Happiness (and how to measure it)

From The Economist print edition ^ | Dec 19th 2006 | Editorial

[RightWhale]

Happiness is a well-known word that is very shadowy in common usage. However, the origin and true meaning of the word can be obtained. While it is true that being in poor health can easily eliminate the choices of happiness, that does not mean that feeling good is happiness. Also, having plenty of money or power or family makes happiness possible, but is not happiness itself. The so-called science of happiness, BTW, is ethics.

[RightWhale]

I know someone who, paradoxically, is not content unless she is unhappy

That is a garden variety power trip.

[Diverdogz]

Yup, a power trip/extremely immature tool of manipulation.

[Riverman94610]

Yeah,you right!
I DO watch sports and some news shows.I was really talking about the salacious trash where grown adults are supposed to laugh at dirty jokes that were old back when I was in Seventh Grade.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

"Happiness is a well-known word that is very shadowy in common usage. However, the origin and true meaning of the word can be obtained. While it is true that being in poor health can easily eliminate the choices of happiness, that does not mean that feeling good is happiness. Also, having plenty of money or power or family makes happiness possible, but is not happiness itself. The so-called science of happiness, BTW, is ethics."

I had not heard that before, so I looked up the definition of ethics:

a. A set of principles of right conduct.
b. A theory or a system of moral values: "An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain" Gregg Easterbrook.
2. ethics (used with a sing. verb) The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.
3. ethics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: medical ethics.

I can see where the correct system of ethics will lead to happiness.

Here's my own experience: when I was 22, I was just out of college and making 3x more money than I ever had before. I was happy having a job, more so than having money itself. But I was happiest giving things to my friends. I then learned giving and serving is the source of happiness, because it always results in success. There are always people who need help and everyone can help them.

[Riverman94610]

Liberals around here in Cali are the MOST status conscious,materialistic,money grubbing folks I have ever seen.
I'm talking about "My"generation born in the late Forties.I even looked up some of my old white "radical"acquaintances from days of Sixties yore and found many of them firmly ensconsed in the Berkeley hills or San Ramon.
Then there are the black"militants"who screamed the loudest about"whitey"and"picking up the gun"who are now Sociology professors at major universities and who hobnob with white dilletantes at cocktail parties in the hills.
Like the Beatles said,"well I just had to laugh,I saw the photograph"

[Riverman94610]

Right on about the ice-cream sundaes!When I lived at home,I SWORE when I got out on my own I would eat all the ice cream I wanted.
When I finally did get out there by myself and had the time and the means,I no longer DESIRED ice cream sundaes!
Like the 5TH Dimension said,"And now I can have the things I always wanted-cause I don't really want them anymore"

[Caipirabob]

Ah, but I think the person who knows a personal relationship with Christ in a forsaken hell hole will have just as much happiness knowing there is a better tomorrow; have happiness in the peace of that relationship. Maybe moreso than someone in the USA, where things come too easily to us.

Bears repeating. Well said. Look at Mother Teresa...

[Smokin' Joe]

You got it, Ronnie.

Food in my belly
Clothes on my back
shoes on my feet
and a warm place to sleep.

But best of all,
it's not just me
That and more for my family.
All I really want and more
God Provides.

[RightWhale]

de Montaigne on money:

At first he had a modest income and was free in loaning and borrowing and didn't worry about if he had a few coins at any given time or was short a few coins. Then he got into serious money and became highly concerned with protecting it, which was worrisome back in 1600; he was not happy at all. Then he passed into a third phase where he had a substantial income and more or less regulated his expenditures to match income so he didn't have to borrow but was otherwise back in phase one, and happy.

He also told of a friar who had substantial funds and hated managing all of it so gave it free and clear to one of the gardeners who had always complained of having no money to get married, with the understanding that the friar was to be well fed and have a roof over his head forever. Both were very happy from that time on.

[RightWhale]

While morals applies to how one chooses, happiness applies to having choices. The more and better the choices, the happier. What would increase the choices? Money, health, education, family, etc. The best choice is that which will increase choices. Since a PhD is the key to the city or to the universe and should allow one to write his own ticket, it should be that getting a PhD should be a very happy day. But, if one uses his PhD to get an ordinary job, right there one has cut his choices. If one uses his PhD to open all kinds of doors like Kissinger, Rice, or Soros (give him this: he appears happy in his degeneracy), happiness should be as unlimited as possible on earth.

[ScubieNuc]

Inalienable rights...bump.

That got me to thinking...The original phrase was something along the lines of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property." If you doubt me, you can read a little about it on Wikipedia. I heard that happiness was put into the Declaration because slave owners didn't want slaves to be able to own property.

When you think about it, how can the government protect or promote something as obsure as "happiness?" How could anyone think that "happiness" is a right? I'm surprised we don't have more lawsuits against the government for not keeping people happy.

