How Can One Achieve Happiness?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

In the Forum “Philosophy (Heavily Moderated)” there is a long discussion in response to the topic “Why Is One Happy? (An Analysis)”. Since I am not qualified to participate in that forum, I wish to first explore the views expressed there, and then go beyond that to ask how we may achieve happiness for ourselves. To do this, it seems to me we need to know the answer to the question posed by Magius in “Philosophy (Heavily Moderated)”. For a better understanding of my introductory remarks, it would be useful to review the postings in that forum.

Here is my response to what has transpired there:

To briefly summarize the view expressed in the original posting, Magius postulates that a person is happy if his needs (perhaps we should say “desires”) are fulfilled OR if he has peace of mind, which implies that his desires are fulfilled. And Magius says that this state of mind does not depend on knowing the truth, it depends only on what one believes to be true.

Magius would be correct, if we considered happiness to exist only at a moment in time, and to consist primarily of a momentary feeling of pleasure or well-being. The girl on a date with a man of dubious intent, in his illustration, is happy at the moment, but destined for unhappiness. Why is she happy? Because she believes she has what suits her well.

Ignorance is bliss – but only until reality intrudes.

However, Magius posed the question “why is one happy,” and sought an answer that suited all occasions and degrees of happiness, so this would suggest he is not primarily interested merely in moments of happiness, but rather seeks to know why does one come to be in a continuing state of happiness. If one is happy only for a moment, one would not describe himself as happy.

Magius seems to have correctly defined the parameters for a continuing state of happiness: awareness; satisfaction of needs (wants) [whether we have complete awareness of these or not]; and peace of mind (contentment).

In a later post Magius stresses that he does not want to know “How does one become happy” but simply “why” and in a still later post, he says that his inquiry was motivated by a desire “to lead all people to happiness.”
“Why” may indicate purpose, cause, or reason. The purpose of becoming happy seems self-evident. It is an ideal state of existence – having all that suits us. Magius seems to have eliminated “cause” as a possible meaning by saying he doesn’t want to know “how.” (although most people would find an answer to this far more valuable). So, what is the reason one becomes happy?

So, the question might be taken to mean “what conditions are necessary to happiness?” To the extent that conditions are within our control, is not knowledge the paramount prerequisite to happiness?

Francis Bacon wrote in “Of Truth” “. . . no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below . . . .”

Those with knowledge of truth are wise, and those who are wise know how to achieve happiness. They know, too, why virtuous action is the way to the greatest happiness, for it is in greatest accord with the harmonious progress of life.

The rest of us must struggle on in ignorance, hoping for a BMW or a one-night stand as a necessary precondition to being happy.

One is able to pursue happiness to the extent (1) one knows the truth, correctly perceiving and understanding reality; and (2) one accepts reality as it is – including our power to affect the future. One is thus happy when one is truly aware of one’s real needs (which are usually fulfilled easily) and has the knowledge which allows the fulfillment of these needs.

This idea is communicated in the “Serenity Prayer” attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

It is wisdom, not ignorance, which gives us bliss. To modify Silhouette’s signature line: “Ignorance (not Life) is such a frustrating contradiction: it seeks that which it cannot find and strives for that which it cannot have. No wonder it ends up with nothing.”

With wisdom, we are at home in the universe. We are contented with our place and able to travel as we wish. With wisdom, our needs are found to be limited, as Thoreau and the Buddhist monks have observed. Thus we are more easily satisfied. With wisdom, we have self-knowledge, and so we know how to fulfill our modest needs and achieve happiness in virtually any situation.

However, wisdom will not be sufficient in every situation. The idea of happiness is rooted in the Middle English word “hap” – chance, good fortune (something that happens which suits us). Thus, we can be knowledgeable, aware, accept reality, and act wisely – and still be rendered unhappy by some chance event. So, if we are seeking a simple answer to the question “why is one happy,” [in the words of Magius: “general, the overriding theme, that makes us happy”] we might say that one is happy to the extent fortune (assisted his own efforts) has brought him what suits him well. It is the suitability of the circumstance, event, situation, happening, fortune to the individual that determines whether it contributes to his happiness.

