Happiness can best be defined as the most ideal emotional state. It is more than a neutral disposition; it is joy. To be happy is to be within the highest achievable state of being. Thomas Jefferson placed this prosperity as the forefront of human endeavors and granted that its pursuit was among our highest goals.
As such, much of the American Dream is predicated upon the achievement of happiness. That’s not to say that other societies or cultures have not pursued happiness or desired to relish in it indefinitely. But the American standard of living is based on it. To be sure, it can be considered the ultimate failure in life to not have accomplished perfect happiness.
Yet this standard presents many problems. For one, happiness is fleeting. We experience joy at times in our life and it is wonderful indeed. But it doesn’t last. Circumstances change and we don’t have the proper control over the infinite variables that affect this joyous state.
We must also factor in the Law of Diminishing returns. All too often, that which makes us happy once, does not make us happy again. Novelty is our only answer and it often doesn’t come quickly enough or even at all. This requirement of novelty keeps raising the bar of standards to the point that happiness becomes exponentially more difficult to achieve. And the time between these events increases as well. Thus, we spend more time absent of happiness. When we don’t achieve our goal of happiness, the void fills with despair, sadness, and anger.
The continued pursuit of happiness inevitably raises our standards of life to unreachable heights. The requirement of novelty that is inherent in that pursuit keeps us looking outside of ourselves for the next fix. What happens then is a focus on material and relative comparisons of status that lead to anxiety, hostility, and conflict.
Superfluity and excess are the products of this pursuit and eventually become the obstacles themselves to the goal. This happens because the object orientation, of happiness, lives well above the level of necessity. A standard of living is not the same as a standard of life.
The best fix for this journey of defeat is to shift to a different paradigm. Instead of chasing the butterfly of happiness that soars ever higher, beyond our grasp, and leaves us hunger, we should reach for those things that travel slow, but fill us up.
Choosing to abide a standard of survival is the answer. Survival is the pusuit of life. Its aim is to do those things that are necessary to maintain life or will likely maintain life in the future. Survival requires solutions and not despair. Survival requires health and fitness. Survival avoids pain and detriment. It attempts to escape misery and has no use for anxiety.
Survival has some very basic tenets with which it adheres. The first is necessity. If an action or an object does not prove to be necessary now or is very unlikely to be necessary for future survival, it is discarded or ignored. If there is no utility, there is no merit.
The second tenet is economy. Survival uses only exactly what is necessary and nothing more. Ignoring economy is costly. Overconsumption of goods leaves us vulnerable. Overstocking goods limits mobility. Goods can take attention and requires care. If we care too much for goods, we do not care for ourselves. If we do not care for ourselves, we cannot maintain life. If we do not carefully select the goods we care for, this can leaves us vulnerable.
The third tenet is adaptability. We can never control all variables of our circumstances. This is an indisputable truth. We must therefore be able to use what is at our disposal in order to survive or do that which increases the probability of survival in the future.
The fourth tenet of survival is observation. Imagination and invention tells us nothing. Only actually observed phenomenon means anything. Uncertain data can be a threat itself. Therefore, rigorous observation is crucial to survival.
Survival does not require accepting our station or our circumstances. In fact, survival requires that we buffer ourselves from those things likely to impede upon our survival. But it does not invent threats. It only observes threats. Survival is not predatory, it is defensive. Survival does not pursue, it escapes, defends, or eliminates.
The standard and the pursuit of happiness leaves us to expect it. This expectation and the failure to reach it is the cause of anger, misery, despair, and anxiety. It is excessive, it is expensive, it is invariant, and it is an illusion.
By accepting instead the standard of survival we can eliminate the pain and desperation that is present in our lives. It is the only necessary pusuit and it is easily attainable. Where happiness eludes us, survival stays upon exception of death. Survival only keeps ill-feeling as necessary and discards it when it is used up. Whereas in the pursuit of happiness, depression is the placeholder.
Survival is fluid and adaptive; happiness is stale and unchanging. Survival is presence; happiness is absence. Survival is necessity; happiness is excess. Survival can be achieved by all; happiness is elitist.
