Before I start, let me first note the following disclaimer: I am not an expert on happiness, nor am I an expert in any field of psychology or any other behavioral science. Everything mentioned here was compiled for its entertainment and thought provoking value alone. No research was involved in writing this paper, and I relied mainly on my fading memory and intuition when referencing other work.
In this article I will try to discuss the most basic perceptions of happiness. I will kick a few norms and suggest alternatives. This is by no means a research but rather a set of notes to provoke additional thinking in the topic that interests humanity since its early days – what does it take to live a happy life?
Aristotle set himself to discover the meaning of the good life. After much deliberation and several lengthy books, he concluded the meaning of the good life is happiness. He then tried to explore and define this elusive term. Eternal Happiness (or Eudemonia) Aristotle concluded is achieved by obtaining the golden mean. This measure of things that are not too little and not too much produce that bliss called happiness. Aristotle even gave a real-life example. He said that if eating one chicken is not enough and eating two chickens is too much, then a chicken and a half is the golden mean is the key to a life of happiness. Well, I had plenty of chicken…and I am still not happy.
My introduction is obviously an almost criminal simplification of Aristotle’s lifelong quest for finding the secret to happiness but it demonstrates a key element in his thinking and the thinking of several other well-known philosophers. Namely, building of character and doing good in moderation will sustain a happy life.
From my personal observations (employing a Descartes like inquisitive mood), life consists of long content and discontent periods with flashes of extreme pleasure and despair. The question is how can we promote the frequency and extend these extreme joyful moments.
I will not relate to long-term happiness that can be potentially induced by regular use of religion, meditation, hypnosis, drugs and other psychological alterations to ones state of consciousness. I am looking to explore the happiness potential that can be obtained by the average person leading a normal life.
When trying to analyze the short-term ecstatic state, I looked at all possible combinations for its appearance and analyzed their subjective impact:
• A time of general content followed by an event driven joyful moment (for example winning a prize or getting positive social recognition).
• A time of elevated content (for example because of meditation, physical activity or sympathetic environment) followed by an event driven joyful moment.
• A time of extreme joy followed by an event driven joyful moment (such as with immediately consecutive joyful events).
• A time of general discontent followed by an event driven joyful moment.
• A time of elevated discontent (for example because of stress or mild health issues) followed by an event driven joyful moment.
• A time of extreme sadness (opposite of happiness, such as one created by one or several consecutive traumatic moments) followed by an event driven joyful moment.
• A joyful moment induced by some direct external momentary stimulation (food, sex, drugs, hormones etc.).
While contrasting possible occurrences of momentary extreme joy, I came up with the following suggestive observations:
• We are beings of change. Without it we get numb and any extended blissful moments become the new comparison base for our level of content (This is why the rich and famous are not in a constant orgasmic state).
• The determinant of the intensity of a joyful moment is the delta in change it represents from the previous state as it is perceived by the individual subjective person.
• These joyful moments are most intensified when they are directly mirroring a previous desperate state (for example testing negative to a disease after a false positive result).
• Extreme joyful moment can serve as a base for launching subevents that reanimate the feeling of joy from the original event. For example getting a desired career promotion the first event is getting notified by the management and subsequent events are formed when telling co-workers, family and friends. The consecutive events are produced by the animated reaction of new actors. This can explain the “kiss-and-tell” phenomena.
• An event that causes a joyful moment can originate from new information that changes the perception of our current state. Our internal thought processes using memories, new ideas or reasoning can be used to realize that our state is better than previously realised. For example finding a solution to a problem or remembering the affection of a close friend not currently in our immediate environment.
• A sympathetic social environment can enable a foundation for creating later events of joy from the original events. They can also help intensify the next event to levels that may even surpass the original event.
• There is a boundary to the intensity of the joyful events. A spillover mechanism ensures that above a certain level new consecutive events do not intensify the current feeling but only serve as temporary time extenders to the original feeling.
• Although external or internal events can cause short moments of extreme joy, one has to be open to experience them. Any event has a “joy potential” that may be taken advantage of.
• Our current state of content or discontent is a result of post analysis of all known events and circumstances as currently analyzed. Old events can produce new happiness only if the opinion about them changes. For an event to create an extreme joyful moment it must bring new information into our view.
• The less we expect the result of an event, the smaller its expected change delta and thus the greater is its joy creation potential. For Example passing a test where we assume we have passed has less happiness potential then passing a test we assumed we did poorly on.
• Joyful moments can also result from direct stimulation such as a massage, food, drugs, hormonal excitement etc.
Based on the results from my subjective inferences, I will try to set a few rules to increase the length and intensity of happiness in ones life. And no, it does not have anything to do with eating chicken (for most people that is).
• Keep your life in constant change. This is the only way to insure a high delta.
• Keep the changes random. Less predicted events produce more happiness.
• Socially commit to perform feats and perform them with no real preparation. This will give you pleasure from the commitment event and will add doubt that will increase happiness from any achievements. Even if the results are not satisfactory there is a social contract to keep trying and produce a better result. This will create both initial satisfaction as well as secondary waves of happiness from people that have experienced your early failure. This also has the mirroring effect mentioned above. The idea is to actively create opportunities for events that can produce joyful moments.
• Keep a network of supporters who can provide the infrastructure for secondary events. Experience these secondary events in succession rather than grouping all these people in one room and limiting the number of secondary events = more joyful moments. Seek to separate and ungroup secondary events. Gossipers are addicted to the rush of after waves as they circulate news to one target at a time to preserve the momentary high experienced with the uninformed target at the moment of revelation.
• When wasting time at places where new events are rare, dwell into past events and ideas and try to create a new and useful understanding that can create a joyful moment by itself and many more when shared.
• Be actively open to and seek events that have a “joy potential”. Be excited and excitable whenever possible.
• When everything else fails use temporary direct stimulation such as a massage, food, drugs, hormonal excitement etc. Instead of simply viewing these times as instant and short lasting joys, try to extend these into following events. For example use the current state as a driver to other random events or finding a creative way to extend its perceived use.
This last bonus section although obvious, can serve as a wake-up call to some and needs to be spelled out. I will try to take my theory to the extreme opposite and give a recipe for lessening ones joy potential and living a miserable life:
• Keep a constant routine, if you improve your life style do it slowly, predictably and in moderation to numb the effect.
• Rarely share your thoughts and ideas with other people.
• Stay in contact with a few like-minded people.
• Whenever you have good news that needs to be communicated, gather everybody and tell them all at the same time. Tip 1 - make sure you let them wait long enough before the announcement to bore them and lessen any real spontaneous excitement that may have built up. Tip 2 – try to let the word out before the gathering so people will already know what the announcement is.
• Whenever possible, listen to the news or read a newspaper. Dwell often on sad events from the past or mentally prepare for sad events in your future.
• Keep a serious and sealed expression and seem unapproachable to people you don’t know.
• Rarely indulge yourself in pleasurable activities.
Now what?
Have a great and happy life!
