Want to be Happy? Be Around Happy People

People’s happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon. _British Medical Journal

A recent BMJ study looked at the "Dynamic Spread of Happiness in a Large Social Network." Using 20 years of data from the longitudinal Framingham Study, UCSD and Harvard researchers sought to determine whether happiness of individuals is related to the happiness levels of individuals surrounding them.

Apparently, happiness is contagious. Clearly, so is unhappiness. So are a number of other ephemeral psychological states. Humans possess "mirror neurons" and mirror brain circuits. We both imitate others, and are imitated by them, simultaneously.

This is how children and adolescents learn to become independent adults, by imitating persons in their environments. Of course, if the only persons in their environments are incompetent perpetual adolescents -- psychological neotenates -- they are not likely to ever become independent in any meaningful sense. And if the only persons who influence them happen to be whining and envious freeloaders, their course in life will be skewed downward. Hence, at least part of the explanation for multi-generational crime and welfare dependency.

If you want to be happy, prosperous, independent, and productive, think about the type of social network you may want to develop for yourself. Think about the kind of books you may want to read, and the sort of entertainment you may wish to expose yourself to.

Purpose

One of the reasons that there are so many religions in the world, is that most people feel compelled to look outside themselves for a purpose to their lives. Religions claim to reveal a person's "true purpose in life." But why do people feel the need for a "purpose" in the first place?

The University of Minnesota sponsors a "Purpose Project." It is oriented toward helping people deal with the phenomenon of prolonged longevity. According to the Project:

Purpose is that deepest belief within us where we have a profound sense of who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. It is the quality or thread we choose to shape our lives around. It is a source of deep meaning and vitality.

According to author and speaker Richard Leider:

There are three hungers that people are trying to feed throughout their lives. The first is to connect deeply with the creative spirit of life. Sooner or later, most people come to recognize that there is some sort of creative energy that infuses all of life. They feel a hunger to touch that energy and to be touched by it. That doesn't mean that you have to be a creative person in a classic sense-to make your living as a painter, a dancer, a writer, or an actor. It could mean an experience as universal as bringing a child into the world, or helping to nurture and shape a life. It could mean finding ways to infuse the workplace with more creativity and more playfulness.

The second hunger is to know and express your gifts and talents. The people I have met in my 30 years as a career counselor are always absolutely sure that they have some unique talent. They may not know what it is yet. They may not know how to express it. It may have nothing to do with how they earn a living or what they do at work. But they know that they have something within them that they have to contribute. And this feeling lasts throughout your lifetime: The healthiest seniors I've met continue to explore their gifts and abilities, long after they've left the workplace.

The third hunger is to know that our lives matter. Everyone wants to leave behind some kind of legacy, some kind of personal mark. It doesn't have to be great or magnificent. But human beings know that at one level, we each have a own unique thumbprint, and we all want to leave that print behind for others to see that we've been here. We can be successful, make a lot of money, reach a certain status, but it will be success without fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from feeding these three hungers.

The last hunger--wanting to know that our lives matter--appears to be the motivator for many young people who undergo religious conversion, or who perform acts of seeming desperation. Muslim suicide bombers and religious cult members who abruptly cut themselves off from their former lives, are examples of people driven to do something that "makes a difference."

Here is an interesting exercise from Steve Pavlina, to find your "purpose:"

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.

We are driven so strongly toward a purpose--if not consciously, then sub-consciously--that even the most jaded and cynical individual is susceptible to "the pitch," if presented correctly for that person.

If you are religious, your purpose is decided to a certain degree by others--founders and shapers of your religion. If you are not religious, but are compelled to find purpose, consider this idea from the Purpose Wikibook:

Given that there is no detectable purpose pre-designed into life or the universe, then, if we must have one, we must adopt a surrogate.

