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>> In the previous segment we discussed
various theories about the history of happiness.
That they all have in common, this attitude towards happiness as if
it is a product of material factors like health, and diet, and wealth.
But, as we saw this is not obvious.
Philosophers, and poets, and thinkers throughout history.
When they thought about the nature of happiness, and the causes
of happiness.
Many of them reached the conclusions that,
yes material factors are important, but social, ethical
and spiritual factors also have a very
important, a very big impact on our happiness.
So we come to ignore them. In recent decades, pyschologists,
economists and biologists have taken up this challenge of scientifically
studying what really makes people happy.
And through that understanding the dynamics
of happiness in society in history.
Are people made happy By money, by family relations,
by genetics, perhaps by their virtues and good deeds.
The first step when we try to, to study
happiness and what causes people to be happy is
to define what happiness is. And to find some way of measuring it.
Without a definition and a measurement you can't study scientifically.
You can think about it.
You can philosophize about it, but you can't study scientifically.
Now the generally accepted definition of happiness.
As is is studied today in eh, the social and life sciences is that happiness is
subjective well being.
This is the professional term for happiness.
Subjective well being.
According to this definition, happiness is something that I feel
inside myself. It is either a sense of immediate
pleasure, or a sense or a feeling of long-term contentment with the way that
my life is going. Now, if happiness is something that people
feel inside them, How can scientists measure it from outside?
Presumably, we can do it.
Scientists can do it by asking a lot of people to tell us how they feel.
Psychologists or biologists who want to assess.
How people feel.
Simply give them questionnaires to, to, to fill
out, and to report what they are feeling.
And they give these questionnaires to thousands of people.
And this is how they build statistics about happiness.
A typical, subjective well-being questionnaire, asks interviewees
to grade on a scale of say,
zero to ten.
Their agreement with all kinds of statements like,
I feel very pleased with the way I am.
I feel that life is rewarding.
I am optimistic about the future, and life is good.
Now you get such, such, such a questionnaire,
you need to say on, on, on a
scale of zero to ten how much you agree with the sentence, I feel as if life
is good. So you write, say, 7.
And then there is another question and you write about a 8.
And then another question and so forth.
And then, the researchers say it adds up. All the answers that you gave.
And, and the researchers calculate your general level of subjective
well being according to the answers that you gave to these questions.
Such questionnaires are used in order to study the relation
between happiness or subjective well-being and all kinds of other factors,
like wealth or political situation or social situation.
For example, if you want to know whether
money makes people happy, whether rich people are happier
than poor people.
So you take a thousand people who earn say $100,000 a year.
And give them, all these thousand people,
you give them this questionnaire to fill out.
And you take a thousand people who earn only $50,000 a year, and give them also
questionnaires to fill out. And if your study, if your study discovers
that the first group of rich people have a subjective well-being level of 8.7.
If you take all the questionnaires and calculate what is the average
level of subjective well being of these thousand people who earn
$100,000, you discover it's 8.7 on a scale of zero to ten.
And the average subjective well
being of people who earn $50,000 is only 7.3.
Then you can conclude that there is a positive
correlation between wealth and subjective well-being.
Or in simple English, that money brings happiness.
When people earn more money, they
feel better about themselves, about their lives,
as can be seen from these statistics.
Now obviously, if it's just one person or two people, that you
asked about how they feel, there could be all kinds of statistical problems.
But, if you give this questionnaire to thousands of people,
and if you do the research properly, eh, eh, eh, properly.
Then, scientists believe it can give you a good indication
for the influence of say, wealth on happiness.
This same method can be used to examine other eh, other questions, other factors.
For example, whether people living in democracies.
Are happier, than people living in dictatorship.
Whether married people are happier than single people or divorcees or widowers.
This is the way that most studies, most scientific
studies of happiness are conducted today in the academic world.
Now this line of thinking, this method, has its problems.
But before pointing the problems, it's worth considering first
of all, some of the finding of these scientists.
The most important finding of numerous, dozens and hundreds of
such researches done over the last few decades, the most important
conclusion is that happiness does not really depend
on objective conditions of either wealth or health or
even society. Rather, happiness depends above
all, according to these studies, on the correlation between
expectations and conditions. What does it mean?
