Is Life About the Search for Happiness?

Introduced by Yvonne C.

Notes on the 16/12/02 meeting of HKPC's Kowloon Branch

Reported by Steve Palmquist (moderator)

Yvonne introduced the topic by summarizing some of the main points recorded in her detailed meeting notes. Essentially, her answer was “yes”, with the important qualification that happiness comes only as a product of the search for wisdom. So a more important question is: “What is wisdom?” She cited the views of Aristotle (for whom the “good life” is the life of moderate virtue, leading to happiness), Epicurus (for whom happiness is gained through living a virtuous life with one’s friends), Eastern philosophy (with its focus on balance between the yin and yang aspects of everything), Buddhism (with its search for the middle way), and several other religious traditions. On the issue of how to choose friends, Yvonne used Shakespeare’s characters to illustrate how every good person has a weakness, reminded us of the importance of being able to be alone (i.e., of being your own best friend), and warned against making friends with people who are always swaying between extremes. On the issue of how to deal with change, she stressed the importance of “catching the sword by the handle, not by the blade”, warned us against loving novelty too much, noted Dante’s view that the Devil lives where there is no change, cited a study indicating the benefits of early retirement, and encouraged us to eat a balanced diet in order to live longer. Referring to her own experiences in Quaker Meetings, she also noted how enjoying regular periods of silence enables a person to value words more: you cannot clear a muddy stream by stirring it up! After listing numerous characteristics of a “fool”, Yvonne recommended that we avoid confiding in such people. A wise person, by contrast, is realistic, counts his or her blessings, is good, asks for advice, is watchful, not interested in secrets, finishes tasks, etc.

As usual, a variety of different questions were raised by the participants. In the first set of exchanges, Yvonne was asked to clarify whose life she was talking about, and in particular, whether she would include animals in her analysis. She responded that she had based her reflections mainly on the people she knows, but that much of what she said might apply to animals (e.g., her dog) as well. She agreed that there might be other factors she hadn’t considered, such as genetic influences, but argued that we are not totally under their control.

Next, several people inquired about the role of the “middle way”: isn’t such a philosophy likely to lead to boredom rather than happiness? Yvonne’s response, that change is always good, elicited a barrage of further questions. How much change? Don’t we need to know the extremes before we can know the middle way? Moreover, many people who live in the extremes, such as extremely religious people, seem to be quite happy. Is the Pope less likely to be happy, just because he lives an extremely religious life? And what about cult members or the 911 terrorists who apparently believed they were going to Paradise as a reward for their extreme actions? Isn’t spontaneity, a willingness to be surprised, also important for a happy life? Yvonne reiterated that for her “happiness” must be clearly distinguished from momentary pleasure. She sees happiness as something necessarily rooted in a moderate lifestyle leading to life-long fulfillment.

Here I pointed out that some people would prefer a one-off fulfillment of their heart’s desire (following which they might say “now I can die happy!”) to a long life of boring monotony. Another participant added that our modern emphasis on consumerism and self-indulgence would seem to support the latter more than the former. Still another spoke up in support of Yvonne’s position, reminding us that modern crazes such as mobile phone mania, extreme sports, and 911 are a sign of the emptiness and loneliness of any society that aims for momentary happiness rather than long-term fulfillment. He reminded us that the Chinese Way to wisdom requires a person to give up your own momentary wishes in order to search for a higher goal that is detached from such self-centered concerns. Several people noted that “nonattachment” is a more accurate term for this approach than “detachment”.

The main point of Yvonne’s introduction became more clear in her responses to the last few questions. These gave her the opportunity to clarify that the word “happiness” in the title should be taken to refer only to long-lasting happiness, and that human life is about this kind of happiness only because it comes as a result of the search for wisdom. Even with her position clarified in this way, however, the last question raised an important challenge: poor people often seem to be very happy just as they are and do not need to search for wisdom or deeper fulfillment in the ways Yvonne had recommended.

At this point I suggested that the small group discussions might want to focus on one or more of three questions: (1) Is “life” in the sense we are talking about here equivalent to “human life”? (2) What is happiness? and (3) Is it the search for happiness or the finding of it that is most important?