To my mind, the only viable option is to support life’s continual evolution and focus upon helping it to achieve an omnipotent ability. Such a purpose is universal and rational; it is a purpose that will last as long as life itself lasts. It accommodates the whole of life, and shows that we care about more than just our own well-being. It declares that we value life for its own sake and think little about the death that must follow, taking it simply as the price to be paid for living.

It should be obvious that such a purpose--like all stated "purposes"--is susceptible to manipulation, distortion, and abuse. Yet, as humans, we are stuck with the need for a purpose, but are given no completely trustworthy formulation of what that purpose should be.

Steve Pavlina's method above reminds me of an interesting exercise utilised by the late John David Garcia, which he called "autopoiesis." To summarise the method, a person will ask for a solution to an important question. The person will then discard the first, automatic thought that comes into the mind, and wait for other answers. The person will most eventually recognise which answers are relevant and useful. It is important to find a quiet place, and have plenty of time available. Garcia taught autopoiesis as a group exercise, which does add an element of expectation that a solo exercise may lack.

The salient feature of mainstream western existence--within academia, as portrayed in the media, and as experienced around the many coffee machines and water coolers of my life--is a lack of meaningful purpose for most westerners. That may be a partial explanation for the merely feeble correlation between affluence and happiness.

Young westerners are fixated on wealth, comfort, and fame. If their lives do not provide these things, it is easy to turn to mind altering chemicals. The trend toward an increase in narcissism, combined with an increase in binge drinking, and extreme drug use, suggests that rather than seeking a deep and meaningful purpose in life, young westerners are looking for escape from unpleasantness.

A later post will discuss the relationship between political activism, religious activism (including terrorism), and the youthful need to "make a difference."



Image Courtesy of Journeys With Purpose

Happiness is When You Stop Slamming Your Own Head Against the Wall Part II

People inherit a "set point" for happiness. But it is what people do with that inherited "set point" that determines their actual happiness.

Tiberius looks again to ancient philosophers who suggested people should develop their character if they wanted to have a good life. One way to do that is to gain some perspective on your life. Volunteer at a homeless shelter for even a day or two and you'll quickly realize how fortunate you are.

"We all spend too much time being upset over things that really don't matter that much," Tiberius says. "You know, something like worrying that your new kitchen cabinets won't match the countertops or something like that and calling all your friends to complain about it. We'd all be happier if we tried harder to keep our reactions proportional to the events in our life. And the fastest way I know to do that is to get outside of ourselves and do something for someone else."

Source.

But don't go outside expecting to find happiness. Go outside to gain perspective and to build character. The happiness that happens comes from inside yourself, when you stop slamming your head against the wall.

Guess what? You were sold a bill of goods. Nothing out there can make you happy. Nothing. You want to know why? Because things change. You change. That beautiful girl you married changes. Women that are worth knowing really don’t care what kind of car you drive. Men who are worth knowing really aren’t as concerned with the smoothness of your skin as they are the love in your eyes. It’s been said before, and it will be said again - The only thing that doesn’t change is that we live in a world of change.

Source

As important as happiness feels to us, it is not the meaning of life.

To over-simplify things down to the basic evolutionary origin, happiness is what we feel when we achieve a goal. It's the indicator of success. (The actual emotion of happiness is far more complex in rats, never mind humans, but let's start with the simplest possible case.) By seeking "happiness" as a pure thing, independent of any goals, we are in essence short-circuiting the system.

Source

In terms of brain function, happiness is a balance of brain activity--reflected in brain wave behaviour.

For general health and wellness purposes, we need all the brain wave types, but we need our brain to have the flexibility and resilience to be able to balance the brain wave activity as necessary for what we are doing at any one time.
What stops our brain from having this balance all the time?
The big 6:

1. Injury
2. Medications, including alcohol
3. Fatigue
4. Emotional distress
5. Pain
6. Stress

These 6 types of problems tend to create a pattern in our brain's activity that is hard to shift.

In chaos theory, we would call this pattern a "chaotic attractor". Getting "stuck" in a specific kind of brain behaviour is like being caught in an attractor.

