Everyone agrees that happiness is the one thing that people want for its own sake, rather than leading to something else.
But people have very different ideas about happiness.
We can begin from the United States. According to recent social science research, the US is not a particularly happy place – Denmark is the happiest country in the world, followed by Switzerland and Austria – the US is not in the top 20 and appears less happy, by self-report, than such places as Iceland, Nigeria and Finland. There is a subject called “happiness studies” and some headlines from this field include the idea that American unhappiness derives from people misjudging what will make them happy. One hypothesis is that we simply adjust too fast to improvements, so that as soon as we acquire some new thing, our expectations ramp up and we are no happier than before. Another idea is that happiness is competitive, so that if Jack and Jill both blow their year-end bonuses on Cadillacs, nothing has really changed, and no one feels any happier. Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard, is studying the ways in which people misjudge what will make them feel good: he says that people tend to think they’ll be happier with more variety, but his finding is that people get more pleasure from being offered the same thing again and again. People think that freedom of choice is hugely important for happiness, but research shows that people are happier when they are limited to, and commit themselves, to one thing. One of Professor Gilbert’s big conclusions is that the experience of getting what we want makes much less of an impression on us than the time we spend looking forward to it.
We can consult the philosophers on the question of happiness, but philosophers tell us different things. Buddha tells us that happiness has to do with overcoming desire. Plato tells us that we reach the highest pitch of happiness when we contemplate eternal truth. Mencius argues that happiness comes from nourishing the life force within us with righteous deeds. St. Thomas says that everyone seeks happiness without knowing what it is; we try out different things in life experience; ultimately we discover true happiness by figuring out what actually gets us to the thing we have been looking for all along. Bertrand Russell argued that the big obstacle to happiness is getting stuck – dogmatism and fanaticism deprive us of the chance to learn and grow and flourish as human beings, because we have to expend all our energy protecting some or other sacred cow. Nietzsche talked about happiness as a kind of enjoyment of one’s strength; Rousseau taught that happiness has to do with being weak and vulnerable and needing other people. The existentialist philosopher Albert Camus taught the idea that happiness has nothing to do with success—but has everything to do with passionate effort—the struggle itself, he says, is enough to fill our hearts. John Stuart Mill challenged the idea that happiness is even important. He said that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied—better Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. On the other hand, Socrates seems to have been an extraordinarily happy person. His famous saying is that the unexamined life is not worth living, but accounts of him from his own time portray a comedian enjoying himself in asking philosophical questions and confusing everyone.
David Brooks hit upon the idea that there is a kind of Big Monster inside us (he calls it 'Big Shaggy') that drives us to do crazy things – the sorts of things that are portrayed in stories, images, music and gossip columns – and indeed a big problem for thought is to try to understand these yearnings – if we don’t understand Big Shaggy, we end up getting eaten by it.
The Monster is partly our own body and the problem of handling stress. When we experience stress, the heart rate speeds up, blood sugar spikes, the immune system is suppressed – lots of other adaptations optimized for immediate action get turned off – you lose your cool and start acting from a very confused place – it's as if you were no longer in the world at all – the troubled inner environment gets all your attention. This is unhappiness.
There is something called the “undo effect” – the idea that positive emotions help to undo the cardiovascular effects of negative emotions – research supports the conclusion that positive emotions (such as curiosity, anticipation, love and wonder) help people who were previously under stress relax back to their physiological baseline. So, if you can get to a happy place, and stay there a while, you end up broadening your awareness and encouraging yourself to have new thoughts, different kinds of thoughts, better thoughts.
The implication is that things like hope, and self-confidence, and a generally optimistic point of view, as well as forgiveness and the ‘rise above’ idea – also “flow” or absorption in what you are doing – these are all CHOICES – that is, happiness is a choice – as the Greek playwright Aeschylus says, “Happiness is a choice that requires effort at every moment in life.” In a way, I think, we are making a choice that comes out of understanding the Big Monster – after spending some time with the Monster – that is: after some time, we learn to acknowledge troubling things, but also to lead ourselves out of troubles, by making the choice to rise above. – The American thinker and activist Henry David Thoreau expresses a similar idea in one of his travel journals. He says: “There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring there yourself.”
Marcel Proust, the French novelist, is another important teacher about happiness. Proust claimed that the main thing we can do to stay focused on happiness is to keep imagining that the world is about to end. Life suddenly becomes wonderful – it becomes easy to appreciate even the simplest things, such as being able to breathe and see and hear – and when we look at things under this threat, we begin to see that unhappiness has to do with the way we look at things, rather than any actual state we face in living. Unhappiness, he says, has to do with taking things for granted. Proust’s other recommendations for happiness are that we take our time, fall in love frequently, and learn to suffer successfully.
When I was a kid I watched a press conference once on TV not long after President Kennedy had been elected. In between questions about the Bay of Pigs and troubles beginning in Vietnam, a reporter asked him the question whether he was happy, since the world seemed such a mess and, as president, he had to face so many problems. JFK answered that Aristotle had defined happiness as the full exercise of one’s powers in pursuit of excellence and so, by that standard, with all the problems he had to face, and the good of the country at stake, yes, he was happy. When I first heard this it made a huge impression on me, and I still think this is a very powerful idea. Aristotle is saying that happiness is not a feeling, but an action; it’s not a result, but is about doing something – working with all your strength on a project that you care about.
Aristotle also devotes several chapters in his book about happiness to the subject of friendship – it turns out that having friends, and being a good friend, is a big part of happiness. My experience has taught me that this is true.