A pig is happy in mud, or so I have been told.

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Your post sent me to read the entire mentioned thread. I came away a bit confused. Magius stated numerous times that the issue was why are we happy, and not how. Most of the posts described a possible state of happiness and then proceeded to discuss ‘how’ that state of happiness was acheived.

It seems to me that Magius set up an impossible-to-answer question. The term happiness describes a feeling, an emotion, and there is no answer to why man has this emotional capacity without attempting to ‘reverse engineer’ the concept. Without a description of the ‘how’s’ there is little to say.

Happiness, like all emotions, only yield’s to one of two possible states: feel’s good and feel’s bad. The possible sources, degree of intensity, duration, etc. of either state reside’s on a very long grey scale.

My take is that happiness occurs as it occurs, and that we should be appreciative of happiness whenever it happens. Can we cultivate happiness? It would depend on the definition, which any number of posters to the original thread pointed out.

In general, the ‘pursuit of happiness’ is futile. To asked for a constant emotional state of ‘feel good’ doesn’t match up with the human species very well. We are a species of compare and contrast, and no one emotional state can or should be expected on a continual basis. Just for giggles, how long could any human exist in a continual ‘feel good’ emotional state before they could no longer tell the difference? How much chocolate can you eat before you throw up?

JT

3

Greetings Taishu,
thank you for taking an interest in the topic, it has stood stagnant for quite some time. You bring up some important issues in correlation to happiness and so I will address my thoughts to your ideas, but I must also respond since you seem to have committed a Straw Man fallacy. Put another way, you have misrepresented my argument as something else and argued against that. I don’t think you did so intentionally but I think you would like to be clear on what it is I really meant, so I will do my best to clarify.

Taishu stated

This is incorrect. I didn’t say that a person is happy if his needs are met. Nor did I say that a persin is happy IF he has peace of mind. Peace of mind is something a happy person has in the moment of happiness, relaxation. But to say that a person is happy IF he has peace of mind assumes a causal relation which I made no claim for. I didn’t say that only if a person has peace of mind can they come to be happy, instead, I said that a happy person has peace of mind, which is to leave it open for the fact that peace of mind may be something that comes from, or atleast one of the things that comes from, being happy. There are no borders here, it may also be possible to have peace of mind from other things. Nor do I assume any causal relation.

Taishu stated:

Correct, this is central to almost all things I say. I don’t believe in absolute truth.

Taishu stated:

There seems to be different ideas of happiness here. You appear to agree that happiness falls into the realm of time, but you seem to have some kind of overarching happiness that is always present in mind. While I have an idea of happiness as brief moments (seconds, minutes, hours…but not days, weeks, or months) of which as an agglomeration we come to think of as a general happiness over longer periods of time.

Taishu stated:

You make a major assumption here, namely that she is destined for unhappiness. One could argue that because this guy I label ‘scum’ will likely hurt her, she may save herself greater pain later. The point of whether she is GOING TO BE happy or not is beyond the scope of the thread about happiness. You appear to agree that she is happy because she believes she has what suits her well, according to your own logic then, happiness consists in what one believes (an internal, personal, relative idea of truth).

Taishu stated:

I didn’t go so far as to say that. Though happiness is quite possible under my idea of happiness both by the ignorant as well as the nonignorant - and even that matters heavily on what we take to be ‘ignorance’.

Taishu stated:

I believe you have very faulty logic in the above quote. I seek an understanding of ‘happiness’ that suits all occasions and all people in general. But you draw unlicensed conclusions from such a claim. What I seek and how happiness work are two different things. More importantly, because I seek a general understanding doesn’t mean I don’t believe in a momentary happiness, nor does it mean that happiness as a definition entails some kind of generality (though it likely does). Once again, I am looking for criteria that is present in every form of happiness experienced by humans…whatever that criteria may be, whether physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, or what have you (I am open to all interpretations). I don’t believe that happiness is experienced as a continuing state of happiness, rather I believe that happiness consists of many short-lived happy experiences. I also disagree with your last claim and would instead claim that happiness is what I describe myself as in a single moment when I am happy. Otherwise, we would need to decide what limit of time experienced in happiness fits the definition of happiness. There is no way to measure the degree nor the length of time experienced in happiness. If one had to measure, I doubt they would be happy anymore. According to your logic, it would seem that a person could find themselves in a situation where if someone asked you “are you happy?” you would likely answer “not yet, for I haven’t been experiencing happiness for the prerequisite amount of time”.