It means that you're happy not because your objective situation is x.
You are happy because your expectations, whatever they are, get fulfilled.
This is
the important thing.
If, for example, you dream about getting a bullock cart,
and you get a bullock cart, then you are content.
You got what you wanted.
You are happy.
If on the other hand, you dream about having a brand new Ferrari, and you get
only a secondhand Fiat, then you aren't as satisfied, even though the Fiat
car, car is much faster, much more sophisticated
than the wagon. You are not happy with it because you are
comparing it not with the wagon of your great-grandfather, but you are
comparing it with the brand new Ferrari about which you're dreaming.
And therefore you will be dissatisfied despite the improvement in objective
conditions of transportation.
The implication of this a line of thinking, is
that even dramatic changes in the conditions of human
beings in history, did not necessarily make them happier
or change their happiness level for better or worse.
The, the problem is or the, the basic mechanism
of human satisfaction discovered by these studies is that
when things improve, expectations balloon. We expect far more.
And consequently even dramatic improvement in
objective conditions can leave us dissatisfied.
Because we expect far more than before. When things deteriorate,
when conditions are worse than before, then
expectations, expectations of people will tend to shrink.
They expect less, and therefore even severe deterioration in conditions.
They leave you as happy as you were before,
because your expectations got adapted to this new condition.
And this implies
that, for example, people in the middle ages were not necessarily
much less happy than people are today, It's true
that people in the Middle Ages had much more difficult
living conditions in many respects than people today in the world.
But the expectations of people in the Middle Ages were also
very different from our expectations. Now, it's very
hard for many people, to accept this line of thinking.
The problem is, that when we try to imagine how
people in the past felt, we inevitably imagine
ourselves in their shoes. Not how they must have felt, but how I
would have felt. If I had to live under those conditions.
And this is wrong, because it forgets
to take into account the change in expectations.
The people in the Middle Ages did not live
like us but they did not have our expectations.
Let's take a simple example.
In modern affluent societies around the world today.
It is customary
for people to take a shower, and to change their clothes everyday.
Medieval peasants on the other hand, whether
in Europe or China, or the Middle East.
Went without washing sometimes for many weeks and months.
And hardly ever changed their clothes, because they didn't have many clothes.
Now for us, just thinking about living
like that, without washing, without changing clothes,
stinking, makes us feel very, very uncomfortable.
Just to think about it.
But with even peasants, seeing not to have minded so much.
They, they were used to the feel, and to
the smell, of a dirty shirt, and a dirty body.
It's not that they wanted to take a shower every day and
change their clothes every day but couldn't.
They had what they wanted.
They were content with what they had, because they didn't expect such things.
So at least as far as showers and clothing goes, even though they were far, far
poorer, than people today in affluent society, it
doesn't mean that they were much more miserable.
And this example, it shouldn't surprise us so much.
After all, think for example about our chimpanzee cousins.
Chimpanzees almost never wash themselves, and never change their clothes.
But they don't complain.
They don't seem particularly miserable because they have
to stay in the same dirty fur all day.
Even we, even closer to us, maybe you have a cat or a dog at home.
Most cats and dogs never
shower, or at least, only once in a few years, and never
change their clothes, yet their owners, pet and hug and even kiss them.
So we don't expect a dog to take a shower every day.
So we don't mind petting the dog or even kissing the dog who didn't take a shower.
But with us, we expect people to shower every day.
So if your spouse or if one of your family members doesn't
shower for a month. You won't approach him.
You won't approach him. Because he's stinking.
But you will, you, you, your perfectly all right with it, when it comes to dogs.
Even, and even, more interesting thing to think about in this, in
this, in relation to this, is that what happens with small children.
Small children in affluent societies often don't like showering.
And it takes sometimes years
of education, of, and fighting with their parents,
to discipline them, and to make them shower everyday.
In many houses, there is every day some conflict
about the child not wanting to take a shower.
And the parents say, no, you have to take a shower before going to bed.
