Study of Happiness

By Phin Upham

Happiness does not seem to be a highly sensitive, though some correlations were found to wealth, social class, etc. Lottery winners, the article "Subjective Well Being" points out, are not made very much happier by their good fortune, and paraplegics are generally not made as unhappy as one might expect by their misfortune.

People do vary as much as might be expected as a function of religion, wealth of nation, marital-status, etc.. Many Researchers conclude that we are progressing down the path toward knowledge about subjective well being. "Hopefully, in 2028 nobody can possibly claim that we know nothing more than the ancient Greeks about subjective well being." The progress, made though careful questionnaires and probing questions try's to measure how happy people feel. This leads me to an objection to this emphasis in the next section...

The emphasis on happiness as an end in and of itself is, I believe, not as fruitful as a measure of a life as it seems to be considered. From this emphasis spring statements like "the happy person [is] well paid, young, educated, religious and married. We would emphasis that the happy person is blessed with a positive temperament..." (Subjective Well-Being) and "although happiness is not easy to predict from material circumstances, it seems consistent to those who have it" (The Pursuit of Happiness). The ancient Greeks might not have had out sophisticated knowledge of methodology, or our knowledge of psychological biasing factors in surveys, but nevertheless, they seem to have had a broader view of happiness that I believe is now overlooked. Aristotle was not wholly unaware of the diminishing marginal return of wealth. He claimed that in order to be happy a person had to have a certain amount of money, but after that, the amount of money made little difference. How much further in our analysis have we come today?

The importance attacked to the question of happiness for the ancient Greeks seemed to have less to do with Subjective hedonistic feelings of well being than it had to do with philosophical consideration of the good life. Fulfillment of function, as Aristotle famously claimed, was happiness for all beings. So the happy life for humans was fulfillment of certain of our intellectual capabilities. It is an open question whether professors and philosophers, whom Aristotle may have claimed have fulfilled their function to a high degree, have a higher life-satisfaction rate. I do not think that the answer to this survey, no matter the result, would significantly changed Aristotle's claim about whether one is happy. His claim, to me, is one which incorporates personal feeling as a manifestation of the nature of ones relationship to the world and not as in and of itself the key characteristic.

The unexamined life, as famously said, is not worth living. Therefor a life which is "happy" but unexamined is not worth living. But many of the readings treat an increase of happiness exactly this way. How you think of your life in terms of joy takes center stage. But not many of us really work to maximize happiness. In fact, a millionaire could live most of her life in "Happiness" if she quit her job and moved to Bali. A less extreme example would include giving up a promotion in order to have more free time. It may be true that we often INCORRECTLY prioritize out lives, for example it may not be either fulfilling nor a maximization of happiness for many to work the long hours they do., but because people often do not choose their priorities correctly when they choose to trade in happiness does not mean that they ought not trade subjective happiness for certain things.

The idea of objective happiness also emerges. A life of hedonism is subjectively happy (as is the life of the deluded person in the Experience machine example) but it is not objectively a good or happy life. An objectively happy life is tied to the concept of a good life in a deep way that subjective happiness, which seems to float free from almost everything but genetics and patterns of thought formed in childhood, is not. And this "makes all the difference."

Reading about happiness has disturbing application to ones own life. So much of what we do we do because we want to live a happy life. We postpone gratification (in the strictly hedonistic sense) by continued schooling and long hours. But if this tradeoff will not yield significantly greater happiness, and if happiness is one's goal, one begins to question if it is worth it. This flirts with the old cliché about doing what makes one happy, but I think it is distinct in its rigor. Far from concluding that one ought to paint the town red every night since postponement of gratification for some goal will not make any difference, I conclude that the tradeoff is not between happiness and work, but between something else, perhaps a fulfilling life, or a good life and work. Happiness is a very important element in a fulfilling life or a good life, but it is only an element. But if happiness is not our goal, then perhaps we must reevaluate what tradeoffs we make.

The most interesting question to me, therefor is "What good does this information do for us? How ought we to use it?" I have two directions I would like to suggest. First, it is unclear to me that the information about marriage and religion making one happier says what it appears to say. Both are self selected groups. It is possible that those who have a disposition to be happy choose to get married more often or be religious (were the same people tested before and after marriage? Are the kind of people who get married the kind that would be happy in marriage?). So therefor it is not necessarily true that we can improve our lives by getting married or joining the church as the studies might suggest.

I do not think a close study of these studies would often yield a great change in the life decisions a person would make. In as far as it would, I do not believe it would be because of the studies themselves but rather because they forced the reader to reevaluate and reexamine their life and their priorities. But a person could do this without these studies but after a careful reading of Aristotle, for example. I am not sure how this information can be used to change/reevaluate/reform ones life. But the question is a vital one to every reader.

How one evaluated one's own happiness is important since we often make decisions in life in an attempt to manipulate this evaluation (to make ourselves happier) and these studies suggest ways which might be dead-ends and ways which would be helpful.