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WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

ANSWERS: MATT@INDIGOPEOPLE.ORG 

Happiness is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history. This reflects the universal importance that humans place on happiness.

States associated with happiness include well-being, delight, health, safety, contentment, and love. Contrasting states include suffering, depression grief, anxiety, and pain. Happiness is often associated with the presence of favorable circumstances such as a supportive family life, a loving marriage, and economic stability. Unfavorable circumstances, such as abusive relationships, accidents, loss of employment, and conflicts, diminish the amount of happiness a person experiences. However, according to several ancient and modern thinkers, happiness is influenced by the attitude and perspective taken on such circumstances.

 Various forms of happiness

Many English language terms refer to various forms of happiness and pleasure. These terms vary in the intensity of the pleasure they describe, as well as the depth and longevity of the satisfaction. These include: bliss, joy, jubilation, exultation, euphoria, ecstasy, elation and gratification.

 Philosophical views of happiness

In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 B.C.E., Aristotle stated that happiness is the only emotion that humans desire for its own sake. He observed that men sought riches, or honor, or health, not for their own sake but in order to be happy. Note that "eudaimonia", the term we translate as "happiness", is for Aristotle an activity rather than an emotion or a state. Happiness is characteristic of a good life, that is, a life in which a man or woman fulfills human nature in an excellent way. The happy person is virtuous, meaning he or she has outstanding abilities and emotional tendencies which allow him or her to fulfill our common human ends. For Aristotle, then, happiness is "the virtuous activity of the soul in accordance with reason": happiness is the practice of virtue. Aristotle argues that happiness depends both on variables that we can fully control, especially virtue, and some variables that we can only partially control, such as wealth and social relationships.

Many ethicists make arguments for how humans should behave, either individually or collectively, based on the resulting happiness of such behavior. Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, advocated the greatest happiness principle as a guide for ethical behavior.

Societal theories of happiness

Societies, religions, and individuals have various views on the nature of happiness and how to pursue it. Western society takes its concept of happiness, at least in part, from the Greek concept of Eudaimonia^[. Eudaimonia (Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is a classical Greek word commonly translated as 'happiness'. Etymologically, it consists of the word "eu" ("good" or "well being") and "daimōn" ("spirit" or "minor deity", used by extension to mean one's lot or fortune).

For Americans, the happy or ideal life is sometimes referred to as the American dream which can be seen as the idea that any goal can be attained through sufficient hard work and determination, birth and privilege notwithstanding^[ While many artists, writers, scholars, and religious leaders can and do consider their work to fall within the American dream, it is usually thought of as relating to financial success. Writers such as Horatio Alger promoted this idea, while many writers, such as Arthur Miller, criticized it Factors such as hunger, disease, crime, corruption, and warfare can decrease happiness^.

Psychological views

Early theories

Buddha is probably the earliest recorded thinker to discuss the role of the mind in the pursuit of happiness, including the psychological origins of mental dysfunction, and positive interventions to remove such dysfunction through the practice of the eightfold path, and especially mindfulness and concentration. According to Buddha,"Mind is the forerunner of states of existence. Mind is chief, and (those states) are caused by the mind. If one speaks and acts with a pure mind, surely happiness will follow like one's own shadow!".

The Chinese Confucian thinker Mencius, who 2300 years ago sought to give advice to the ruthless political leaders of the warring states period, could well be the second figure to ponder over the psychological roots of happiness. Mencius was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between the "lesser self" (the physiological self) and the "greater self" (the moral self) and that getting the priorities right between these two would lead to sagehood. Furthermore he argued that if we did not feel satisfaction or pleasure in nourishing one's "vital force" with "righteous deeds" that force would shrivel up (Mencius,6A:15 2A:2). More specifically, he mentions the experience of intoxicating joy if one celebrates the practice of the great virtues, especially through music.

About one hundred years later the Hindu thinker Patnjali, author of the Yoga Sutra, wrote quite exhaustively on the psychological and ontological roots of bliss (See Marvin Levine, the Positive Psychology of Yoga and Buddhism). Positive psychology

In his book Authentic Happiness Martin Seligman, one of the founders of Positive Psychology, describes happiness as consisting of both positive emotions (such as ecstasy and comfort) and positive activities (such as absorption and engagement). He presents three categories of positive emotions related to the past, present and future.

Positive emotions relating to the past include satisfaction, contentment, pride and serenity. Positive emotions relating to the future include optimism, hope and trust. Positive emotions about the present are divided into two categories which are significantly different: pleasure and gratifications. The bodily and higher pleasures are "pleasures of the moment" and usually involve some external stimulus.

Gratifications involve full engagement, flow, elimination of self-consciousness, and blocking of felt emotions. But when a gratification comes to an end then positive emotions will be felt. Gratifications can be obtained or increased by developing signature strengths and virtues. Authenticity is the derivation of gratification and positive emotions from exercising signature strengths. The good life comes from using signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in, for example, enjoying work and creative activities. The most profound sense of happiness is experienced through the "meaningful life," achieved if one exercises one's uniques strengths and virtues in a purpose greater than one's own immediate goals.

Prior to Seligman, Abraham Maslow pioneered the idea that psychology should examine the trajectory of happy people, as well as examining why sad people were sad.

 Mechanistic view

 Biological basis

While a person's overall happiness is not objectively measurable, this does not mean it does not have a real physiological component. The neurotransmitter dopamine, perhaps especially in the mesolimbic pathway projecting from the midbrain to structures such as the nucleus accumbens, is involved in desire and seems often related to pleasure. Pleasure can be induced artificially with drugs, perhaps most directly with opiates such as morphine, with activity on mu-opioid receptors. There are neural opioid systems that make and release the brain's own opioids, active at these receptors. Mu-opioid neural systems are complexly interrelated with the mesolimbic dopamine system. New science, using genetically altered mice, including ones deficient in dopamine or in mu-opioid receptors, is beginning to tease apart the functions of dopamine and mu-opioid systems, which some scientists (e.g., Kent C. Berridge) think are more directly related to happiness. Stefan KleIn in his book "The Science of Happiness" links these biological foundations of happiness to the concepts and findings of Positive Psychology and Social Psychology.

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