Taishu stated:

While you think that purpose of becoming happy is self-evident, I find it to be more complex than anything I have ever encountered in any science. I have never heard of a person who has gotten all that suited them as happy, in fact it is these very people that get what suits them that are most unhappy. If it seems that I have eliminated “cause” of happiness, I meant no such thing. I am most interested in the cause of happiness, though specific types of cause. For instance, one may be willing and able to tell me the chemical reactions in the brain that cause happiness which would, in all likelihood, not lead me to a better understanding of why we become happy in a general sense. There is a certain level of complexity in understanding a thing that may lead to less understanding of the thing in practical terms.

Taishu stated:

The question should not be taken to mean the above. For the reason that it assumes that I am only interested in the conditions necessary for happiness, but I believe there are an unlimited number of conditions that make people happy, though there are, I believe, certain commonalities between the way in which we experience happiness, like my idea of the focus. This can be compared to melancholiness and sometimes sadness which I have often experienced when I am neither here nor there, and not really focused on anything but just sort of blah…in contrast, when I am happy I am quite sharply focused on one or another thing, whether it be an idea, hope, act, or material thing.

Taishu stated:

Again with self-evident truths. If you believe in absolute truth and I don’t, then it is something we will have to clear up first before going on about why one is happy. There must ofcourse be some kind of correlation between belief and what one experiences as reality, but within that framework there is much room for differentiation. For example, if person A stated that everything in reality is always doubling in size every second, there would be nothing we could say to disprove them. If person B stated that everything was shrinking by half every second, there would also be nothing we could say against them. These two arguments are in opposite direction of each other yet person A and B can go on living healthy normal lives. Ofcourse, if one attempted to convince themselves that gravity didn’t exist, that nothing existed except themselves (extreme form of Solipsism) then they would soon find themselves dead (referring to Phyrro the founder of Solipsism).

Taishu stated:

But isn’t it just the opposite? Don’t society teach us that education will allow us to make enough money to drive BMW’s and be able to have one-night stands with super-models? I don’t believe these things lead to the right kind of happiness, but my aim is not to find the right kind of happiness but to find the commonalities in all forms of happiness for all people.

Taishu stated:

I totallly disagree with the above. Though I don’t want to get into it because we will go off topic. Perhaps you would like to start a new thread. As a first criticism of the above quote, it assumes that YOU already know the truth, otherwise how could you claim to know that truth leads to happiness?

Taishu stated:

According to what logic? And again, your notion of ‘wisdom’ is entirely dependent on the idea of absolute truth (which is an assumption).

I also don’t buy the argument that happiness is a chance event. If it was then it would appear we couldn’t have any control over it, yet people are able to alter their perception of situations and come to see a situation in a positive light which they previously saw in a dark light.

What’s your take?

4

Magus,

" I seek an understanding of ‘happiness’ that suits all occasions and all people in general."

People are happy if life is meaningful. For this reason people even find happiness in their unhappiness, which isn’t as contradictory as it sounds.

Dunamis

5

In reference to the difference between asking “why is one happy” and “how is one happy”:

It depends on how you take them. For instance, if one understands ‘how’ to mean the causes of becoming happy in an external sense, for example, I am happy because I received a present…then this is missing my point. However, ‘why’ could be understood in the same way. Why is one happy, well because they received a present…also missing the point. There shouldn’t be such a big focus on word usage as sticking to the subject topic. I clearly spelled out that my objective was to find what it is that is common to people experience any and all forms of happiness.

