I recently got a DM from my friend  A.R.Karthick of http://arkarthick.com/  to respond to the question on “What is the key to Happiness? 

I smiled to myself, because I have been repeatedly asking this same question to myself for last several months.

After a turbulent 2011 my perspective about happiness has changed drastically. Just a year ago probably my views would have been completely different. But  today, I’m not too sure whether I really know the answer to this simple question.  Immediately I decided to write this post.    

Key to happiness - A brief overview.

Almost 50 years ago research showed that rats would work to electrical stimulation to their brains which suggested the possibility that bliss could be achieved through the use of ‘pleasure electrodes’ implanted deep within the brain.These findings seemed to suggest  that the pleasure center in the brain had been discovered.

Research in the next two decades established that dopamine is one of the main chemicals helping in neural signaling in these regions. For many years dopamine was suggested to be the brain’s “pleasure chemical.”

But the road to happiness was not that simple. Subsequent human experiments raised ethical questions and the research was eventually stopped. It was later realized pleasure electrodes are unlikely to truly cause pleasure, and are instead likely linked most closely to the psychological processes of ‘wanting’ - with very little ‘liking’ involved.

According to Aristotle happiness consisted of two fundamental aspects -  hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (a life well-lived). Aristotle spoke about achieving eudaimonia. So for him it was the act of living in balance and moderation that brought the highest pleasure.

Psychologists have recently proposed to add a third  meaning-related component of engagement  involving feelings of commitment and participation in life.

Hedonic happiness is similar to ‘liking’ without ‘wanting;’ as a state of pleasure without disruptive desires. It is just a state of contentment. Yet, happiness in daily life may rely on a proper balance of  ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ to help facilitate engagement with the world. If the balance tips the wrong way, happiness becomes impossible. As an example too much ‘wanting’ can readily lead to disruptive behaviour such as addiction which may be a great cause of unhappiness. 

The eudaimonic components of meaning and engagement are crucial to happiness for human beings. Eudaimonia is not an emotional state. It is more about being all that you can.The idea is that by living in a way that reaches your full potential you bloom or flourish and so display the best version of you that you can be.

The mechanisms that regulate behaviour were shaped for an environment quite different from the one we live in now. The size and duration of personal goals may be a  major difference that accounts for much pathology.

Hundreds of years ago individuals had limited variety of tasks like : gathering food, taking care of their family, participating in the group, etc.

But as social groups enlarged and roles became more specialized, the requirements for success and expectations reached to a very high level.

Huge rewards now go to those who devote huge proportion of their life’s effort to one domain, and sometimes even just to one goal.

For example a film or music star, famous athlete, a top academic, or a CEO will almost always have to sacrifice a lot in life to strive for the goal. What is worse, the goal may take years of specialized effort, it may not be reached, and if failure occurs, no satisfactory alternative may be available. Our brain regulation systems were never designed to cope with efforts so long in duration, towards goals so large, with all-or-none outcomes that offer few alternatives.

In today’s modern social structure individuals are sacrificing much in life to reach huge goals, whose attainment is uncertain and whose alternatives are few and unsatisfactory.

When employers seek a worker, the Harvard or Oxford graduate gets the edge. Once the pool of available spouses expands to thousands of people, simple attractiveness is overlooked in favour of drop-dead gorgeous partner. In short, the connections between modern life and compromised well-being has become very complex.

Doctors often come across such patients, where individuals running after hopeless or unwanted goals are entangled in situations that disengage motivation and cause extreme depression and unhappiness. In some extreme cases suicidal tendencies develop.

The question of whether “money buys happiness” comes up frequently in discussions of subjective well-being in both scholarly debates and casual conversation. The topic has been addressed in a vast and inconclusive research literature.  People imagine that because acquiring things causes joy, having things will cause happiness. According to some studies income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. It is observed that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being.

What one possesses in objective terms- money, personal image, social status, career, does not seem to be important to global quality of life and of little importance to self-assessed health. Several studies have indicated that what is really important is not what one has, but how he sees, evaluates and experiences what he has. The person's level of consciousness and responsible attitude towards life and others seem far more important for the global quality of life and health. 

We have used  science and technology to protect ourselves from want and many diseases. It seems quite possible that we will be able to use our growing knowledge to make similar advances in promoting human happiness.

References:

Natural selection and the elusiveness of happiness. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004;359:1333–47.

Causes and correlates of happiness. In Wellbeing (ed. D. Kahneman, E. Diener & N. Schwartz), pp.353–373. New York: Russell Sage Foundation 1999

Neural coding of pleasure: “rose-tinted glasses” of the ventral pallidum. In: Kringelbach ML, Berridge KC, editors. Pleasures of the Brain. Oxford University Press; New York, New York, USA: 2010. pp. 62–73.

Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex. Nat Neurosci. 1999;2:1032–7.  

Hedonic hotspots: generating sensory pleasure in the brain. In: Kringelbach ML, Berridge KC, editors. Pleasures of the Brain. Oxford University Press; New York, New York, USA: 2010. pp. 27–49.

Darwinian happiness: evolution as a guide for living and understanding human behavior. Princeton, NJ.Darwin Press.2002