The government can defend property though. While it is still hard to define as a right, think of all the things that former governments kept from the masses....weapons, freedom to speak against the government, the ability to attend or not attend any church. If you can never have private property, that would be like always being submissive to you landlord. That's like slavery.

Personally, I see happiness as a temporary condition based on current events. If I'm eating dark chocolate and drinking a Mt. Dew, I'm happy. If I'm sitting in gridlock, I'm not happy. I personally try not to measure life as pursueing happiness, because that just becomes hedonistic and self centered. After all, alot of the things I do in life aren't pleasurable, but they are needed.

A better thing to pursue, IMO, is contentment. I believe there really is only one place for true contentment...Jesus.

Phillipians 4:11-13 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, [therewith] to be content.

I know both how to be abased (poor), and I know how to abound (rich): every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Well, that's my two cents worth.

Sincerely

[Mamzelle]

re: If growth of this kind does not make people happy, stagnation will hardly do the trick. Ossified societies guard positional goods more, not less, jealously. A flourishing economy, on the other hand, creates what biologists call “a tangled bank” of niches, with no clear hierarchy between them. Tyler Cowen, of George Mason University, points out that America has more than 3,000 halls of fame, honouring everyone from rock stars and sportsmen to dog mushers, pickle-packers and accountants. In such a society, everyone can hope to come top of his particular monkey troop, even as the people he looks down on count themselves top of a subtly different troop.))))

bumpmark

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

Happines is... indeed.

http://www.lzxray.com/Ronnie3.jpg

.

[PGalt]

If you doubt me...

I do not doubt you. Good cents / inalienable rights bump!

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

Wisdom about riches...

http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=riches&searchtype=all&version1=45&bookset=7

[driftless2]

"liberals"

As you and I well know one does not have to go to California to find hypocritical libs. There are plenty of them around the country. It's interesting that for all the whining libs do about the "oppressed" and the "underprivileged", so few libs are willing to put their money where their mouths are. The total wealth in this country of people who call themselves libs or Dems is probably equal to that of Republicans/conservatives. So they could easily fund all the "unfortunates" who don't have as much as the rest of us.

Why don't they then? Because number one they know that there aren't really that many totally destitute people in the country, and number two libs really are as greedy and selfish or more than the people (Republicans/conservatives) they claim are.

[joeystoy]

I do doubt you. The phrase "pursuit of happiness" is based on the writings of Aristotle, later expanded upon by Aquinas. John Locke referred to "life, liberty and estate" not pursuit of property.

Your definition of happiness as temporary is also addresses by Aristotle. He describes the temporary condition as contentment. Happiness, he wrote, was a lifelong pursuit and the end result of a life well lived.

I went to college in the 1960s so I heard the same nonsense about Jefferson and "pursuit of property" from dimwit professors who were trying to denigrate the Founders. Show me a single primary document from the period that shows the phrase "pursuit of property" in Jefferson's handwriting.

I'm not saying that the Founders didn't value property rights. They did. By the late 20th Century the concept of property rights became code for greed among the American Left. They used the Pursuit of Property myth as a club to beat down anyone who did not agree with them that our Founders were selfish elitists who only sought to protect their ill-gotten wealth.

Anybody can write anything they want and post it on Wikipedia.

[ScubieNuc]

Show me a single primary document from the period that shows the phrase "pursuit of property" in Jefferson's handwriting.

You got me here. I read that "pursuit of property" idea a long time ago, and I don't remember the source. Before I wrote the post, I did a quick search to see what I would find and I saw the wikipedia discription. How accurate it all is, I don't know.

However, pursuit of property still makes more sense than the pursuit of happiness. Just because the radical left saw ownership of property elitist, doesn't make it true. That just sounds like the left was trying to promote communal ownership of property. Not a surprise there.

I personally think that the Declaration should have just said life and liberty. Happiness has value, but impossible to guage. Property is valuable but obviously difficult to get a firm grasp on how to define.

Sincerely

[joeystoy]

Aristotle and Aquinas have given the best definitions of happiness as the end result of a life well lived.

Aquinas went further, saying that happiness comes from having what you want, without wanting what you shouldn't have. In a world of moral relativism this concept is dismissed. Those of us that believe in objective truth understand the concept of not wanting anything you shouldn't have.

For example, if I want to control the lives of my neighbors, that's wanting something I shouldn't have.

If I want a new car and that desire motivates me to work hard to get it, that's fine. If you want a new car and you dream up a crooked stock scheme, that's not alright.

It reminds me of Gekko's "greed is good" speech. Self-motivating desire is good. Greed, which is pursuing material wealth to the exclusion of all other values, IS NOT GOOD.