After briefly contrasting Yvonne’s notion of a relentless “search” with the Taoist notion of the Way of Spontaneity, the small group I joined talked quite a bit about the different features happiness can have for different people. An important philosophical distinction to be raised here is between the object of happiness (i.e., the thing or experience that makes a person happy) and the experience itself (i.e., the essential character of the feeling). Although the former is indeed different for different people, most philosophers would argue that the latter should be the same. This point led us to a consideration of “contentment” as the best term to describe the state of mind Yvonne was encouraging us to develop. One problem this raised is that a lack of contentment is often what motivates people to act, so if a person were content all the time (as one member of my small group claimed to be), then how (and why) would such a person ever decide to act in one way rather than another? The person’s answer was very Taoist: he just does whatever he likes, and is content, no matter what the outcome is.

I also raised the point that for some philosophers (such as Kant), virtue is what life is “about”, and happiness is a mere product of the search for the former. As we discussed this point with Yvonne (who was also in the same small group), I gradually came to realize that this was, in fact, what Yvonne had been arguing all along. I was originally the one who suggested the title to Yvonne, so it seems that my title might have ended up not being entirely suitable for her introduction. For she argued (in the small group) that for her virtue is the key to wisdom, and since searching for wisdom is how one becomes happy, she basically agrees with the Kantian position. When asked which comes first, happiness or wisdom/virtue, Yvonne responded that happiness is the goal, with wisdom/virtue being the means to achieve that goal.

The last few minutes of our small group discussion were spent talking about Freud’s view, as expressed in his book, Civilization and Its Discontents, that the greatest (most influential, and so presumably also the wisest?) people are always the most unhappy people. He explains this on the grounds that culture is primarily a product of the superego (and its “death wish”) curbing the desires of the id (and its “libido” or sex drive) and finding alternative ways of channeling that unused energy. To make ourselves completely happy, according to Freud, would require us to give up human culture, and with it, all that is best about being civilized people. With their uninhibited expression of their sexuality, animals may be the best example of “life” that is “about the search for happiness”, yet such lives are not worth living, for us humans - depressing though this fact may be.

Once the small groups came back together, I started off the final session by asking whether life is only about the search for happiness. The first response was that different things make different people happy, but that the common feature of life for everyone seems to be that human beings (unlike animals) need a purpose. Another possibility is that life is simply about survival and the perpetuation of our DNA. Someone else claimed that peacefulness and neutrality are the key, because they lead to a balanced life.

This appeal to balance led to a brief, though interesting, discussion of whether the notion of balance actually makes sense, and if so, whether it is really needed. The point was again raised that some extremists seem to be fulfilled. Yvonne responded that one person’s way of balancing their life may look extreme to another person, because we’re all different. Yet the former person’s “extreme” may be just what he or she needs in order to regain genuine balance. The original questioner then asked whether any behavior could be called “imbalanced”. Yvonne replied that we do not know other people well enough to make such a judgment. She illustrated this by saying that even something as extreme and apparently unwise as a search for money might be just the thing a poor youth needs to regain balance. The search for balance, she reminded us, is just what she means by the search for happiness. And to this, one other participant added that even in “balance” something “imbalanced” is always contained.

When someone brought up the “ignorance is bliss” saying, I took that opportunity to mention the ideas of Freud that had been discussed in my small group. Someone then asked whether it is possible to be wise and yet unhappy (as Freud assumes). Someone else asked what wisdom is. Yvonne repeated her idea that wisdom is the means to the goal of happiness. Another participant claimed that wisdom is to know oneself. A third portrayed it as “the sublimation of knowledge”. And yet another summarized the Buddhist view that wisdom is more than knowledge; it is acting without passion, because passion leads to suffering. Finally, one participant opined that there is no connection between happiness and wisdom: a wise person may turn out to be either happy or unhappy, for reasons that are unrelated to his or her wisdom. The fourth respondent to the question about wisdom replied by distinguishing again between momentary happiness and happiness as deep self-contentment, arguing that the rare self-knowledge that accompanies the latter is the key to human life.

Since we were beginning to repeat ourselves, and with the time quickly approaching 10pm, Yvonne concluded by summarizing her main thesis: Life is about the search for happiness in the sense that we become happy only by searching for wisdom; and the search for wisdom requires a balanced and virtuous life.

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In our few remaining moments, the following suggestions were given for future discussion topics:

- Euthanasia

- The value of silence

- How do you define (or measure) instinct?

- Should we quantify everything?

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This page was uploaded on 27 January 2003.