Source

What we are looking for is balance--the well-lived life. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting what will cause them the greatest happiness. We need to learn to listen to our true inner needs. To do that, we have to provide ourselves time away from noisy distractions and clamoring demands--and learn to listen to the voices behind the voices.

Happiness is When You Stop Slamming Your Own Head Against the Wall

Happiness appears to elude us, like a moving target. Oliver James thinks that it is capitalism that is making us unhappy. Certainly anyone who thinks that money is enough to make him happy will be sadly disillusioned.

Will giving to others make us happy? Giving to others may bring a warm glow. But don't confuse that warm glow with actual happiness. Sir John is correct that love and contributing to others can take us closer to happiness or add to the happiness we have. But that "warm glow" can also be achieved with Valium, and that is not happiness.

The type of happiness that actually means something is the happiness that comes from a productive, well-rounded life, that constantly sets meaningful goals and is constantly making progress toward achieving meaningful goals.

Happiness is not in a rich retirement. Retiring from life, withdrawing from life, cuts us off from many avenues toward happiness. Love is at the center of happiness, and love is not cut off. Love connects.

Popular culture has myths of happiness--but they are almost all diametrically opposite to any paths to real happiness. Popular culture is superficial. When you reach the goals that popular culture tells you to strive for, you discover the meaning of emptiness.



Evolution designed certain rewards into our neural apparatus. Rewards for certain behaviours resulted in our survival for more successful breeding. But evolution also predisposed many of us to gluttony, now that foods of all types are readily available. Eating can make us happy temporarily, just as other forms of evolutionarily programmed "consumption" can make us temporarily sated, content, even happy.

Having things doesn't make us happy, no matter how many alluring advertisements we choose to believe. Breaking our backs to acquire more things will not lead to happiness.

Happiness can mean simply stopping for a moment and looking around--and beginning to notice the world around you. Going further, and beginning to respond more satisfactorily to the world around you can add to your happiness. Then, creating a better world around you can add even more.

The real trick, is in understand who "you" are. For that, no amount of ordinary education will suffice. More on that later.

God and Orgasms: Seeking Pleasure, Transcendance, and Purpose

Humans have been searching for God ever since their brains grew large enough to begin asking: who, what, when, where, how, why, why not, and what if? Humans are still searching for the transcendant, and it makes perfect sense that they incorporate modern technology in the search.

Dr. Michael Persinger has been researching the effect of transcranial magnetic stimulation on the human brain for about twenty years. He developed what has been dubbed "the God helmet", an array of electromagnets that mount on the subject's head.

The magnetic helmet focuses on the temporal lobe, a part of the brain that has been associated with transcendant experiences for some time. Many subjects do indeed report transcendant experiences, such as experiencing being in the presence of God, or in the presence of someone they know who has died. Others experience only very subtle effects, or no effects at all.

Earlier researchers used direct electrical stimulation of the brain, with more striking results. Jose M.R. Delgado was an early neuroscientist who used direct brain stimulation. He is perhaps most famous for his use of brain stimulation to stop a raging bull in its tracks. Wilder Penfield was a North American neurosurgeon whose use of electrical probes in neurosurgery expanded the knowledge of brain function tremendously. Robert G. Heath was another neurosurgeon, who pursued electrical stimulation of the brain for therapeutic purposes.

Most mainstream medical uses of electrical brain stimulation seek only to alleviate traditional maladies such as movement disorders, mood disorders, etc. Heath's research in the 50s and 60s used electrical stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain to take the research to a new level:

Heath tells us some of his patients were given "self-stimulators" similar to the ones used by Old's rats. Whenever he felt the urge, the patient could push any of 3 or 4 buttons on the self-stimulator hooked to his belt. Each button was connected to an electrodeimplanted in a different part of his brain, and the device kept track of the number of times he stimulated each site.

