On Happiness

[siochi]

I would be leading this paper with my notion of logic and evolutionary biology. In the process that would follow such act, I am sure I would be ridiculing a few of long held conceptions of happiness, and how they eventually manifested themselves in the form of ethics and law. This post is not for the faint hearted or for those who don't possess an open mind. With all this said, let me delve into explaining my concept of happiness.

Note: I would use happiness and pleasure interchangeable even though they could mean different things at different times.

Happiness is an elusive entity, for it has evaded even those philosophers who had spent a considerable amount of their lives catching it in action. Our present notion of happiness is nothing more than just an outcome of our perception. The believes that we have about our notion of happiness is without any solid proof (ingrained in any scientific form) and there is nothing more than just a perception based proof that makes us believe in our current notion of happiness. Such frail is our understanding of happiness upon which we have created and composed the greatest of human forts and tower.
(here's an interesting thing. Try to persuade me into believing your (conventional) notion of happiness if you do not agree with me.)

Now, let me direct the flow of arguments towards a different set of ideas. Evolution!

We all know that evolution is what is responsible for the different kinds of highly evolved and specific types and kinds of animals and plants that we see around us. There are several ways in which evolution can work and lead to the domination of one species over the other. I wouldn't delve into explaining them here, but I hope my audience has a somewhat clear idea about evolution.

Happiness, I believe, has an evolutionary origin. (Scientists haven't yet proven it, so it is just an assumption, but a very probably veracious assumption.) I am sure you would all agree that happiness (a.k.a pleasure) is related to motivation. In fact, the intensity of pleasure is directly related to the strength of motivation. For example: if object A gives you pleasure, you would be attracted to it, and the strength of this attraction is directly proportional to the intensity of the pleasure. So, if there are two objects A and B, and B happens to provide more pleasure than B, then an individual would be more attracted to B than A. Fair enough, i guess, right?

Now, back to the point: Happiness played a crucial role in evolution as it dictated as to what level would an individual be attracted (or repelled, in case of pain) to a stimuli. If an organism had a very high potential for happiness, it would be inevitably stuck to a stimuli (as many kids these days are to the stimuli of porn ) and like Narcissist, they would forget to take care of their daily needs and eventually die. On the other hand, if an individual has a very low potential for happiness, it would not be able to stick long enough to a stimuli (like many depressed people today) and wouldn't be able to lead an effective life. In both cases, happiness was tuned in by evolution to a perfect balance that would allow an individual to both stay stuck to a stimuli as well as not for long enough so as to enable him to lead an effective existence. Subsequently, all those species that had a higher or lower potential of happiness to the optimal happiness potential would have been extinct, and the animals that we see today are the ones who fall in the optimal happiness level.

Now, if we all fall in the optimal happiness level (all humans, i mean) then there should not be any difference in the amount of happiness that we perceive. This means that all humans should perceive the same amount of happiness, though through different sources and in different intensities.

I know it sounds a little offish, and I think I haven't given very convincing arguments in support of it. So, let me strengthen my case by giving a few more offbeat arguments.

1. Happiness is relative. Two people can't be said to perceive the same amount of happiness unless they have the same history and the same physical and genetic makeup. In other words, No two people can have the same amount of pleasure from the same external stimuli that each of them are exposed to.
For example: A poor man and a millionaire are gifted an Tuxedo. but, beneath the left pocket of the Tux, there is a tiny hole. The poor man is happy for he has a Tux and the millionaire is unhappy because he received a Tux with a hole. Even if we compare the poor man with another poor man, we wouldn't expect them to have the same experience of happiness for this or other subsequent events.

2. Happiness can be said to have a potential. I call this, the barrier to happiness. Let's say we have an absolute scale of happiness and then, we denote a barrier value to each person on the basis of his past experience with happiness. So, a millionaire has a very high barrier to happiness, whereas the poor person has a low barrier to happiness. Now, if they both are made to experience a similar stimuli, they would experience different amount of pleasure due to their different levels of barrier to happiness.

3. All humans share a single way of entry and exit. They all take birth and die (though in different ways). Now, if we can ascertain that all humans start their life at a universally fixed happiness potential (let's say, at 0) and they all end their life at a fixed happiness potential (say, at 100) then one can easily see that the amount of happiness that all humans can perceive in their lives in fixed and same.

4. If A is a hedonist whereas B is a Buddhist monk, then we can assume that A has a higher barrier to pleasure and B has a lower barrier to pleasure. On the death of A and B, their barrier level would converge, and A, having spent high potential of happiness and avoided high pain potential, would find death to be painful, whereas B would find death to be pleasurable (for the opposite reasons).

5. I believe some would take issues with my argument 3. To them, I would like to point out that we are dealing here with a process and not an element. All humans go through this process (called life), and since they all begin their life in the same manner and end their lives in the same manner (i mean, by the loss of consciousness), we can assume that they all have same happiness (and pain) barrier level at these points.

This is why I believe happiness if finite and would amount the same for everyone. The happy souls among us are nothing but show offs, whereas the depressed souls among us are simply hiders.

