What is Happiness?
Because happiness is something most of us aim for, how we define it has important implications for how we conduct our lives. To see why, compare these two competing definitions of happiness:
1. Happiness is all about minimising pain and maximising pleasure.
The underlying idea here is that there is a kind of mathematics of happiness. Imagine if on our deathbeds we were able to add up all the moments of pleasure in our lives and then all the moments of pain. The amount by which the pleasures exceeded the pains would tell us how happy we were during our lives.
2. Happiness is satisfaction with life as a whole.
On the surface this looks like the same idea but actually it's completely different. Consider the case of Clea Koff, a forensic anthropologist who spent nine years working in Rwanda, digging up the remains of people killed in the 1994 genocide (Bergsma, In press). While this was clearly a gruesome task that would have given most people nightmares, afterwards she explained that the work was meaningful, which made it worthwhile. For Koff, then, happiness was satisfaction that she had done the right thing with her life.
Pleasure and pain
The first definition of happiness is perhaps the one most associated with hedonism, and one that is implicitly accepted by many people. But I think the second definition is much better because it makes room for the idea that we give meaning to the things we do.
Happiness is not just a headlong charge towards whatever makes us feel pleasure, it is about finding satisfaction in ourselves and in what we have done. Even when what we have done has been painful, like Clea Koff's work.
» Read more on the science of happiness.
What's your view?
Would you agree with either of these definitions, or does the answer lie somewhere in between, or even elsewhere completely?
[Image credit: sean-b]
References
Bergsma, A. (In press) The advice of the wise. Introduction to the special issue on advice for a happy life. Journal of Happiness Studies.
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Really good post.I am agree with you hapiness does not means always pleasure.
I would contend that the question you have posed is actually a false dichotomy. If you are not satisfied with your life, your capacity to achieve #1 is limited. You'll always feel that nagging that you should be doing something else. Ispo facto, your pleasure is not maximized and your pain is not minimized.
Essentially, I would argue that #2 is simply a component of #1 and not, in and of itself, a separate definition of happiness.
Thanks for the fantastic blog.
Hi,
I think happiness is determined by closing the gap between reality as it appears to you and your ideas about how reality should be. I read on your blog that people who rate their happiness at about 7 or 8 out of 10 are generally the people who have become successful in their careers. My opinion is that they have closed this gap so that they live there expectations of life (that we all seem to have about how successful we should be) and therefore experience less dissonance. The people who scored 9 or 10 on that study weren't necessarily successful in a career way. My opinion is that these people have closed the gap internally instead of externally, maybe with a radical form of acceptance such as a spiritual practice like Zen. Personally I'm into a process which has similarites with cognitive therapy called The Work which was discovered by an American woman called Byron Katie. It has proved to be an effective way of closing this gap and relieving suffering by questioning your thoughts with an elegant system of questions. Check out her website www dot thework dot com
Loving your blog btw...
Peace out.
Also, gratitude is an effective way of closing the gap. There are two ways to experience happiness - use your mind to change your perceptions of reality in order to see that it does fit your requirements about reality, or, stop having requirements about reality. Not to diminish gratitude as a fantastic practice for menatl health and happiness at all but I prefer the latter because it is permanent. If you can remove the shoulds and shouldn'ts from your mind then everything becomes acceptable. Its tantamount to removing desire like the Buddha taught. Essentially Buddhism's idea of removing desire to end suffering is the same as removing the gap bewteen what you want and what actually happens to end suffering.
Why can't there be two separate definitions? Both definitions seem important and sensical, and most common words in the dictionary have several definitions.
I'm in with Grue on this one. I've always thought that there is the fleeting, emotional feeling of happiness, as in, "I just got a free cupcake," and the larger, satisfying kind of happiness (or what I would usually call "contentment"), as in, "I've got a wonderful relationship with my soul mate." Lack of one can damper the other but they are largely independent. By the same token an emotional sadness ("My steak is overdone") is independent of dissatisfaction with life ("I'll never have the job I want").
Achieving inner peace through the use of religion, meditation, etc. can, I think, increase contentment - as Denk suggested, you can either try to change the world to fit your desires or change your desires to fit the world. Changing the world to fit your desires gives you more of the fleeting type of happiness; changing your desires, more of the second.
about the 2definition,i think the key distinct is the pleasure and the satisfaction.the pleasure is about what you feel,and the satisfaction is about what you do.
For me happiness happens when sadness kept at bay. It is an active process which requires continual introspection. Also, many confuse happiness with ecstasy which is a fleeting and difficult state to achieve. If this is true, it would explain why most think they have so little "happiness" in what is actually a wonderful life.
Thanks for your comments everyone.
Jonathan, I don't think I'd agree that definition 2 is a subset of 1. In fact I would argue that 1 might well be a subset of, or intersect with 2!
I say that because avoiding pain and seeking pleasure might be one way to achieve satisfaction with life. But I don't think achieving satisfaction with life necessarily means your pleasure/pain account is always tipped towards pleasure.
I'd agree with you, though, that they are not dichotomous.
Hi,
I would suggest to ask the question "why human being search for happiness?" this would probably help to define happiness.
Do animals search for happiness?
We have basics self-needs to satify to remain alive in our environment (safety, strength, curiosity).
We have social-needs to satisfy to adapt ourself to our social environment.
We have spiritual-needs to understand ourself in the universe.
Happiness is balanced answers to those biological needs, that drive us to be a human being (or God).
A fantastic read....very literate and informative. Many thanks....where is your RSS button ?