To further explain the issue in a negative way: I could say in answer to why/how a person is happy that they are happy because…

  1. They ate good food
  2. They won at a game
  3. They had sex
  4. They were cheered
  5. They won a prize
  6. They completed a task
  7. They received a present
    :sunglasses: They received something everyone else wants
  8. They received fame
    and so on…

Now, can we not take 1-9 and say that this same situation can cause a person to feel bad? Could we not say that someone at least once in their lives ate good food but felt bad because they thought of those without food at all? Could we not say that someone felt bad for winning a game because they cared nothing at all for winning but only wanted everyone to be happy and to have fun yet those who lost are now upset? Could we not say that someone having sex is upset because it is bad sex, or perhaps it isn’t sex with the person they wanted? Could we not say that a person who is being cheered for feels bad because they feel they shouldn’t be cheered for?..the general point is this, there is no one thing as an external cause that can be said to make a person happy every time. Hence, we cannot conclude that we can understand happiness for people by looking to the external factors as causes. We need to look for internal causes. Ofcourse, there is a correlation to external causes in terms of happiness, but it is only a correlation in a most broad understanding. It isn’t any ONE thing that causes us to be happy, but its relation to our mental states. One thing I find common to all forms of happiness is that they are a focus, kind of like looking at a leaf upclose. It is these generalities that I seek.

Whether we ask why or how matters not as long as we understand that we are looking for the general criteria of happiness.

What’s your take?

6

Yes, I most humbly agree Dunamis. It appears that all things that make us happy also give us meaning of some sort. This also closely translate to having goals and why many self-help experts advocate making goals for oneself to achieve in order to be happy. Psychologists often find that the sad and depressed see life as meaningless and they lack any short-term or even long-term goals.

Dunamis, do you think we can extract anything more from ‘meaning’, is this the only criteria applicable to happiness in most general terms, or is it just one of many?

What’s your take?

7

Magius,

I think meaning comes by orienting yourself within a meaning field, or as some say, an ideology (which is literally a “picture-order”). It is “taking your place”, and for some that can even be a wretched place, but still a meaningful and therefore happy place. I do believe that pain leads you to truth, it has a way of nudging you closer to something, but always these nudgings collapse into meaning fields which compete with others. I have just been reading about the Cathar Inquisition by the Catholic Church in the 13th and 14th centuries. Confessions were elicited by depriving the subject of a place within the meaning field of the church. The choice was to either bravely cling to the private and more subversive Cathar reality, or to join the dominant ideology by taking your place as a heretic. Either place, I believe, if it is committed to lead to a kind of happiness.

Dunamis

8

i believe there are two kinds of happiness, short-term and long-term. most (if not all) of the nine things Magius came up with are short-term things. winning at a game, being praised for doing something good, these are all good reasons to be happy, but it will fade within minutes or hours. now being in love, having the aforementioned peace of mind, these are long-term things. this happiness will last years usually.

as to respond to the statement that there is no such thing as an external cause for happiness, you’re probably right. and i can’t really think of a better way to prove it, but there is always a good way and a bad way to view any given situation.

let’s try it: the recent tsunami. the bad way to look at it (bad meaning sad, not the morally bad way to see it): massive loss of life. the good way: the next time you’re in a long line, ask yourself: am i better off now that there are less people?

while this may seem like a horrible argument or whatever, it’s actually relevant. the happiness experienced in most of Magius’s examples is personal and self-centered, while the sadness experienced is a result of asking how this affects others. so i think this may provide a clue as to the internal factor of happiness. whilst i don’t like to say it, much joy we feel is selfish.

9

I heard BBC’s interview of Desmond Morris (“The Naked Ape”) on radio. And he said that contentment is being satisfied with your current position, for whatever reasons, whereas happiness is a change in your position for the “better”, and such can occur as in winning, or achieveing an aimed-for goal, getting a pleasant surprise, etc. That these good feelings are ephemeral is beside the point. And I often wonder why people make happiness the goal of life.

10

Right from birth, we need. Food, water, sex… you name it. Happiness is the pleasure of not needing anymore. There are two ways to do this: 1 struggle to archieve; 2 practise to become a monk.

