Happiness surely is a highly debated topic in philosophy, only in rank after ethics and means of governance, but it forms such a core foundation of our every day action that an approximate understanding of it would not led us far. Sure, there have been several discourses on happiness, but the main aim of all of them has been same: that happiness if infinite and it is out there for grabs. What I am going to argue in this paper is something different.
Suppose happiness is finite, then it follows that every individual will have equal amount of happiness since there would be no distinction between person A and person B except for the slight difference in genetic make up (highly improbably factor). Person A and person B would be put through different situations in life, but we have already assumed that they would have finite pleasure and since we cannot differentiate between A and B but only on the tiny basis of genes, I would conclude that both A and B would have equal amount of happiness eventually.
This may not sound like a very big argument, but it has very subtle but remarkable consequences. If happiness really is equal for all, then no matter what steps I take in life, what path I choose on a cross road, I would end up with equal amount of happiness. For example: If I have to choose between Ice cream and soda, I can be rest assured that whatever choice I make, I would end up with equal amount of happiness, eventually. Then, there would be no basis to make any decision, for both choices would be equally good.
In the absence of this guiding light, I think a new guiding light would take over. I call this guiding light— The purpose of one’s life:
I define it thus: “The purpose of one’s life is to look for purpose in one’s life”, and if you look hard, and yet fail, you have succeeded at fulfilling it.
I think I would be writing more about it in later papers, but for now, I would like to read your comments on it.
I don’t see any reason to agree with this statement at all. I can’t think of very many finite quantities at all that every individual has the same amount of. Blood cells, money, lung capacity, life expectancy… how do you reach this strange conclusion? Some people spend years struggling with profound depression without experiencing years of bliss.
So I can with good conscience beat my wife and mentally abuse her for years, knowing that I’m saving up an ecstatic old age for her?
‘There must after all be something meaningful to do, something with more content, something more interesting than what I’m doing now’, you tell yourself. And the only thing you can do is to change yourself, hmm? But in reality there is no possibility of changing. Do you realize that ? The only change takes place in your thought structure, you begin to think differently and therefore to experience and feel things differently. Basically however everything remains exactly as it was.
I believe there has been some activity on this post, both positive and negative. Some of my arguments were understood and some utterly misunderstood. I can only be glad that some of my arguments were understood correctly, but for the ones that are misunderstood, here’s my attempt to further simplify them.
Our concept of morality is formed from our current understanding of pain and pleasure. We think it is alright to take actions that would give our subject more pleasure and reduce pain. In certain versions, only the intentions counts, regardless of the outcome. So said, it is stupid to counter my notion of happiness with ethics, since the models of ethics can very well change with the notion of happiness, and which in now in fashion can soon rot away with the change in notion of happiness.
Building back to the argument of one of the users, yes, It would be alright for you to torture and hit your wife. But, there’s a underlying subtlety here. Since neither her nor you are diminishing or gaining any sort of happiness (happiness is conserved) then why would you engage in such an activity? Would you like to waste your time hitting her (for no apparent reason) or rather go out and find your purpose in life?
I haven’t quite got the reply made to purpose in life. Sure, you can think that X is my purpose in life, and then later, Y is my purpose in life, and so forth, but that’s really the flesh of the issue. You can never know a purpose in life with certainty. Just like scientists think that a certain theory is correct, yet the conduct experiments to prove it wrong. Similarly, one should , with some thoughtful thinking, suppose X to be his purpose in life, and then with all his efforts prove that he is wrong, and then proceed to Y. Such is what I call life!
About my reason to believe why happiness is finite. All humans share a common entrance and common exit (birth and death). Now, I can use clever evolutionary arguments to make my case, but I would resist from doing it. Long story short, it is just because of this (our common entrance and exit) that evolution would force the finiteness of pleasure and pain upon us.
Also, supporting my previous argument, I believe motivation is linked with happiness and pain in the sense that the degree of happiness or pain leads to the formation of an equally intense motivation. If you feel pain, you are repelled, and if you feel pain intensely, you feel repelled intensely.
So, pain and pleasure has an evolutionary use, and like every other evolutionary variable, it should be optimized (through processes of natural selection). If a creature is able to form more positive towards emotions, he would get stuck to an stimuli for a very long time (just like narcissist) and if it has a low ability to form positive towards emotions, it would not be able stick long enough with a stimuli.
So, it follows that the notion of pain and pleasure (finiteness and equality for all human) is fitted deep into our genes (through evolution). Sure, different humans have different sizes of lungs, and no two human has the same no of red cells, but we need to consider that these things were not directly decided upon by evolution. Lungs were not put under the process of natural selection, neither were the no of red cells ever allowed one species a survival advantage over the other (in absolute terms). But, the concept of happiness plays a central role in evolution of human and thus, should have been directly determined and , like all humans have equal no of hands and legs etc, happiness is equal for all.