We can begin from the United States. According to recent social science research, the US is not a particularly happy place – Denmark is the happiest country in the world, followed by Switzerland and Austria – the US is not in the top 20 and appears less happy, by self-report, than such places as Iceland, Nigeria and Finland. There is a subject called “happiness studies” and some headlines from this field include the idea that American unhappiness derives from people misjudging what will make them happy. One hypothesis is that we simply adjust too fast to improvements, so that as soon as we acquire some new thing, our expectations ramp up and we are no happier than before. Another idea is that happiness is competitive, so that if Jack and Jill both blow their year-end bonuses on Cadillacs, nothing has really changed, and no one feels any happier. Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard, is studying the ways in which people misjudge what will make them feel good: he says that people tend to think they’ll be happier with more variety, but his finding is that people get more pleasure from being offered the same thing again and again. People think that freedom of choice is hugely important for happiness, but research shows that people are happier when they are limited to, and commit themselves, to one thing. One of Professor Gilbert’s big conclusions is that the experience of getting what we want makes much less of an impression on us than the time we spend looking forward to it.
We can consult the philosophers on the question of happiness, but philosophers tell us different things. Buddha tells us that happiness has to do with overcoming desire. Plato tells us that we reach the highest pitch of happiness when we contemplate eternal truth. Mencius argues that happiness comes from nourishing the life force within us with righteous deeds. St. Thomas says that everyone seeks happiness without knowing what it is; we try out different things in life experience; ultimately we discover true happiness by figuring out what actually gets us to the thing we have been looking for all along. Bertrand Russell argued that the big obstacle to happiness is getting stuck – dogmatism and fanaticism deprive us of the chance to learn and grow and flourish as human beings, because we have to expend all our energy protecting some or other sacred cow. Nietzsche talked about happiness as a kind of enjoyment of one’s strength; Rousseau taught that happiness has to do with being weak and vulnerable and needing other people. The existentialist philosopher Albert Camus taught the idea that happiness has nothing to do with success—but has everything to do with passionate effort—the struggle itself, he says, is enough to fill our hearts. John Stuart Mill challenged the idea that happiness is even important. He said that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied—better Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. On the other hand, Socrates seems to have been an extraordinarily happy person. His famous saying is that the unexamined life is not worth living, but accounts of him from his own time portray a comedian enjoying himself in asking philosophical questions and confusing everyone.
David Brooks hit upon the idea that there is a kind of Big Monster inside us (he calls it 'Big Shaggy') that drives us to do crazy things – the sorts of things that are portrayed in stories, images, music and gossip columns – and indeed a big problem for thought is to try to understand these yearnings – if we don’t understand Big Shaggy, we end up getting eaten by it.
The Monster is partly our own body and the problem of handling stress. When we experience stress, the heart rate speeds up, blood sugar spikes, the immune system is suppressed – lots of other adaptations optimized for immediate action get turned off – you lose your cool and start acting from a very confused place – it's as if you were no longer in the world at all – the troubled inner environment gets all your attention. This is unhappiness.
There is something called the “undo effect” – the idea that positive emotions help to undo the cardiovascular effects of negative emotions – research supports the conclusion that positive emotions (such as curiosity, anticipation, love and wonder) help people who were previously under stress relax back to their physiological baseline. So, if you can get to a happy place, and stay there a while, you end up broadening your awareness and encouraging yourself to have new thoughts, different kinds of thoughts, better thoughts.
The implication is that things like hope, and self-confidence, and a generally optimistic point of view, as well as forgiveness and the ‘rise above’ idea – also “flow” or absorption in what you are doing – these are all CHOICES – that is, happiness is a choice – as the Greek playwright Aeschylus says, “Happiness is a choice that requires effort at every moment in life.” In a way, I think, we are making a choice that comes out of understanding the Big Monster – after spending some time with the Monster – that is: after some time, we learn to acknowledge troubling things, but also to lead ourselves out of troubles, by making the choice to rise above. – The American thinker and activist Henry David Thoreau expresses a similar idea in one of his travel journals. He says: “There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring there yourself.”
Marcel Proust, the French novelist, is another important teacher about happiness. Proust claimed that the main thing we can do to stay focused on happiness is to keep imagining that the world is about to end. Life suddenly becomes wonderful – it becomes easy to appreciate even the simplest things, such as being able to breathe and see and hear – and when we look at things under this threat, we begin to see that unhappiness has to do with the way we look at things, rather than any actual state we face in living. Unhappiness, he says, has to do with taking things for granted. Proust’s other recommendations for happiness are that we take our time, fall in love frequently, and learn to suffer successfully.
When I was a kid I watched a press conference once on TV not long after President Kennedy had been elected. In between questions about the Bay of Pigs and troubles beginning in Vietnam, a reporter asked him the question whether he was happy, since the world seemed such a mess and, as president, he had to face so many problems. JFK answered that Aristotle had defined happiness as the full exercise of one’s powers in pursuit of excellence and so, by that standard, with all the problems he had to face, and the good of the country at stake, yes, he was happy. When I first heard this it made a huge impression on me, and I still think this is a very powerful idea. Aristotle is saying that happiness is not a feeling, but an action; it’s not a result, but is about doing something – working with all your strength on a project that you care about.
Aristotle also devotes several chapters in his book about happiness to the subject of friendship – it turns out that having friends, and being a good friend, is a big part of happiness. My experience has taught me that this is true.
