post and be left to your own devices on which direction to take this.

What do you think? Am I off base? Maybe this is a well formed area of psychology/ philosophy, so feel free to send me some names of people I should read up on.

Happiness is a measurable phenomena and can be indexed using the Duchenne smile. Paul Ekman did some early research on this facial expression.

Not only is happiness a fleeting temporary state, but Duchenne smiles are rarely found on the faces of the most successful and powerful people of our era. Instead they are found in the faces of children , impoverished primitives , those under the influence of drugs and 'religious nuts' such as myself

If one wishes to be happy, there are four routes...

EDIT; afterthought
Blobism 34
If one can't be happy with the things one actually needs,
One can never be happy by acquiring that which one merely desires.

 

[snafupants]

Happiness is a measurable phenomena and can be indexed using the Duchenne smile. Paul Ekman did some early research on this facial expression.

Not only is happiness a fleeting temporary state, but Duchenne smiles are rarely found on the faces of the most successful and powerful people of our era. Instead they are found in the faces of children , impoverished primitives , those under the influence of drugs and 'religious nuts' such as myself

If one wishes to be happy, there are four routes...

Aren't the first and fourth routes the same? At any rate, there's a direct relationship between desiring and pain. Two things happen once desiring occurs - the desire is either placated, and quickly replaced by another paltry, ultimately unsatisfying wish, or the desire is stifled, which immediately throws the wisher into abject sorrow or frustration. This frustration could materialize from the whims of fate, the enmity of another, or a misappraisal of the risk or reward; the reasons behind the failure to connect desire and fulfillment aren't greatly important, because even presuming a connection, the pleasure is ephemeral, quickly replaced by apathy or pain (i.e., a new desire). The trick to a relatively painless existence is to realize that willing and desiring have created this wretched world, and then stop willing and desiring. This is of course impossible to thoroughly accomplish, because humans need sustenance to maintain animation, but reducing extraneous wants should somewhat diminish unnecessary pain. On a planet this rife with pain and suffering and lies and disappointment, in a world in which chance cruelly extinguishes good people hourly and everyone eventually, the goal should be obviating pain rather than attaining some immanently transient feeling, which will ironically invite more pain and frustration.

 

[josurac]

Sustained happiness isn't possible, by observation...
This is a good thing in my estimation. If it were possible we'd still be sitting in the trees knocking coconuts together.

By observation of what? You can't prove non-existence of something by observation. No one thought black swans existed until someone saw one.

If money weren't an issue, I'd strive to live like a fat, lazy monkey living on a beach. Maybe you'd argue I wouldn't be happy, but I'm not sure knocking coconuts is a bad thing. Are we cursed (reason, conscience, etc...) to not be fulfilled unless we are "accomplishing" something more than knocking coconuts?

Time is probably interesting here too - meaning the course of humanity ... Certainly living before modern medicine, computers, transportation, electricity didn't preclude people then from being fulfilled. Now, we have those things. Are we forced to use them to achieve our fulfillment?

 

[Da Blob]

Aren't the first and fourth routes the same? At any rate, there's a direct relationship between desiring and pain. Two things happen once desiring occurs - the desire is either placated, and quickly replaced by another paltry, ultimately unsatisfying wish, or the desire is stifled, which immediately throws the wisher into abject sorrow or frustration. This frustration could materialize from the whims of fate, the enmity of another, or a misappraisal of the risk or reward; the reasons behind the failure to connect desire and fulfillment aren't greatly important, because even presuming a connection, the pleasure is ephemeral, quickly replaced by apathy or pain (i.e., a new desire). The trick to a relatively painless existence is to realize that willing and desiring have created this wretched world, and then stop willing and desiring. This is of course impossible to thoroughly accomplish, because humans need sustenance to maintain animation, but reducing extraneous wants should somewhat diminish unnecessary pain. On a planet this rife with pain and suffering and lies and disappointment, in a world in which chance cruelly extinguishes good people hourly and everyone eventually, the goal should be obviating pain rather than attaining some immanently transient feeling, which will ironically invite more pain and frustration.

Perhaps the state of mind or consciousness of all four are the same, not just #1 and #4.

As far as the rest, I believe it for the most part to be correct and is a theme found throughout the Bible.

For example

James 4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

 

[Architect]

If money weren't an issue, I'd strive to live like a fat, lazy monkey living on a beach.

I'm glad your ideal wasn't common in the human gene pool

Maybe you'd argue I wouldn't be happy, but I'm not sure knocking coconuts is a bad thing. Are we cursed (reason, conscience, etc...) to not be fulfilled unless we are "accomplishing" something more than knocking coconuts?

I didn't equate fulfillment with happiness - you did. I'd put fulfillment on my list of achievable states. And I wouldn't "quote" our accomplishments. Neither would you after you fell out of that tree, or the first time a tooth rotted out of your head.

Time is probably interesting here too - meaning the course of humanity ... Certainly living before modern medicine, computers, transportation, electricity didn't preclude people then from being fulfilled. Now, we have those things. Are we forced to use them to achieve our fulfillment?

Mixing apples and oranges.

 

[nexion]

I think that perhaps there are some times in which happiness can be coaxed out through the redirection of one's attention towards things that might make him happy, or a paradigm shift in perceiving and therefore thinking about reality. I also find, however, that there are some points in which even the pursuit of happiness becomes unbearable or impossible. And then there are also some points in which an individual may not necessarily desire happiness, or perhaps even he would desire something which might directly oppose happiness.

I'd have to say, that to live in happiness is indeed desirable to a certain point. But to live in a sustained happiness which would last forever would be to live a jaded and deluded existence, and would serve no more purpose than to rob happiness of any meaning. It is sadness that one feels which makes happiness worthwhile, depression which gives meaning to joy, and vice versa. There is always a flow to be had from one state to another, wherein the first pours into the second which then gets absorbed back into the first. Balance without turmoil is peace.

 

[BigApplePi]

As we go about our business we alternate between desire and satisfaction. Desire ... satisfaction ... desire ... satisfaction ... desire ... satisfaction ... . If you can keep this up, you is happy. If you run into a snag, you gets unhappy.