Subjectivity of Happiness: Insights from Philosocom
Updated: Oct 22
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Article Synopsis by Mr. Chris Kingsley And Co.
"The Subjectivity of Happiness" is a thought-provoking article that explores the complex nature of happiness, emphasizing its individualistic characteristics. Mr. Tomasio uses personal anecdotes and experiences to illustrate the diverse ways individuals perceive and achieve happiness, making the content relatable and compelling.
The article critically examines generalizations made by studies on happiness, such as Dr. Robert Waldinger's research on relationships, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging individual differences.
The philosophical reflections on happiness, survival, and the role of emotions add depth to the discussion, with quotes from thinkers like Tracy Dennis-Tiwary and Kenneth Stewart enriching the narrative.
The article offers practical advice for self-discovery, emphasizing self-knowledge and exploration of new experiences. It critiques social norms, such as marriage and gender roles, and highlights how these norms can impact individual happiness.
The article maintains a realistic view on the pursuit of happiness, acknowledging that it is often a privilege rather than a guaranteed right. This perspective encourages readers to be pragmatic about their expectations and efforts. The notion of a "higher calling" and finding satisfaction in something greater than oneself adds an inspirational dimension to the article.
Part I: Understanding the Subjective Self
The logical truth about happiness is, that there is no one, universal source that will make all of the currently-living human beings happy, even if there is such a source that makes most of them happy. According to research:
“Over and over in these 75 years, our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned into relationships with family, with friends, and with community" -- Dr. Robert Waldinger
However, this research is overgeneralizing, and ignores the fact that some people prefer to be alone, even when presented with good company. It ignores the fact that the past affects our behavior, thoughts and emotions, to the point of changing our priorities in the future. It ignores the whole concept of social fatigue, which in some cases, could be attainable through any kind of human company.
We are not the Same
Ever since my mother almost died in the 2000's, I slowly sank into depression as a child. This depression lasts until this very day. I realized what matters to me the most is not even happiness but survival. I developed an ascetic mentality, along with anxiety, to help me better survive:
Emotions are tools for survival, forged and refined over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to protect and ensure that humans can thrive. They do this by providing two things: information and preparation. -- Tracy Dennis-Tiwary
High-quality connections do not make me happy. Being mindful about the fact I am surviving, and being a good influence on reality, is what makes me happy and happier. My happiness stems from gratefulness, and never from any human interaction. I sacrifice all mindfulness sessions for my craft because I know I still have much, much left to do. I don't care about the fact I already did so much. I go on being self-ruthless in my way until my influence on this world will improve the lives of many more, using the virtue of philosophy.
The knowledge about my potential is a double-edged sword, as I actively let it deprive me of pleasure, and lambast hedonism for stagnating the growth of the human potential towards building better lives. The more better lives there are, the more we can rectify this world!
Then, enough generalizing about individual people's happiness, when these people, like me, actively contemplate about the pain and trauma these lands have experienced. Stop generalizing when I don't care about myself as much as I care about the world, and my ability to help it... in my own unconventional ways.
Part II: The Path to your Own Happiness
If you truly want to attain long-term happiness, you have to know yourself better, and get to know what makes you feel good and what causes you to feel the opposite. Only when you'll know yourself well enough, you'll be able to determine what that source is.
There are two ways you can know yourself better, in order to determine what to pursue in life and what to avoid. The first one is in solitude, where you'll have to contemplate in order to know yourself better, and the second one is by getting yourself to experience new experiences, so you might surprise yourself, and find such an activity that you have yet to realize that it genuinely makes you happy.
You might find, for example, that being in nature can bring you happiness, due to its mental and health benefits. That is despite much of the global population living in cities, alongside the rapid growth in urban development.
Lastly, you cannot expect others to tell you what will make you happy, as much as you can determine it yourself. Take rule on your life, and lead it like a benevolent dictator does. You are capable of being the best candidate for it.
You can lead your life to the future you want yourself and your dear ones to be in. Consider halting your attempts at clinging on destructive hope, which deters you from accepting reality. Instead, devise a vision where you can find yourself the happiest. Happiness is rarely unconditional, after all, given how much we desire that we believe to be amiss.
You will suffer accordingly to ambitions that haven't been fulfilled yet. Years can go by, and as long as your idea of paradise won't come to fruition, you will suffer. You will suffer because you care. You will suffer per your desire to make your life matter to someone other than yourself.
Yet, you will lose things, you will lose people by departure or by death. However, you can, and should, rebuild yourself after realizing you can, and how you can, do it.
Until then, by caring for a different reality far more than this current one, you'll live in frustration, whether recognized or repressed, as you try to cling to hope, maybe more than you should...
I'm in the profession of hope. Each hour I spend with a client is like an "archeology of hope," if you will, uncovering evidence that things will get better for them: that depression will fade... that anxiety will be transformed into tranquility. But there's another kind of hope that.... inflicts pain instead of easing it. This is what I call "destructive hope."
Destructive hope pulls us into a chaotic future, promising us a heaven and dumping us in hell.