Heath tells of one patient who felt impelled to stimulate his septal region about 1500 times per hour. He happened to be a schizophrenic homosexual who wanted to change his sexual preference. As an experiment, Heath gave the man stag films to watch while he pushed his pleasure-center hotline, and the result was a new interest in female companionship. After clearing things with the state attorney general, the enterprising Tulane doctors went out and hired a "lady of the evening," as Heath delicately put it, for their ardent patient.

"We paid her fifty dollars," Heath recalls. "I told her it might be a little weird, but the room would be completely blacked out with curtains. In the next room we had the instruments for recording his brain waves, and he had enough lead wiring running into the electrodes in his brain so he could move around freely. We stimulated him a few times, the young lady was cooperative, and it was a very successful experience." The conversion was only temporary, however.

... We ask Heath if human beings are as compulsive about pleasure as the rats of Old's laboratory that self-stimulated until they passed out. "No," he tells us. "People don't self-stimulate constantly -- as long as they're feeling good. Only when they're depressed does the stimulation trigger a big response. There are so many factors that play into a human being's pleasure response: your experience, your memory system, sensory cues..." he muses.
A more recent medical scientist's accidental discovery of an
"orgasmatron" device is in need of volunteers, to perfect the method.

Dr Meloy - originally a pain specialist - stumbled on the concept when he inserted a pacemaker-like device under the skin in a bid to alleviate severe back pain in a patient.

The pronounced side-effects of the electrical current it delivered prompted him to diversify into a different field of research. He patented the idea of using the technique to treat female sexual dysfunction.

The device works because of a natural reflex in the body which produces an orgasm. Source.

The pursuit of push-button pleasure and electromagnetic transcendance might cause one to wonder just what humans want? A lot of people instinctively answer that humans just want to be happy. But is that true? Here is one thoughtful perspective:

3.5: Isn't "happiness" the meaning of life?

No.

What is happiness? What's it made of? Where's it come from?

To over-simplify things down to the basic evolutionary origin, happiness is what we feel when we achieve a goal. It's the indicator of success. (The actual emotion of happiness is far more complex in rats, never mind humans, but let's start with the simplest possible case.) By seeking "happiness" as a pure thing, independent of any goals, we are in essence short-circuiting the system. I mean, let's say there's an AI (Artificial Intelligence) with a little number that indicates how "happy" it is at any given time. Increasing this number to infinity, or the largest floating-point number that can be stored in available RAM - is that meaningful?

Or to put it another way, how do you know you're happy? Because you think you're happy, right? So thinking you're happy is the indicator of happiness? Maybe you should actually try to spend your life thinking you're happy, instead of being happy.

This is one of those meta-level confusions (19). Once you place the indicator of success on the same logical level as the goal, you've opened the gates of chaos. That's the basic paradox of "wireheading", the science-fictional term for sticking a wire into the brain's pleasure center and spending your days in artificial bliss. Once you say that you should take the indicator of success and treat that as success, why not go another step and trick yourself into just thinking that you're happy? Or thinking that you think you're happy?

The fact that evolution has reified the success-indicator into a cognitively independent module doesn't make it logically independent.

There's also the problem that seeking "true happiness" is chasing a chimera. The emotions of happiness, and the conditions for being happy, are all evolutionary adaptations - the neurologically reified shapes of strategies that promoted reproductive fitness in the Plio-Pleistocene environment. Or in plain English, when we're happy about something, it's because being happy helped you survive or have kids in hunter-gatherer tribes.

Punchline: There is no point at which the optimal evolutionary strategy is to be happy with what you have. Any pleasure will pall. We're programmed to seek after true happiness, programmed to believe in it and anticipate it, but no such emotion actually exists within the brain. There's no evolutionary reason why it should. Source.

What if everyone could sense the presence of God by putting on a God helmet, or could achieve total bliss at the push of a button on a handheld remote? Would that be your heaven?