Those who search for heaven on earth will never find it. Those who seek unending joy find only chains. Yet those who maintain the standard of survival will live free.
What about meaning? That is the highest of human aims, is it not? One can have meaning in life without happiness. Survival is nothing more than DNA’s methods and ability to replicate itself and is shared by all life forms, from prokaryotes to George W. Bush (but I repeat myself). You’ve read your Frankl, have you not?
Yes. But to accept this as focus in human situations promotes emotional neutrality, which is satisfaction.
Frankl Schmankl. Meaning is overrated. It can be just as difficult to reach as everlasting happiness. Now, it may be useful from time to time, but then it’s no longer meaning, but rather “objectives”.
And it’s rather childish to compare Bush to prokaryotes…it’s not a fair comparison to prokaryotes! (winking yellow smiley face thingy)
I do not accept your premise that happiness is dependent upon material things. Things are fun, but they are not what makes most people happy. Happiness comes from caring for others, doing things that you enjoy with ones you love, and adding value to the world.
Mere survival is a narcissistic wordview. One merely exists, one only worries about one’s self, not caring about others.
I also disagree with your statement “When we don’t achieve our goal of happiness, the void fills with despair, sadness, and anger” on two fronts. First, happiness isn’t a goal, it ensues from doing things that provide value. It’s a result of other goals. Second, if one isn’t happy at a given moment, why do you automatically assume that the feeling is despair, sadness, and anger? How about amusement, boredom, hunger, curiosity, confusion, blissfulness, or any other feeling that isn’t happiness?
As humans, we can do better than mere survival.
It’s not that happiness is dependent on things, it just tends that way. And when happiness depends on other people, as with things, maintenance is impossible.
…and…
The standard of survival is dependent on present circumstances and should not be construed to imply “the state of nature.” That is, the standard of survival is a reality based paradigm that limits expectations of emotional achievement, i.e. happiness.
“Caring” for others happens to be a necessary product of the standard as it best insulates us from harm in many, many ways. What emotional benefit arises is incidental and unnecessary so as long as it is non-negative and promotes its avoidance (survival) of negativity in the future. When caring stops having this insulating affect, caring should be ceased.
Not in the sense of the American Dream. Happiness IS a pursuit and a goal unto itself. And it shouldn’t be. That it is a result of other goals is true so long as its existence doesn’t matter to completion. Otherwise, it IS the goal.
I am happy now. You are right it will be gone when it is gone. Something new will replace what this feeling is, something new, something new, and again something new.
We are not robots. We are not zapped from an emotion - a chemical and social/psychological response. We are not mere survival, yet we are. When we live to sustain, we could find a sense of happiness. An equality. A balance.
Happiness is defined by each who defines it. In this general statement, there are no generalities.
Love, love, love.
How do I know? Sounds exactly like something a robot would say…
You run the 1-3-1 well, but the trap won’t work here. Biologicaly, chemically, one could argue we are a system of 1’s and 0’s, a machine, a robot and there is little to deny that. However, we, humans have created a robot, a machine; therefore we are giving the definition. Would the machine be what we are to God? We the creators?
However, going again, we define robots as completley mechanical, void of emotion, their intention based on strict reason. We as humans, are, at times, void of reason, are we not? Or perhaps it could be catergorized as void of common rationale. But I refuse to play on commonalitites and generalizations. There are general ideas that can be said about certain times/people/places, but they tend to not hold up the closer the general ideas are related to a single individual.
We as people could find happiness if we would stop searching for it and realize that we are in a constant state of happiness. Through the constat look out and acceptance/denial cycle we fall into we are always looking for some sort of “greater” happiness - the idea of happiness is humans worst kind of drug.
Do you say survival is the best for all of us or just you? Or just a set number of people? Should we all revert back to the savage man? Can we? Does the savage man love? Does the survivalist love the fellow survivalist? If so, in what way?
Aaron,
Mark Twain would tell you that we are indeed robots, or namely, machines, built with the singular purpose to do nothing but pursue contentment of our own spirit.
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-whatisman.htm