Happiness is Not Objective
Poor, homeless people can be happier than rich, wealthy, expensive people. Why? It's all part of being human. Think about it. We all strive for success in one way or another. We can all experience happiness. When you're at lunch, and you buy an especially nice frozen treat, you are happier. In general, finer things make us happier. Since, in most everyday interactions, more money gives us more happiness, we naturally assume that more money in the long term will mean more happiness. However, in many cases, this is not true. Think about it in terms of genetics. Rich Person A struggles many years of his life and becomes rich. He has all the toys and gadgets he wants. For the rest of his life, he stays at home, happily and contentedly playing with his hi-tech toys until his death. Rich Person B also struggles many years of his life and becomes rich. However, once he reached his goal (of becoming rich), he kept going, working hard and becoming even more successful until the end of his life. For the human race, people who are more like RP (Rich Person) B are a benefactor. They help the human race on a whole. People like RP A, on the other hand, while extremely happy, do not help the human race by living a happy, content life. Most people are somewhere in the middle.
Being too happy is not a good thing for humans on a whole.
Happiness is not universal. It's not even objective. When you experience happiness, that's your head telling you you're on the right track. When you don't feel happy, you try to do something to change the situation (you try to make yourself happy).
If everyone was happy all the time, no-one would ever try to change anything. We would all sit at home feeling happy.
That's why, when we feel unhappy, we try to do something to change it. When we feel sad, we try to prevent what caused us to feel sad from happening again. We're all just playing the roles assigned to us by our genes. Of course, everyone would love it if they could feel happy all the time - but it wouldn't be good for us as humans. We'd die out. People would be so happy they wouldn't eat anything. Sure, they'd feel the gnawing of hunger in their stomach, but they wouldn't feel the need to DO anything about it.
Don't worry, though. There is a solution. Although being eternally happy is not possible (or at least, it shouldn't be), being happy is actually rather easy to achieve. And no, I don't mean eating that bit of chocolate cake (that's for a future article). Just do what feels right. Being aware is half the battle. Force yourself to determine what things will give you long-term happiness, compared to short-term happiness. It's OK to spend your time doing things for short-term happiness, but keep in mind your future as well.
Don't do drugs. Using drugs makes you happy when you shouldn't be. Using drugs gives you very short-term happiness. Not only that, it makes it even more difficult to achieve long-term happiness. Then again, if you do drugs, you probably won't live as long, and your genes (which had a role in making you do drugs in the first place) are less likely to remain in our human gene pool. So, in a way, humanity is weeding out the bad traits, and keeping in the good.
So why are we unhappy? I believe that the only reason humans have so much stress, anxiety, grief, and unhappiness, is because as a human race, we haven't finished evolving yet. We're not perfect - we still make mistakes. Because it's so much easier for bad (genetically) people to continue living these days, where medicine and money virtually secure places for people who value themselves too much, as a whole, humanity is not moving forward as quickly as we used to. So the majority of us are not as happy as people have been at some points in history. Or as people will be in the future.
This is my first blog entry! It's bound to be jumbled and probably grammatically incorrect in places, but I hope that writing enough will help me to settle into my own style. I've found once you read a few articles by the same person, it becomes easier to understand the concepts they write about, because you begin to have a window into their mind. It's even easier if they have a certain style. One can only hope.
Here's a link to an interesting site about something called Sudden Success Syndrome - http://www.mmcinstitute.com/sws.html
Being too happy is not a good thing for humans on a whole.
Happiness is not universal. It's not even objective. When you experience happiness, that's your head telling you you're on the right track. When you don't feel happy, you try to do something to change the situation (you try to make yourself happy).
If everyone was happy all the time, no-one would ever try to change anything. We would all sit at home feeling happy.
That's why, when we feel unhappy, we try to do something to change it. When we feel sad, we try to prevent what caused us to feel sad from happening again. We're all just playing the roles assigned to us by our genes. Of course, everyone would love it if they could feel happy all the time - but it wouldn't be good for us as humans. We'd die out. People would be so happy they wouldn't eat anything. Sure, they'd feel the gnawing of hunger in their stomach, but they wouldn't feel the need to DO anything about it.
Don't worry, though. There is a solution. Although being eternally happy is not possible (or at least, it shouldn't be), being happy is actually rather easy to achieve. And no, I don't mean eating that bit of chocolate cake (that's for a future article). Just do what feels right. Being aware is half the battle. Force yourself to determine what things will give you long-term happiness, compared to short-term happiness. It's OK to spend your time doing things for short-term happiness, but keep in mind your future as well.
Don't do drugs. Using drugs makes you happy when you shouldn't be. Using drugs gives you very short-term happiness. Not only that, it makes it even more difficult to achieve long-term happiness. Then again, if you do drugs, you probably won't live as long, and your genes (which had a role in making you do drugs in the first place) are less likely to remain in our human gene pool. So, in a way, humanity is weeding out the bad traits, and keeping in the good.
So why are we unhappy? I believe that the only reason humans have so much stress, anxiety, grief, and unhappiness, is because as a human race, we haven't finished evolving yet. We're not perfect - we still make mistakes. Because it's so much easier for bad (genetically) people to continue living these days, where medicine and money virtually secure places for people who value themselves too much, as a whole, humanity is not moving forward as quickly as we used to. So the majority of us are not as happy as people have been at some points in history. Or as people will be in the future.
This is my first blog entry! It's bound to be jumbled and probably grammatically incorrect in places, but I hope that writing enough will help me to settle into my own style. I've found once you read a few articles by the same person, it becomes easier to understand the concepts they write about, because you begin to have a window into their mind. It's even easier if they have a certain style. One can only hope.
Here's a link to an interesting site about something called Sudden Success Syndrome - http://www.mmcinstitute.com/sws.html
posted by MercuryLime at 5:29 PM
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