Chapter 1
Happiness, the motivation of all behavior
Most dictionaries show happiness to be generally understood as pleasure
or positive emotion. It has synonyms with words such as joy, bliss, delight and
satisfaction. Some dictionaries distinguish between two broad categories of
happiness.[1] On one
hand is the more expressive happiness as would be captured in words like
exhilaration, pleasure, delight, and interest. The other, more passive sense of
happiness is one captured in words like satisfied, content and satiated. The
former meaning is the more common one, and most often when people hear and use
the word happiness, this is what they refer to. This meaning of happiness
generally carries a somewhat negative connotation since people associate it
with the pleasures from physical indulgences.
The general classification of happiness into pleasure and satisfaction
is not a modern invention. Even ancient thinkers like Epicurus made similar
distinctions, classifying pleasure into kinetic pleasure and static pleasure.
While Epicurus and Epicureanism have come to be associated with sensuous pleasure,
drink, food and festivities, these elements are far from the philosophy that
Epicurus and his followers taught and lived by. In one of his letters, he
wrote,
When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of
sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through
ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure
we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the
soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other
delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life;
it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every
choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which
the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul.[2]
Evidently, Epicurus was not one given to a life of unending
indulgences. He sought, through rigorous thought, to lead people towards a
rational and honorable path of living well enough to be able to enjoy living
life and being satisfied with it.
Likewise, in this treatise, the assumption that all people want to be
happy does not mean that all people want to live a life of physical
indulgences. Indeed history abounds with people who have sacrificed indulgences
and have claimed a sense of pleasure and satisfaction from doing so. Happiness
in this treatise means a positive emotional state, a subjective internal state
of pleasure that can be seen in external expressions, smiles, celebration or
that may remain unseen to the observer. Such a notion would apply equally to
the person who goes for a week of partying as one who denies himself food and
other physical pleasures for the same period of time. Arguably, these two
people are looking for the same thing, and that thing in this treatise I call
happiness.
The Universal pursuit of happiness
Many great thinkers on human behavior have expressed the sentiment that
all people want to be happy, or, that happiness is the ultimate end of all
human endeavors. However, this idea still makes many people frown with doubt or
outright disagreement. It was the great philosopher and Mathematician, Pascal
who observed that,
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different
means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war,
and others avoiding it, it is the same desire in both, attended with different
views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the
motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.[3]
In light of the above, to call happiness the ultimate goal of all
people is not an overstatement. Happiness is clearly the primary motivation of
human behavior. Everyone acts to attain or maintain this state, even those who
do not realize it. As Freud observed,
The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless
times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not
admit of one.... We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what
men show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What
do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly
be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to
remain so.[4]
If Freud is right, and by all appearances he is, then, “Yes! Indeed,
everyone wants to be happy”. Perhaps psychopaths and mentally disturbed people
may be exceptions to this rule. Otherwise, it is reasonable and academically
viable to assume that any normal person seeks to be happy, and organizes his or
her own life towards attaining happiness or some form of gratification.
Daniel Gilbert reiterates the same position when he says,
If there has ever been a group of human beings who prefer despair to
delight, frustration to satisfaction, and pain to pleasure, they must be very
good at hiding because no one has ever seen them. The dictionary tells us that
to prefer is “to choose or want one thing rather than another because it would
be more pleasant,” which is to say that the pursuit of happiness is built into
the very definition of desire.[5]
[2] Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus. http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html
accessed on March 20, 2012.
[3] Pascal quoted in, Gilbert, Stumbling
Upon Happiness, 32.
[4] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents. Electronic Version Buckinghamshire:
Chrysoma Assocites, 1929. Quoted in Gilbert, Stumbling
on Happiness, 32.
No comments:
Post a Comment