In the last few days, 2 different discussions of "happiness" have intrigued me. First I heard a radio report about a recent study of happiness across the world. Denmark came out on top. The radio report said that one of the reasons that Denmark was on top is because they don't have that high of expectations. Therefore, they don't get disappointed. In other words, according to the report I heard, if you have high standards, you aren't as happy. I saw that as a very superficial view of happiness.

Then...in the Chicago Tribune today I read an article about a book, "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy." I haven't read the book, but I have read some articles about it. What the author (Eric G. Wilson) seems to say is that if you're happy all the time, you aren't experiencing life at its fullest. The unrest you feel is what makes you want to change things. Sadness makes you feel deeper. He distinguishes "happiness" from "joy," in that "...joy grows out of melancholy, the idea being that a fully lived, fully human life is a complex mixture between joy and sorrow, and thats ultimately what makes us human." Yet, he seems to see "happiness" in a very superficial way.

I don't see happiness as merely "contentment." I see it as a deeper emotion, more like Wilson's description of "joy." What do you think?

60 Minutes had a piece about Denmark's high level of happiness. Tal Ben-Shahar was a guest on the show. He teaches Harvard's most popular course -the Psychology of Happiness. I have his book, Happier, which is a basic happiness "how to"... It promotes stopping to smell the roses, slowing down, meditating, being in the moment, etc. I do think that these behaviors are more prevalent /accepted in places like Denmark.

To me, happiness includes savoring each moment and accepting things in the "now" - but I also think that happiness is the path to our goal. It is not the goal. Like the illusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, we never really reach the state of happiness. Yet, we certainly can enjoy all the rainbow's colors and sensations along the way.

Well, your definition seems to be closer to that discussed by Wilson and that described in the worldwide study of happiness.

I see "happiness" as something that's more akin to Wilson's definition of "joy." I think if someone is genuinely happy, they get there by experiencing the ups and downs of life. They work through challenges, sometimes failing and sometimes not, but they reach a higher place after each challenge.

I am not saying that it isn't important to slow down and to smell the roses. People who are workaholics and don't slow down most definitely aren't happy. But I don't think that's all there is to happiness. I think it's a lot more complicated, as with the difference between "contentment" and "joy."

I think that it is vital for us feel engaged in life, whether at a fast or slow pace. At least in America, many people are happiest when striving toward purposeful goals, whether or not they succeed. Of course, most of us need to have some positive reinforcement (occasional successes) along the way.

Also, I think people can become accustomed to the adrenaline rush involved in the ongoing struggle (like "trauma junkie" nurses) and that's when they lose sight of the "roses" (moments of contemplation and contentment) along the way. One could also argue that, when we are engaged in intense (workaholic) struggles, we are very much engaged in the moment, just not in a slow and contented way.

On the other hand, spiritual seekers might consider that type of engagement to be a form of distraction from our deeper, more genuine selves.

I hadn't heard that term "trauma junkie nurses" before, but I surely have known some.

On an elevator today they had this little screen with all sorts of information (including words of the day), and this quote from Dr. Albert Schweitzer was shown:

"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."

Good health is surely important.

That is quite funny. I think good health helps alot, and forgetting some of our bad memories could contribute to happiness ("ignorance is bliss"). Yet, I wouldn't want to forget all the good things at the same time.

Some of my least happy patients have had dementia. Of course, some of the happiest ones also had memory deficits. I have occassionally seen people in terrible health who somehow retained a happy disposition, but it has to be a huge challenge, and it is very rare.

I have also read that people who feel and demonstrate gratitude tend to be happier than those who grumble (counting our blessings and handing out praise instead of criticism). I find that I am happier when I focus on the positives in my life.

I think that happiness is often a choice. I think you can choose to be miserable, or you can choose to see things in a more positive light. Contentment, well, I think it takes work. I see Joy as something that is more spontaneous and more of a surprise.

To me, it's like the difference between Passion and Love. Passion is fleeting - it hits you or it doesn't hit you and there is often little you can do to control whether or not you feel it. Love, though, is a choice. You can choose to love someone even if you don't like them much at the time.

There was a good bit on happiness in the latest The Sun magazine. It somes out of NC. Do you know it? http://www.thesunmagazine.org/

I think one of the problems about defining happiness is that it's a very imprecise word. Rather like the infamous "nice" it can mean all sorts of things. As with nice, it indicates a general condition, not a precise one.

For example, one could be happy if one were comfortable - but comfort does not equate with happiness - one could be quite comfortable and unhappy.

Even negative emotions could give rise to happiness; most people would be unhappy to learn of someone's death - but there are maybe a few people around whom one would be happy to see gone.