Such a change in the notion of happiness can initiated several significant changes in our notions of ethics, politics, and in our general notions of right and wrong. I would be willing to discuss them in further, but only in the case if you have been convinced by my arguments above.

Hope to hear soon from you all!

Siochi

[Bill Wiltrack]

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If you were to express your thesis in one sentence, would it be?:

.............................................................The effects of happiness upon our brain could be an unperceived element of our evolution.





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[siochi]

If you were to express your thesis in one sentence, would it be?:

.............................................................The effects of happiness upon our brain could be an unperceived element of our evolution.

YES!!!

[Bill Wiltrack]

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I agree with your thesis.


Before you were a member here I created a thread that is similar to yours.



It's comforting to find a related soul to an idea that is not readily recognized or accepted.








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[reasonvemotion]

4. If A is a hedonist whereas B is a Buddhist monk, then we can assume that A has a higher barrier to pleasure and B has a lower barrier to pleasure. On the death of A and B, their barrier level would converge, and A, having spent high potential of happiness and avoided high pain potential, would find death to be painful, whereas B would find death to be pleasurable (for the opposite reasons).

Not all are hedonists and not all are monks.....

What about the Middle of the Road?

[The Voice of Time]

The problem a monk faces is that his inwardness makes him an easy potential target for the sophistications of advanced societies. It's important to remember that you can't isolate people from the world they live in, with such an ideal follows great risks.

An interesting on-the-side thought-experiment: would a monk cope better with being raped half a dozen times over the span of a couple of weeks than a hedonist? This could go both ways, I'd say (in the experiment imagine that both are 30 years old with no mental or physical problems or disabilities). Hedonists are more susceptible to drops of success, but they are also very strong climbers when, as in most modern societies, the means are available for them to rise. An average monk on the other hand, and this is my pure guesswork because I've never known an average (or any) monk, might find themselves taking more time to rise, and whereas the hedonist might turn towards the light because his access to so many means of taking his (or her) thoughts onto new impressions, the monk might find him (or nun, her) being more disturbed in the medium-term aftermath. In turn the hedonist might never fully recover and might find their appetite increased with a decreased satisfaction-per-consumption (of any kind of good), whereas the monk/nun might finally reach a threshold where they no longer are disturbed by the event and are at peace with the whole happening. In the end, to me, in this hypothetical range of a-versus-b, it seems a question of quantity versus quality. Will you take the quick and rough cure or the long, painful but thorough cure?

[reasonvemotion]

VoT:

An average monk on the other hand, and this is my pure guesswork because I've never known an average (or any) monk

I do know monks.

Scratch the surface and we are all the same.

[The Voice of Time]

I do know monks.

Scratch the surface and we are all the same.

Elaborate your experience? This actually interests me, because monks to me (coming from a country largely of atheists and casual religious people) is kind-of semi-mythical people.

[reasonvemotion]

Elaborate your experience? This actually interests me, because monks to me (coming from a country largely of atheists and casual religious people) is kind-of semi-mythical people.

The above is rather different from your usual logical thought pattern and probably more a "Western" view.

Just one example below, shows that monks are very aware of their human-ness.

The Vinaya Rule specifies that if a bhikkhu touches or is touched by a woman, it is an offence — a very serious offence — only if the bhikkhu is overcome by lust, with altered mind . However, the practising bhikkhu knows that as his mind changes so quickly, he has to be extremely cautious about involving himself in doubtful situations. It is better to be safe than sorry, even if this may seem over-scrupulous. In emergency situations the bhikkhu will have to decide for himself and be sure to take care of his thoughts. A monk can use a 'receiving cloth' to emphasize that there is no touching.

[siochi]

Haha, the discussion often goes out of hands at message boards

I would really appreciate guys if you could stick to the above thesis, and provide your opinion based on it.

Monks and stuffs alike can only be correctly understood when we are them, and they us. Without this, it's just misunderstanding.

Let me give you an example: Let's say you have a brother. He has all the things that you desire. A new laptop, a hot girl friend, a new bike, etc. Would you call him happy (on the above basis)?

maybe, you would, but I wouldn't.

Maybe, he doesn't like them. Your liking of certain things are not a universally true fact that others would like them too!

Like many of us who dreamed of getting a job when we were young would acknowledge this. Things that we perceive to be pleasurable at one time wouldnot always be pleasurabe when you change states (that is: move in space, time, etc).

Similarly, the monks (who are different entities) would have a different source of happiness than us, and would therefore be able to find happiness in different things than us. But the fact remains (haha, i am sorry for using the word fact ) that they would perceive the same amount of happiness as any other human being.

[reasonvemotion]

We are on topic.

I have asked you a question five posts previous. Perhaps you did not read it. So I post again.

Not all are hedonists and not all are monks.....

What about the Middle of the Road?

[siochi]

We are on topic.

I have asked you a question five posts previous. Perhaps you did not read it. So I post again.

Not all are hedonists and not all are monks.....

What about the Middle of the Road?

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that

Well, the middle path is the path that we all take. But, you would see that the rules apply to us too. We just can't have more happiness than we already have.