Sure, there can be cases where there is no limb in a human or that a human has no tongue or other such abnormalities, but I would resist talking about this, for such topics can only be discussed when a user has fully accepted my notion of happiness, and is now exploring its nuances.
I think I will rest here, but I would thank you all who have posted and will post their replies on this post.
That’s right and any significance that one might try to give to this would be born out of an assumption that life can be understood or known about. Nobody knows anything about life. We have only concepts and formulations of ideas about life.
So you tell me, what is there to understand.
Some Buddhists (among many others) believe that the path to enlightenment involves doing simple things well, mindfully. If it doesn’t matter, why not beat my wife well? She’s close at hand and smaller than me. Plus, I’m granting her a happy old age.
I’m pretty sure that this is absolutely incorrect. If evolution isn’t the mechanism by which lung capacity of a species was determined, what was? If having the right amount blood isn’t a survival advantage, what is?
Let us take height. Height is determined by a combination of ones genetics, and ones history - principally, how well-nourished we happened to be. And most of our characteristics are in varying degrees a combination of genetics and the situations we have found ourselves in. That happiness is influenced by genetics is well-attested - some families are more prone to severe depression than others, and twin studies show a link. So already we appear to have a variable. However, I think happiness is profoundly influenced by the situations we find ourselves in; and those situations can in no way be said to be equal for everybody, any more than one could claim that everyone eats as much as everyone else over their lifetime.
A further complication - what about somebody who is cut down in their prime, having had a miserable childhood and waiting for a golden retirement? Is there supposed to be some balancing force that acts throughout time to ensure balance?
I don’t buy the premise. And without that, you seem to face the problem of convincing people to follow a moral theory that tells you it’s fine to beat your wife, or worse.
There are a couple of things that I would like to point out in my post.
Some of you, it appears, have the wrong notion of what I mean by finite amount of happiness. It is not that you can have all happiness today, and leave none for future, or have no happiness in your youth, and then lead a happy old life. That is certainly not the case.
What I mean by finiteness of happiness is that happiness is bound to come to you (in one source or the other) and you don’t need to go behind running it. If it doesn’t come to you by the source you want (i would assume that you were asking for a Big bunch of happiness), it would come to you by other sources (in smaller things). So, for example, if you didn’t win the state election, you would be denied the happiness of celebrating your victory, but at the same time, as you go through life, you would encounter happiness in other forms (let’s say: as a beautiful sunset, or a hot cocoa drink).
No, I am not professing the law of attraction here, or any such pseudo science stuff, but what I am professing here is that your notion of happiness varies with time, and once when you experience high amounts of happiness (say, in terms of big successes), the notion of happiness so decreases that ordinary objects would not make your happy. (Ask a billionaire if he is pleased by the act of sitting on his jacuzzi?, or a pornstar if he loves his job?) As it appears, not many porn stars like their jobs. (Source: there was a documentary in which several pornstars confessed of not enjoying their job, but i don’t remember the name).
Anyways, coming back… You can think of happiness as a potential, more like a potential to be happy. With time, this potential increases, and with activities (like watching movies, reading, and any other pleasurable tasks), it decreases. Now, if you are denied the big sources of happiness, you can always spend your potential through smaller sources. But, there is a small thing to note here. Happiness is linked with motivation in the sense that the intensity of happiness gives the intensity of motivation caused in a human, and so, bigger sources of happiness create a bigger motivation for themselves in humans. But, as I reason, it would be just as much fine to spend your potential through the smaller sources as through the bigger sources.
Happiness does not just depend on one’s present situations. I believe happiness depends on both the current situation and the situations that precede the current situation.
Let me give you an example:
A billionaire and a poor man are both given an Armani suit, but with a hole underneath the left pocket. Do you expect both to have similar responses to it?
The billionaire, who has a overflowing pain potential, would be pained by the sight of the hole, whereas the poor man, who has a overflowing pleasure potential, would be pleased at the sight of the Armani suit.
So, current situation matters for happiness as much as one’s past.
Now to the most important of my arguments. I have found that some of the people here have problems with my concept of evolutionary happiness, so I would attempt to resolve it.
The reason why I believe happiness is equal for all even though there is a different no of red blood cells and different lung capacity in every being is that happiness served as a core entity to evolution, whereas the other things were just periphery or dependent entities. For example: A creature with a desire to live (moderate) would be more likely to live than a creature who has low or high desire to live. The former would carelessly lose one’s life, whereas the latter would care about it so much that it would not undergo any of the actions that are crucial for life. So, in short, a perfect balance between the desire to live was formed through evolution.