11

Not needing sex anymore? Aww … how can that be happiness? :astonished:

12

You want sex, you go look for sex, probably with a little masterbation on the way, just to make sure that you are not too full of it to ignore traffic signs.

You don’t want sex, you sit down in front of your computer, as peaceful as ever, philosophising life, during which you conclude that happiness is eternal ease.

13

Magius and Dunamis,

If one does not believe in absolute truth, then isn’t ‘meaning’ purely a creation of the human brain? To be happy we therefore have to immerse ourselves in illusion (as opposed to becoming disillusioned), to find meaning and through it, potentially, happiness.

To my mind this would suggest that ignorance truly is bliss. To be happy, a person must create or accept something that has no proveable basis in fact and may in fact be illogical - e.g. religion.

I think, for me at least, truth is necessary for real happiness, although ignorance is an effective substitute and very possibly the best we have.

14

Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right? Not that these are mutually exclusive, but I see the overlap as being a tiny area.

Those who make an intense effort to be right, rarely experience happiness. This is because acceptance is part of happiness. Those who hunger to be right have to reject everything that is wrong. They also have to carefully monitor everything to screen out the wrong from the right. Part of happiness is accepting that you will always be occasionally wrong, no matter what you do.

Then again does a universal, one-size-fits all, formula for happiness even exist?

Will doing what makes another man happy make me happy? What if he is a freak? Then he may not be a good standard for me to follow. What if I am a freak? Then following the standard won’t lead me to experience happiness.

15

xanderman, I don’t think it is necessarily a case of what we want. Most (all if we’re honest) of us, would prefer to be happy rather than right. However, you cannot find happiness through something you don’t believe in and if you’re inclined to be sceptical you can’t simply pick the first (perhaps any) ideology or belief system that you come across and immerse yourself in it.

If one doesn’t make an intense effort to be right, one must either ignore what appear to be facts (or are likely to be facts) or choose to believe in something that reason tells you is likely to be false - and that’s easier said than done. You are right though, that seeking a ‘right’ answer is not conducive to happiness.

The trick is to never become disillusioned to any significant degree because I don’t think it’s reversable… :slight_smile:

16

Jake,

“I think, for me at least, truth is necessary for real happiness”.

“Truth” is always produced within an ideology, a discourse, a meaning-field. Now you have three alternatives. One is that ideologies are in competition with each other, and none are any better than any others, so that the best you can do is to pass from one to another. Two, is that by moving from one to another you are progressing towards some ultimate meaning, though perhaps not one that you will completely reach. Or three, that there is an over-arching ideology or structure of meaning and that this ideology corrects the incorrect ones and is ultimately reachable.

I find that the violences committed in the name of the third option make me shy away from this belief, but I don’t rule it out. It may very well be that the first is the “real” one, that victors determine the truth and that new victors always will come with a new truth, but this does not reflect how I have experienced life. So for me the successions of meanings, of ideologies in my own life, and my ability to find a place within them has felt progressive, so most meaningful to me, most happy for now, is the sense that it is the process itself, a continual evolution of meanings that is important, which may or may not reveal itself in the end with an ultimate perspective.

Dunamis

17

Magius,

To put in my two cents, I can’t say I agree with your idea that happiness requires focus and attention absolutely. I realise in your initial post that you said you did not want to talk about the different physical and emotional attributes of happiness, as there are many degrees of happiness, but I feel it is necessary to divide happiness into at least two different forms to investigate why one is happy.

I believe there are two forms of happiness, unconscious and conscious and that each are intertwined and can influence the other. I believe that in your initial post you are referring only to conscious happiness, that is the happiness that you experience after focus. Please correct me if I am wrong. However, I believe that there is an unconscious, more primal form of happiness that you have not considered.

Let me expand with an example. If we revisit the scumbag example, lets say that after dinner he does indeed have sex with the girl in question. Afterwards he experiences an obvious feeling of well being wash over him and while he is not necessarily focused (awareness and attention, in your words) on the variables of the situation, he nevertheless feels happy. Now the reason he is experiencing happiness is no doubt from the fulfilment of an instinctual/biological need and it is likely to be dominantly chemical. Do you agree that at that moment the scumbag has achieved happiness without being focused on the situation he is in? I don’t think being happy can be entirely separated from biology. It has the capability of amplifying or suppressing any forms of conscious happiness.