Now if showering, taking a shower was such
a wonderful thing, why would small children object
to it?
The fact is that taking a shower everyday is not natural.
To human beings.
It's not important for their happiness until they get used to it.
Once they get used to it, once it becomes an expectation, I
must take a shower every day, otherwise I feel dirty and stinking.
Once you have this expectation, then it becomes important.
Then if you don't get your shower every day you will
feel miserable, at least until you get used to your new condition.
So, this is the central importance of expectations
for happiness and for the history of happiness.
An interesting conclusion from this is that
if happiness is indeed determined by expectations,
then two of the central pillars of modern society, the mass media
and the advertising industry, may actually be working to ensure.
Not necessarily on purpose, but they are working to ensure that people won't
become happier even if there are huge improvements in their conditions,
because the media and the advertising industry all
the time exposes us to more and more,
eh, to better and better things and all
the time they're working to increase our expectations.
And thereby they are preventing an increase in our happiness.
For example, take the issue of how people
relate to their bodies, what people think about
how they look. Think, for example, about some
18-year-old teenager in a small village 5,000 years ago.
Such a teenager 5,000 years ago probably thought that he looked pretty hot.
Because in those times he knew only the other 50 men in his small village.
Most of these 50 men
were much older than him, or they were scarred or wrinkled
and suffered from some disease, or they were just small kids.
So he thought, based on his acquaintance with the
other 50 guys around him, that he looked pretty good.
A teenager today is far more likely to
feel that he looks, doesn't look good enough,
that he shoul-, that oth-, that he's inadequate.
Because even if he personally is surrounded by other
teenagers or other youngsters who don't look much better than him, he is exposed
every day to movie stars and to athletes and
to supermodels which he sees every day on television and
in giant billboards and on the Internet and so
forth, and he measure how, the way he looks.
Compared to these models, not compared to the other
50 kids in his school or in his college.
And therefore, it's no wonder.
And there are lots of studies about it, that the body
image of people today is far lower than in the past.
People are far
less satisfied.
With the way they look today, than they were a 100 years ago or a 1,000 years ago.
This leads some scholars to argue, this, eh, important, eh, issue
of expectations in the mass media and so forth, that even the discontent.
As we see today in the Third World, in developing
countries, is caused by, not narrowly, by poverty and
disease and corruption and political oppression, but, perhaps most importantly,
simply by their exposure to the standards of the developed world.
Of the first world.
Take Egypt, for example. The average Egyptian enjoyed
much better conditions under the rule of Hosni Mubarak,
than under the rule of any previous government in the history of Egypt.
It was much less likely to die from starvation, or plague, or war
under Hosni Mubarak than under pharaoh Ramses the Second, or Cleopatra.
The material condition of the average Egyptian was never so good.
Again, the, for, for example.
The chance of an Egyptian woman to die while giving birth was
smaller in the age of Hosni Mubarak than in any previous age in Egyptian history.
The chances of a newborn baby in Egypt to reach adulthood.
Without dying from some terrible disease on the way, they were much better in
the days of Hosni Mubarak than in the days of any previous government in Egypt.
Your chances of dying again from starvation or from war were much
lower than in the middle ages or in the days of the Pharaohs.
Nevertheless, you would have thought.
That the Egyptians, in consequence, will go dancing
in the streets, thanking Allah for their good fortune to
be living under Hosni Mubarak and not in previous era.
But as we all know, they were not very happy with it.
They stage a revolution.
They went to the streets in anger.
Toppling Mubarak from power, saying that they are not
satisfied with their living conditions, even though their living conditions
at least with respect to objective measurements were much better than
in any previous era in history, at least since the agriculture cultural revolution.
This was, this is because Egyptians were dissatisfied because they were comparing
themselves not to their ancestors hundreds of years previously, but to
their contemporaries in Europe and America.
The Egyptians did not expect to live like the Middle Ages
and then they were very happy when the conditions were actually better.
They expected to live like the people they see on television in America and they're
very dissatisfied when Hosni Mubarak could not provide such a standard of living.
So this is the main finding of scholars in fields such as psychology
and sociology and economics. Happiness depends on expectations.
