How does one measure happiness?

[senchagreen]

On 2/1/2018 at 8:46 AM, Chimeric said:

AVEN's second-favorite author, Jordan Peterson, does a whole lot of talking about this on his YouTube channel and in his most recent book. He essentially boils it down to the fact that "happiness" is a crap life goal to have, because it's impossible to maintain, and in every moment we aren't happy we simultaneously feel like failures, which leads to a whole lot of other issues that also don't make us happy, and thus it propagates. 

I have not had a good impression of Jordan Peterson. It seems as though his videos are filled with bold statements that are individually hard to justify, and he uses those to reach his conclusions. I'm also skeptical when you say that he is AVEN's second favorite author, because one of his videos towards asexuals seemed offensive.  That being said, I'll watch more of his videos and see if my mind changes because I could be wrong.

 

I doubt my mind could be changed about happiness being a good life goal though. Perhaps "permanent happiness" would be what he meant. Of course nobody could be happy all the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a worthless effort.

[Chimeric]

4 hours ago, Lee314 said:

I have not had a good impression of Jordan Peterson. It seems as though his videos are filled with bold statements that are individually hard to justify, and he uses those to reach his conclusions. I'm also skeptical when you say that he is AVEN's second favorite author, because one of his videos towards asexuals seemed offensive.  That being said, I'll watch more of his videos and see if my mind changes because I could be wrong.

 

I doubt my mind could be changed about happiness being a good life goal though. Perhaps "permanent happiness" would be what he meant. Of course nobody could be happy all the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a worthless effort.

I was being heavily sarcastic when I called him AVEN's second favorite author, sorry.  Do continue watching his videos, though. Even if you disagree with what he says, his ability to debate and to carry on rational conversation even in the face of heated argument is an incredible skill to mimic.

 

I read another book recently called The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson) that talks about how so many people focus on "being happy" as a life goal, who are really messing up their lives because of it.

 

Basically what Petersen and Manson postulate is that happiness should be a side-effect, not a goal. If we're living a life with goals and values that are meaningful to us and achievable for us, then happiness comes to us because of that. But if we aim for happiness with no concrete plan of getting that happiness, then we're almost always doomed to fail. And as we fail, we aren't happy, and so we're failing doubly hard. 

 

Manson has a whole section about those self-affirmations people sometimes do - you know, the thing where you go and look at your reflection and tell yourself "I am handsome, I am smart, I am a good person." But he suggests that we wouldn't have to do these things if we already thought that those things were true, so when we practice reaffirmations, we're essentially repeating to ourselves - over, and over, and over again - "You aren't this thing so you're trying to convince yourself that you are."  It's a really interesting book.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

...maybe ask Matthieu Ricard? He's widely purported to be the world's happiest man....

[SorryNotSorry]

On January 26, 2018 at 8:10 PM, Lee314 said:

So, my question for you all is how do we measure happiness? or simpler, how do we determine if we are happy or not in a given moment? It also could be helpful to think of what it means to be happy or what makes you happy. 

 

Any thoughts? My mind's getting jumbled thinking about this, and I'm not sure how to answer.

To me, this is like asking someone what "gooooooood!" tastes like. You're going to get a zillion individual answers.

[RoseGoesToYale]

First we have operationalize "happiness", which has a pretty subjective definition. E.g. for a Buddhist, the closest thing to such "happiness" might be the absence of suffering, but the absence of suffering doesn't necessarily imply happiness, rather contentedness or ok-ness with the world. For a capitalist, happiness might be the ownership of certain material objects that convey status. Then there are varying cultural definitions of happiness... trying to quantify it gets sticky real quick.

[lapat67]

On 31/01/2018 at 10:03 PM, lapat67 said:

We have one inbuilt. What's this with calling it subjective? Is that meant as an objection? Asking people how happy they are on a scale from 1 to 10 is done all the time. And people have an answer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

 

On 01/03/2018 at 5:19 PM, RoseGoesToYale said:

First we have operationalize "happiness", which has a pretty subjective definition. E.g. for a Buddhist, the closest thing to such "happiness" might be the absence of suffering, but the absence of suffering doesn't necessarily imply happiness, rather contentedness or ok-ness with the world. For a capitalist, happiness might be the ownership of certain material objects that convey status. Then there are varying cultural definitions of happiness... trying to quantify it gets sticky real quick.

I think the second half of your last sentence is a non sequitur from the first half. In global data on self-reported happiness all respondents have answered the question from within their own culture.

[Yatogami]

Believe in God, and you are always happy.

[daveb]

I don't measure happiness. I just enjoy it.