Being sexually frustrated, hungry, thirsty etc., while not eliminating, can have severe impacts on feelings of happiness. I believe true happiness lies in the combination of unconscious happiness (the fulfilment of basic human needs) and the conscious happiness that involves the awareness and appreciation of the situation, which you have discussed previously.

18

I think we must abandon ‘happiness’ as a concept altogether. From whats written it seems that to most happiness is what makes you happy: to one it is meaning, to another being right, to another getting what you want, and yet to anther is to be rich and powerful, etc, etc. In other words it is back to be often asked question again: what is life all about; and the ‘doctrine’ being if you know what is this and if either you have attained it or on course to attain it, that’s what happiness is all about, if there is a need for that label at all. Now we can debate whether this ‘doctrine’ is true or not, or what’s the ends of life is all about. This I think is a more fruitful discussion. If not it is simply an argument over personal preferences.

19

I like Magius’s point that those who are unhappy usually are unfocused and connot find meaning in anything. It seems also true that those who are happy are somewhat focused on something that is meaningful.

I believe that happiness is realizing one’s own accord with absolute truth. I know a lot of people here do not believe in absolute truth so let me at least describe my view of it and perhaps you will have different labels for it.

Absolute truth cannot be spoken or communicated by any singled out part of existence but rather is described and exemplified by all that exists together. Absolute truth is never wholly known or completely understood by any seperate part of it. It merely is. Absolute truth is existence entirely.

Now with that in mind I make again the statement that happiness is realizing one’s own accord with this absolute truth. How can a person be in accord with absolute truth if no seperate part of existence can communicate or understand it?

My answer is that we don’t have to. We may never understand it or communicate the truth ourselves completely, but yet if we have perfect faith that it exists, if we eliminate our fear of its lack of existence, if we simply and honestly understand our weakness and place in the truth, then we are allowed happiness.

Like Magius pointed out, happiness sorrounds those who are focused. I believe that those happy people are focused in their faith that “whatever will be will be.” For example a happy person will see the truth of a matter, focus on it, realize their accord with it, and therefore gain faith in their understanding of it. This faith is what leads to happiness. Not to say that one’s logic and reasoning will dissolve when it comes to decision making with this faith. Rather this faith should help a person to rationalize more clearly the steps that lie ahead of them.

With meek and humbleness to the absolute truth we are capable of seeing more and more of it. We are set free on a clear and steady path of upward movement. A path that never ends, and that begins in places like this forum. The happiness we experience now is merely a glimpse of what is intended for us. Only fear stands in the way.

I’m tired…this couldn’t have come out right…anyone know what I’m talking about?

20

Dunamis

When I said I think that truth was necessary for one to be happy, I should have said an absolute truth. My point of view would be that if there is no absolute truth (which may well be) then any meaning we find in life does not and cannot have any truth. It’s essentially meaningless.

If, to borrow your examples, 1 is correct and that victorious ideologies determine ‘truth’ then truth is not really ‘true’ in the absolute sense of the word. You say we can only pass from one ideology to another, when we can, in fact, refuse to believe in something we don’t see a reason to believe in.

2 requires, if you are working towards an ultimate meaning, an absolute truth at the end of your searching - even if it may not be reachable. If there is no ultimate meaning it is basically the same as example 1. I would say, however, that this way of living is most likely to result result in a happy life.

3 again requires an absolute truth.

My point simply is: either there is an absolute truth (e.g. divine) that we can find or at least search for, or there isn’t. If there isn’t, then we must invent truths. Inventing truths is a strange concept if you hold it up to the light - it seems like cheating to me :slight_smile: in a sense. That’s why I said that, for me, truth (absolute truth) was necessary for happiness.

(I would briefly add, however, that obsessions can remove one’s need for absolute truth, which I suppose is finding a meaning of a kind. I think I would characterise being obsessed as inventing an absolute truth…).