Sucker Punched by Happy-Happy-Happiness

People just are not happy like they should be. Bad government policies may be to blame. In fact, you can be sure of it. If only the right government policies were enacted, everyone would be happy. What government policies, you ask? Why, happiness policies, naturally.

In the UK, the economist Richard Layard, New Labour's very own happiness guru, has succeeded in getting hard-nosed political operators to back his campaign. His recent call for the Government to train 10,000 more therapists to help us become happy, resonates with politicians who are desperately short of ideas. Back in the 1940s and '50s, the big idea was the Welfare State. Today it is the Happy State. Stalin, who called himself the "constructor of happiness" would approve. So would the Controller in Huxley's Brave New World, who believed that making people happy was the precondition for stable government.

Policies that are designed to make us happy have little to do with a genuine emotional response to our experience. They attempt to persuade the public to think positively and adopt forms of behaviour deemed appropriate by enlightened "experts". Like Happy Meals, happiness has been turned into an easily digestible formula that can be taught by teachers, learned by the masses and managed by policy makers.

....Privately, many New Labour supporters hope that happiness is the Big Idea that has eluded them since the decline in appeal of the Welfare State. And where New Labour treads, can David Cameron be very far behind? Mr Cameron has declared that education is "one of the keys to happiness" and that "happiness" is one of the "central goals of government". Many educators agree. Having concluded that it is easier to help children feel good than to teach them maths, reading and science, they have embraced the cause of emotional education.

The ascendancy of therapeutic education is not confined to the state sector. Anthony Seldon, the headmaster of Wellington College, hopes to turn his school into a very happy place. He has teamed up with the Orwellian sounding "Well-being Institute" of Cambridge University to produce happy children. He writes that producing "happy young adults is my highest priority as head". Excellence and high achievement? Umm. Seldon castigates "driven people" who are "missing the point of life".

Of course, no one wants to miss the point of life. And the platitude that money does not make you happy contains more than a grain of truth. However, what the happiness lobbyists are actually saying is not that we should go forth and discover the meaning of life, merely that we should be content with what's on offer. They claim that concern with prosperity and economic growth diminishes the quality of our emotional life and makes us unhappy. They argue that if we were more modest in our aspirations and lowered our expectations, we would be far happier people.

"We should be thinking not what is good for putting money in people's pockets but what is good for putting joy in people's hearts," noted Mr Cameron recently. The Conservative leader, like other advocates of this Big Idea, tends to counterpose happiness with economic prosperity. What they all argue is that concern with prosperity and economic growth causes unhappiness. The project of linking unhappiness with economic development has as its target human ambition. High expectation, hard work, aspiration for material possessions and discontent are increasingly represented as human failings in today's therapy culture. Cultivating an electorate with low expectations appeals to officials who have very little to say or offer.

.....Today's turn towards the management of people's internal life is motivated by moral disorientation and political exhaustion. Unimaginative politicians who are unable to decide what needs to be done - or implement the appropriate policies - feel more comfortable with instructing the public how it should feel.

Advocates of the happiness crusade frequently contend that their campaign will help create more caring, altruistic and trustful communities. However, the emphasis on individual feelings distracts people from the life of their communities. Public policies enacted through the intervention of thousands of therapists are likely to turn the public citizen into a helpless patient. Whatever the problems associated with the pursuit of individual ambition, they pale into insignificance when compared with the moral disorientation caused by the politicisation of happiness.

More at the source.

I had to read the article twice to see if I was missing a punchline someplace. Unfortunately, no. The sad thing is how well this government drive to induce happiness in citizens meshes with policies in government education--such as teaching self-esteem in lieu of preparing students for the real world. It is too easy to anticipate entire nations of happy dunces, pushovers for any group of thugs wanting to take over governing powers--as long as they keep everyone happy. "A gram is better than a damn," as the happy happy people say.

Something that would make me very happy. Knocking government officials who dream up such ideas on their asses. Then kicking them. Oh yes. Now that would make me happy.