I suspect the Danish study was largely equating happiness with contentment and, if one accepts this comparison, then I can see how the Danes would be considered happy.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
I think one of the problems about defining happiness is that it's a very imprecise word.

I agree it's a very imprecise word that is used to describe a wide set of feelings. To me, it is more a sense of elation than contentment. In this sense it strikes me suddenly, nearly always as a sense arising from preceding hard endeavour, physical or mental, or it emerges as a joyful release from some gloomy experience. I must be a melancholic Dane, at heart.
The one thing I am certain of is the utter futility of striving for, or planning for happiness.

Kalleh, isn't it about time you brought up schadenfreude?

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Kalleh, isn't it about time you brought up schadenfreude?

Or...the English word for it.

Yes, I agree that the study was probably reporting on "contentment," rather than "happiness." Regarding the quote from Dr. Albert Schweitzer, I have seen some very ill or disabled (that is, not healthy) people who, indeed, seem quite happy. On the other hand, we've all seen people who have wonderful health, great marriages, beautiful children, and still they just can't manage to be happy.

Pearce, I love your description of happiness.

All a matter of perspective, I suppose...
http://www.superseventies.com/sl_meandbobbymcgee.html

Perhaps it's something to be pursued rather than attained.

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Originally posted by neveu:
Perhaps it's something to be pursued rather than attained.

From my observations, to pursue happiness is doomed to failure. It's the apparent spontaneity, or emergence from some hard-pressed striving (e.g. success after working for a difficult exam or job interview) or from a miserable state, that brings such feelings.

They are almost invariably fleeting. However many use the word for other feelings, and they may well take a different view.

Ironic, Pearce, that it is doomed to failure, but deemed a cause worth fighting a revolution over. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is in the US Declaration of Independence.

It is ironic. Perhaps I am naive, but I think we are all in the pursuit of happiness.

There was a perfect Sherman's Lagoon about happiness today.

quote:

Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
Ironic, Pearce, that it is doomed to failure, but deemed a cause worth fighting a revolution over. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is in the US Declaration of Independence.

Yes. But wars have been fought over many such useless quests, power, lands, economies and indeed the pursuit of happiness. Man doesn't seem to learn from his history.

"If you would live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things."
-- (as quoted in Kantha, An Einstein Dictionary, p. 176).
This roughly echoes my sentiments:

quote:

e.g. success after working for a difficult exam or job interview

For happiness let me be clear;
It's found in a cask of good beer!
With just a few glass
All misery passes
For Real Ale's the bringer of cheer!

"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

"pursuit of happiness"

I thought this phrase was code for the original, Lockean one: estate or property. And, of course, for the Founding Fathers, a great part of their personal property consisted of chattel slaves.

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I thought this phrase was code for the original, Lockean one: estate or property

As it happens, an old New Yorker I was reading this morning contains an article by John Lancaster that includes the following:

quote:

To non-Americans, talk of "the pursuit of happiness" can seem an amazing mixture of the simpleminded and the complex. What seems simple is that happiness is so straightforward that we all have a right -- a right!-- to seek it; what seems complex is the idea that what we're entitled to is, indeed, a pursuit, something strenuous and not necessarily successful. Some Marxists have thought that the right to pursue happiness was a last minute substitution for a previously drafted right to property, but [Darrin] McMahon [author of Happiness: A History] makes short work of that conspiracy theory. He points out that the Founding Fathers, who queried, crossed out, and haggled over every line of the Declaration, let the "pursuit of Happiness" stand unedited and unamended. But he also points out that the eighteenth-century understanding of "pursuit" was rather darker than it might seem now. Dr. Johnson's dictionary defined it as "the act of following with hostile intention," and McMahon adds that "if one thinks of pursuing happiness as one pursues a fugitive...the 'pursuit of happiness' takes on a somewhat different cast."

but [Darrin] McMahon [author of Happiness: A History] makes short work of that conspiracy theory.

I'm not sure I understand Mr McMahon's assertion. Is he suggesting that the Founding Fathers hadn't read Locke or were unaware that they were substituting pursuit of happiness for estate? It has been a long time since I was accused of being a Marxist though. As a contractor who owns his own business and a land owner, I find it humorous.

quote:

§87. Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and, in order thereunto, punish the offences of all those of that society; there and there only is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted his natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that excludes him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it.

[John Locke. Two Treatises of Government (link).]

I have to admit to being new to this debate. I had always assumed that "pursuit of Happiness" meant just that, or was a concise way of saying that one's life was one's own, rather than the State's. Even if one accepts that "life, liberty, and X" was drawn directly from Locke, it doesn't necessarily follow that "pursuit of Happiness" is code for "estate". Jefferson might have thought it more comprehensive, or just liked it better.

§1 of the Amendment XIV of the US Co