And because expectations adapt to conditions, happiness
levels throughout history changed to a small degree.
Than we usually think, maybe there are some,
some changes, but they are not as big as the changes in eh, human power.
The question of happiness however, has been studied by scholars in other fields.
Not only in the social sciences, like say, ecology and sociology,
but also by scholars in the life sciences, like biology and medicine.
And scholars in the life
sciences studying happiness, reached rather similar conclusions.
To the conclusions of some psychologists and economists,
but from a different approach, from a different perspective.
Biologists argue that our mental and emotional world is governed
by biochemical mechanisms that were shaped by millions of years
of evolution. Like all other mental states, our
happiness our subjective well being too, is not determined by external factors
like our salary, or our social relations, or the political situation in the country.
Rather our happiness, according to the life sciences, is determined.
By a complex,
internal biological system of nerves and neurons and synapses in the brain.
And various biochemical substances such as serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin.
These control our moods and even our joy or sadness,
happiness, or suffering. Nobody, according to biologists,
nobody is ever made happy by winning the lottery, or by
buying a house, or by getting a promotion at work or even by finding true love.
Nobody is made happy.
By such things.
People are made happy by one thing, and one thing only, according to biologists.
And this one this is pleasant sensations
in the body. A person who has just won the
lottery or a person who has just met the love of his life.
Jumps from joy, not because is reacting to the money, or to the new lover.
But because he or she are reacting to
various hormones that are now going through the bloodstreams.
And in reacting
to the storm of electric signals flashing between
different parts of the brain. This is what makes them jump from joy.
And unfortunately, for all the hopes of creating heaven, here on earth,
our internal biochemical system, is programmed by
evolution to keep happiness levels relatively constant.
Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent
that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction.
Evolution has no inherent interest in happiness as such.
It might not be surprising, therefore, that evolution Have shaped us.
To be neither too miserable,
nor too happy.
Evolution enables us, a biochemical system in our body shaped by evolution,
enables us to enjoy momentary rushes of pleasant sensations.
But these never last long, or at least not forever.
Sooner or later, the rush of hormones and
the electrical signals in the mind and so forth,
they change. And the pleasant sensations subside
and give place to much more unpleasant sensations.
For example, to give an example to, to this general principle, take eh, the
example of sex and ***. Evolution provided pleasant
feelings of *** and other *** feeling to males, and also to females
who spread their genes by having sex with fertile females.
A male who has sex with a fertile female is rewarded by evolution
with this pleasant feeling of an ***. If it was
not so, if sex was not accompanied by pleasant sensations
in the body, few males would bother about having
it, I mean, what's the point?
At the same time, evolution is not really interested in making these males happier.
It's only interested in making them pass their genes onto the next generation so it
tempts them with these pleasant feelings, but the pleasant feelings quickly go away.
If orgasms, if evolution, if evolution really wanted,
eh, eh, was infinite happiness then it would
have designed males which have orgasms that last forever.
Obviously, this is not the case because
evolution is interested in survival and reproduction.
And if, orgasms lasted forever.
Then the very happy males who had them would simply die of
hunger for lack of interest in looking for food, and in any case,
would not take the trouble for finding additional fertile
females to carry their genes to the next generation.
As a result, external events, such as having sex, or winning the lottery,
or being hit by a car, can temporarily increase or decrease our happiness.
But over the long run, the biochemical system of our body will tend
to return us to square one, and in any case, will not allow our happiness levels.
To increase or decrease beyond a certain,
beyond a certain, a certain, a certain threshold.
Some scholars actually compare human biochemistry to a, to a kind of
air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature
constant, no matter what happens outside.
Whether it's heat wave or
snow storm, events might momentarily change the temperature,
but the air conditioning system will always return the same, the temperature to
the same set point. Now some air, some
air conditioning systems are set at 25 degrees Celsius.
Other systems are set at 20 degrees Celsius.
Similarly, the biochemical systems of different
people are not the same. They differ from person to person.
On a scale, of say, zero to ten. Some
people are born, are genetically programmed, with a cheerful
biochemical system that allows their mood to swing,
say, between level six and level ten,
stabilizing with time around level eight of happiness.