The same argument applies to happiness. Creatures with high potential for happiness, and creatures with low potential for happiness would have been extinct by now because for life, you need an optimal level of happiness.
Now, to the most crucial point. A creature with an optimal level of happiness potential would most probably survive even if it is blind or has only one leg. But, a creature with an abnormally low or high happiness potential would most probably die even if it has a perfect athletic body.
Think of it this way. There are all types of students in a classroom. Some of them are intelligent (predetermined) and some of them are motivated, and some are both. Now, ask yourself this: what kind of students do you suppose will make through this examination, and all the subsequent examinations?
It wouldn’t be tough for you t guess that the students who are motivated as well as intelligent would have the highest probability of making through the exams, but the second in set are not the ones with intelligence, but the ones with motivations (of course, the ones with motivation are not dunce, but just averagely intelligent, whereas the one’s with intelligence are just averagely motivated). It would just take a clear cut look on the world to see this principle in action.
Sure, the some intelligent students would outdo the motivated students, but in the long term (in a series of exams), the above pattern should be apparent.
So, this way, the concept of happiness is different from the concept of height or lung capacity from the point of view of evolution. The former is a direct quantity which was determined by evolution, whereas the latter was indirectly determined by evolution.
It so follows now that all humans have equal potential for happiness.
“Getting stuck to a stimuli” isn’t so bad in all cases. Runners have positive feelings about running that make them want to keep running for many many years. Friends, lovers, and companions have positive feelings about each other that persistand allow for lifelong bonds.
Even by that baseless analogy, hands and legs vary greatly in quality (size, strength, flexibility, dexterity, blood circulation, etc.) from person to person, so too should happiness vary greatly in quality from person to person. Do you accept that?
siochi might be considering the other mechanisms of evolution, such as genetic drift or mutation, as playing more of a role in lung size and red blood cell count than natural selection. That is my most generous guess.
Not true! did you not read by example of narcissist? Narcissist got so stuck to himself that he didn’t care for his other needs (food, water, etc). Of course, the example of narcissist is mythical, but it nevertheless is a worthy example. If certain species of animals have very high happiness potential, they would so highly get stuck to stimuli that they wouldn’t care about anything else. Also, there’s a single very important nuance here. Happiness is relative, so if you multiply my happiness with a factor of 2, I wouldn’t be able to notice it. I can only notice it if it changes in respect to a certain scale. So, in the above example, we are simply assuming that only a certain stimuli is able to produce highly entrancing motivations, whereas others cannot. If so happens, he would simple be repeating the fate of Narcissist.
About my use of evolution. I think I have cleared that point in my previous comment.
It is exactly what you are hoping and trying for that is responsible for its opposite, today’s sorrow. It’s just an unhappy person who wants to become happy; a happy person does not have the wish to become happy. So the question of being unhappy does not arise as long as you don’t search for happiness.
What is it that has a hold on you and your individual affairs? It’s as if something’s making you feel that there must be something more meaningful or interesting to do with your life.
Existence is all that is important, not how to live. We have created the “how” to live, which in turn has created this dilemma for us. Your thinking has created problems–what to eat, wear, how to behave–the body doesn’t care. I am simply pointing out the absurdity of this. Once you get the hang of it, you just forget about it and drop it.
this is refuted by suicide, existence is not what is important we are organic machines moved by emotions and urges, we do not exist for the sake of existing we exist to react on this emotions and urges.
if you doubt it, what happens if you take away the emotions and urges’ would you still do anything?
also im not saying there is something more to life, there is a logical reason why i say permanent hapiness can only be achieved at death.
Nature is interested in only two things - to survive and to reproduce one like itself. Anything you superimpose on that, all the cultural input, is responsible for the boredom of man. So we have varieties of experiences. You are not satisfied with your own teachings or games; so you bring in others. They become interesting because they are something new. You pick up a new language and try to speak it and use it to feel more important. But basically, it is the same thing.
No talent is required to reproduce. Nature has done a tremendous job in creating this extraordinary piece - the body. The body does not want to learn anything from culture. It doesn’t want to know anything from us. We are always interested in telling this body how to function. All our experiences, spiritual or otherwise, are the basic cause of our suffering. The body is not interested in your bliss or your ecstasies. It is not interested in your pleasure. It is not in interested in anything that you are interested in. And that is the battle that is going on all the time. But there seems to be no way out.
(Source: there was a documentary in which several pornstars confessed of not enjoying their job, but i don’t remember the name).