The Downside of Happiness
- Too much happiness can make you less creative — and less safe.
- Happiness is not suited to every situation.
- Not all types of happiness are good for you.
- Pursuing happiness may actually make you unhappy.
More by June Gruber.
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It’s a shame our society has adopted an “all-or-nothing” attitude toward happiness.
In Classical times people had an understanding of the Fate. That sometimes fortune was on our side and at other times it wasn’t. They lived their lives regardless. They kept trying even when times were hard.
Today’s society has no understanding of noble suffering, or of struggle. They expect everything to be easy, and happy, and constantly pleasing. Thus, we have high rates of divorce, end of life suicide, and abortion.
People need to learn the redemptive power of suffering.
Even happiness needs to be in moderation. If everyone was always happy we wouldn’t have many of the things we enjoy today.
“Today’s society has no understanding of noble suffering, or of struggle.” Well said Lucius. It’s hard to appreciate something you’ve always had. Many people just expect things to always go their way and I can easily see how this becomes a destructive mindset.
I’m not sure how I feel about the idea that pursuing happines makes you unhappy though. I definitely think that pursuing anything with the wrong mindset can make you unhappy, but I don’t think this principal can be applied across the board for everyone’s pursuit of happiness. As long as you adopt an it’s-the-journey-not-the-destination mentality, I don’t see why pursuing happiness would be a bad thing. I think pursuing happines with this mindset would actually be a good thing.
In medieval and other more primitive times, people were not as happy (or were they?). When the need to survive is more pressing, there is less time for happiness.
Basically, happiness makes you complacent, whereas never being quite satisfied can make you strive harder. But, what is the point of striving harder if you are never truly happy?
Good point Buster. By such logic, maybe the key is for people to be ignorant of the fact that they will never truly be happy. If they knew that they would never be happy, they would stop trying and become complacent.
So on some level, we must delude ourselves into thinking that true happiness is attainable.
@Brian, I respectfully disagree. “Delude” ourselves into believing we will never be happy? No. The comments above have overcomplicated the issue. Complacency does not give way inherently to unhappiness. Complacency is the natural result of a rational calculation: am I likely to become happier if I try harder? Those who are risk averse and answer this question negatively become complacent and, consequently, happy. Those who answer this question, however, take the risk of never being happy or hitting it big. It’s the difference between playing penny slots all day or going big on one tile in Roulette.
Brian, interesting point! I’m sure that some people believe that you could truly be happy, but I would also imagine that a good number of people (myself included) realize that eternally sustainable happiness is impossible (at least in this lifetime). Moments, glimpses of happiness, at least, are attainable, and it is those things that keep many people striving onward in their pursuit of happiness.
Let’s not get away from ourselves here.
Happiness is completely attainable. The only problem we face is the idea of “complete” or “eternal” happiness, complete only being attainable for a limited period at best, and eternal is unattainable in life due to the very nature of life.
Man will always seek happiness. We will pursue it, chase it, desire it, etc. This is natural because happiness is our last end, or in other terms, our goal in life. We seek all other things hoping they will make us happy.
This study shows that the more we seek happiness the more likely it is that we will make ourselves unhappy. This has an easy explanation: we are seeking the wrong things. We end up seeking the “shadow” of happiness, its shell.
Just as most things can be graded on quality, so can happiness. Our goal in seeking happiness is the “ultimate happiness”, that once attained provides us perfect and eternal happiness. We can reason that this exists because of the argument of perfection, which (using fire as an example) says that since some fire is hotter than others there must be a fire that is most hot. The happiness which would be “most happy” would be eternal and perfect. Using a bit of ontology we can argue that since humans have a desire for perfect happiness, and all desires correspond to a real and attainable thing, then perfect happiness is a real thing.
Therefore, it is likely that people become unhappy when seeking happiness because they recognize the gulf that exists between the happiness they are attaining and the ultimate happiness. They see what they are working toward and recognizing how fall they fall short. It’s like how most Saints think they are the worst sinners: when you see how good your goal is you begin to recognize your failure in attaining it.