The inevitabilities of living in an imperfect and mortal world mean that sooner or later each of us must each face necessary losses. -- Kenneth Stewart
Part III: The Fault of the Orthodox Paths
“No person, no place, and no thing has any power over us, for ‘we’ are the only thinkers in our mind. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives.” -- Louise L. Hay
The fault in some traditional communities is that they believe they know what is good for you, without necessarily knowing yourself beyond the sphere of your societal origin. They will get you through certain events, especially as a child or a teen, without necessarily caring for your thoughts, even if such rituals are not mandatory by the law of the state.
Arguably, the "ultimate" happiness-related ritual in such communities is, of course, marriage. In some of these communities, you will be required to get married by local norms, due to the belief that it is not good for humans to live by themselves, and that a truly happy life is that which always includes marriage.
Case Example: Women in The Days of Old
Women in ancient China did not enjoy the status, either social or political, afforded to men. Women were subordinate to first their fathers, then their husbands, and finally, in the case of being left a widow, their sons, in a system known as the “three followings” or sancong. Often physically ill-treated, socially segregated, and forced to compete for their husband's affections with concubines, a woman's place was an unenviable one. -- Mark Cartwright
Can we really say women were happier in traditional times? If a woman's desire to either live single and/or not bear children was ignored and misunderstood, can we say they were happy?
While children can make many couples happy, the sad truth is that not everyone is fit to raise children. Not necessarily due to ill, but also because not everyone has an affinity for them. It's one of the reasons why I, for example, might never have kids, as I find them extremely loud and thus, harmful for a lifespan I'm trying to expand.
Of course other women can also experience life that way, especially when you suffer from misophonia. Societies can understand how loud children can be. However, do their truly understand you if you have misophonia? Will the average authority figure care for this? Would they want to know this?
And as women did what they were told in traditional societies, were they happy given that they didn't have the freedom to do what they want? While modern-day women might not be happy too, can we blame this on their lack of choice? When sexism still thrives today, and when women still have a disproportionate burden in the household and struggle in providing proper care for their children, how could they be any happier?
Part IV: I Want to be Strong Enough To Provide Happiness to the One I Love
Some may claim that a life without happiness is not a life worth living, and those who lead such lives are more likely to sink into depression, if not become suicidal. While I don't agree with them wholeheartedly, I do understand the importance of happiness for the average person to say in their mind that "Ah, this is a life worth living". I understand some people need happiness, such as the one found in love, as core reason to go on living.
Hence why, for many, happiness is valuable, if not imperative in order to gain satisfaction from life. Happiness can also help us avoid certain illnesses and premature endings that may follow with an unhappy life.
Is happiness a right, or a privilege? Perhaps for most throughout history, it was the latter. The lower classes of premodern societies, instead of worrying for happiness, they had to worry for bread and for the future of their children. Many still worry about it today.
Rights, however, are not innate, but given to you by someone else. They are best provided when we make them an ethical obligation. Therefore, in the absence of a giver, "the right to happiness" is just a privilege reserved for the few. To quote the philosopher, Mary Warnock:
“I do not think that it makes sense to say that you have a right unless someone has a duty to make sure you get what you claim.”
Do we have a right to be happy? It might depend on duty.
And I put it as a self-proclaimed duty to make sure my partner is happy. If I can't ensure the happiness of many, I can ensure her happiness, at the very least!!
Understanding The Power of Rights
There is a distinction between survival and happiness. One can say happiness is not necessarily a basic right like any right that allows you to survive better, such as the right to live safely, or labor rights. The first is a right in any democracy that cares for its people. The second is a right in any society whose rule of law hasn't been torn apart.
No state is obliged to make you feel good; if you wish to feel good, you'll have to reach it yourself. It's not a responsibility anyone has for you, even as a child. That is... unless you have someone who wants to make it a right for you. Someone strong, capable, and with a large heart to contain you.
Most people are basically on their own in the pursuit of happiness. Even in modern times, jobs can deter you from your happiness. Life after workdays doesn't have to be enjoyable as well, when you struggle with loneliness and work-related fatigue.
However, it doesn't have to be that way, when you can find people who want to make sure you're happy. Simply, because they love you. And of course, I love her so much.
Conclusions -- The "Higher Calling"
Since your life belongs to you once you reach adulthood, it is then that you can better decide whether or not you're going to be pursuing happiness as a higher goal. That includes what it will be in your life (a job, a hobby? What kind of people?).
For some of us, life is more about living to the next pay-check than taking care of our children or living comfortably. For some of us, there is a "special call" in life—something that gives us great satisfaction, more than anything else.
Religious folk may claim that this "call" is from a higher being. Yet, even atheists and irreligious folk can have such "calls." Once you find it you can be, tremendously happy. In theory, it can be anything that can be special to anyone. Yet not everyone necessarily has it, nor will necessarily have it. They won't, likewise, recognize your call. Don't depend on validation too much.
The Other Aspect
We can conclude that the pursuit of happiness is not only subjective, but, at large, unfair and unjust. Some will have to sacrifice certain things in order to attain it, while others might never get to have the thing that truly makes them happy.
What is certain, however, is that happiness is not as imperative for living as other things, such as money etc.. To think that everyone wants to be happy to begin with is a critical error.
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Very interesting article; once one gets more aware of who he or she is, the quest for happiness normally occurs after a feeling bad occason which forces he or she to go deep in her or his self for finding out who we are so we know what makes us happy after all?
You are right , once the basic needs are fullfiilled , then we can look at being happy I guess?
Thanks for this nice article well explained!
roland