What's Your Definition of Happiness - Essay Example

 What's Your Definition of Happiness? The quandary of happiness comes down to a simple question, is one smiling because one is happy or is one happy because one is smiling? Does happiness come from within or from without. While there is an abundance of psychological and sociological research on the maladaptive and negative behaviors of sadness, there is much less research on the “problem” of happiness, mainly because happiness is not a problem, simply somewhat of a mystery. Myers and Diener (1995) appear to suggest, as this writer would agree, that happiness comes from within. These authors interpret happiness through the appearance in their assessments of subjective well-being (SWB) and use this as the litmus test of happiness. However, what is well being? Silverstien appears to take an opposite approach and considers well being in terms of externalities: As I take it, then, well-being is synonymous with a person's own good, welfare, or interest. To say that something contributes to one's well-being is simply to say that it is in one's interest, that it is good for one, or that it makes one's life go better. Understood as such, well-being is an inherently evaluative concept: when we say that something promotes one's welfare, we ascribe a certain type of value to that thing. In particular, we identify it as having prudential value (Silverstein, 2000, p. 279) Ascribing values to objects is certainly an interpretive process, but what has value, the object or the perceiver’s interpretation of the object. One would have to posit that the object is inherently valueless other than the value it may have to itself. Myers and Diener have found in their research that although money has been said to buy happiness, its value can often be short-lived: Wealth, it seems, is like health: lts absence can breed misery, yet having it is no guarantee of happiness. In one survey, people on Forbes’s list of wealthiest Americans reported only slightly greater happiness than other Americans; 37% were less happy than the average American. Even lottery winners gain only a temporary jolt of joy. (Myers and Diener, 1995, p. 13) Over time there have been many attempts to discern what true happiness is. Also, attempting to resolve the difference between happiness and pleasure has been a key component of this search. This stretches back to Aristotle who states emphatically that they are different. Pleasure, he poses, has its origin in the survival needs of an organism to preserve itself, quite an early Darwinian attitude. So, no matter how much pleasure or joy can be associated with certain activities done for their own sake, Aristotle refused to identify pleasure with happiness. His concept of true happiness would be more along the Buddhist and Hindu lines of Bliss, that true happiness is a result of the contemplation of the divine. (Gurtler, 2003) Of course this is a highly ethical viewpoint, but not to be completely discarded. Being happy is often taken for feeling happy, what one author calls “the smiley-face” feeling and there are also desire and the satisfaction of that desire fulfilledthat account for another type of happiness. But Annas points our that happiness may be linked to a more formal arrangement: Both the smiley-face and desire-satisfaction accounts of happiness, despite their current popularity, especially among social scientists, turn out to conflict with two other surprisingly deep and far-reaching convictions about the meaning of happiness, convictions which emerge readily in simple discussion. These are the thought that happiness has an essential connection with my life as a whole and the thought that happiness is an achievement on my part. (Annas, 2004, p. 45) Although the author also grants that this may be a bit “high-minded” of a theory, it still nonetheless promotes the idea that happiness is an internalized system and that an individual’s personality plays a significant role towards their level of happiness. So perhaps self-determinism is happiness? However, some researchers have a problem with even equating well-being with happiness and feel that they are in fact unrelated: Self-determination theory (SDT) is another perspective that has both embraced the concept of eudaimonia, or self-realization, as a central definitional aspect of well-being and attempted to specify both what it means to actualize the self and how that can be accomplished. Specifically, SDT posits three basic psychological needs--autonomy, competence, and relatedness--and theorizes that fulfillment of these needs is essential for psychological growth (Ryan & Deci, 2001, p. 141) Similar to Maslov and Rogers, yet this interpretation in itself certainly does not give rise to a satisfactory explanation of happiness. Perhaps, as one author suggests, that true happiness is unattainable in this real world without some sort of “Faustian bargain” to achieve it. Pessimism, attributed philosophically to Schopenhauer, espoused this view and Reginster here believes that permanent happiness is elusive: What I have called the strong paradox of the will to power reveals one of its most distinctive features, namely that it is a kind of desire that does not allow for permanent--once and for all--satisfaction. Its pursuit, on the contrary, necessarily assumes the form of an indefinite, perpetually renewed striving. (Reginster, 2004, p. 55) So while happiness is attainable, it is not sustainable without regular infusions. We seem to be inclined to seek out pleasure (happiness) and avoid pain (sorrow), yet are often in play between the two. Those that are happy often seem to be happy in spite of circumstance and not because of them. In this respect, happiness must and forever be an internalized condition dependent upon itself. References Annas, J. (2004). Happiness as Achievement. Daedalus, 133(2), 44-52. Gurtler, G. M. (2003). The Activity of Happiness in Aristotle's Ethics. The Review of Metaphysics, 56(4), 801-812 Myers, David G. & Diener, Ed (1995) Who Is Happy? American Psychological Society. 6(1). 10-19 Reginster, B. (2004). Happiness as a Faustian Bargain. Daedalus, 133(2), 52-62 Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). ON HAPPINESS AND HUMAN POTENTIALS: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being. 141 Silverstein, M. (2000). In Defense of Happiness: A Response to the Experience Machine. Social Theory and Practice, 26(2), 279. Read More