Such a person, with a cheerful biochemical system, will be quite happy.
Even if she lives in an alienated big city.
Even if she loses all her money in a Stock Exchange crash.
Even if she's diagnosed with diabetes, she's likely
to remain rather cheerful and satisfied.
Other people are born with a gloomy biochemical system.
A system that, say, swings between three and seven.
And stabilizes with time at five, on a scale of zero to ten.
Such a person is likely to remain depressed and dissatisfied,
even if she enjoys the support of a very tight community, even if
she wins millions in the lottery, and even if she's as healthy as an olympic athlete.
She's still likely to be grumpy and dissatisfied most of the time.
Think for a moment about yourself, your friends,
and your family members, you will probably find
you are probably familiar with just such people.
Who remain relatively joyful and satisfied, no matter what happens to them.
And then there are other friends or family members who always seem to be
dissatisfied and disgruntled, no matter even, even if they have all kinds
of successes and lucky breaks. Most of us tend to believe
that eh, if we only changed our workplace, if we only got
married, if we only finished writing that novel or that paper for college.
If we only had the money to buy a new car or to repay the mortgage.
Then we'll be completely happy and satisfied.
Yet, when we get what we desire, most of the time, we don't
seem to be any happier than before. Because buying
cars and writing novels and so forth. They do a lot of things.
But they do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it
for a fleeting moment. But very soon, the biochemical systems
returns us to our set point. This is the biological
approach to happiness.
And if we accept this biological approach to happiness, that happiness is
determined by our internal biological system,
biochemical system, and not by events outside.
That it turns out that history is simply not very important.
At least, not very important for human happiness, because historical events have
very little impact on the structure of the human
biochemical system, on the internal structure of our bodies and
brain. History can change the external stimuli
that causes say serotonin to be secreted in the
brain. But history does not change the resulting
serotonin levels.
And therefore it cannot really make people happier than before.
Compare for example, a Medieval French peasant, to a modern Parisian banker.
The peasant, back in the Middle Ages, lived in
an unheated mud hut, looking upon the local pigsty.
In contrast,
the modern pa-, banker's great, great, great
grandson may go home to a splendid penthouse
with all the latest technological gadgets and
get a wonderful view over the Eiffel Tower.
Now most people would expect the modern banker
to be much happier than the medieval peasant.
However, a man's happiness is
determined by his brain.
And his brain, the brain does not know
anything about mud huts or penthouses or the Champs-Elysees.
The only thing the brain knows about is all kinds of chemical substances like
serotonin. When the medieval peasant completed
building his tiny mud hut, brain neurons secreted
serotonin bringing it up to level x. When in 2013, the Parisian
banker made the last payment on his wonderful super technological penthouse.
Brain neurons, in the, in the brain, secreted a similar auto seratonin
bringing up again to a similar level X. Now the brain of
these two individuals is unaware.
But the penthouse is much more comfortable than the mud hut.
The only thing the brain knows is that at present, the level of serotonin is x.
What led to to this level, the brain does not know.
Consequently if the banker and the medieval
peasant have the same level of serotonin in
the brain they will be as happy as each other.
One would not be one iota happier than the other.
The banker will not be happier than his great-great-great-great-grandfather,
the poor medieval peasant. And this logic is applicable,
not only to the lives of individuals but also to great
collective events. Take for example, the French Revolution.
The French Revolution changed many things in French society and politics.
The revolutionaries executed the king.
They gave land to the peasants. They declared the Rights of Man.
They abolished noble priviledges, and they waged war against the whole of Europe.
Yet, none of these actions changed the basic
structure of the French biochemistry or French brain.
Consequently, it is likely if we accept the biological
theories, it is likely that despite all the political and social
and economic upheavals brought about by the French Revolution,
its impact on French happiness was very small.
Those who won a cheerful biochemistry, a cheerful biochemical system in the
genetic lottery, were just as happy before the revolution as after the revolution.
And those who got a gloomy
biochemistry, they complain about Robespierre and Napoleon
with the same bitterness.
With which they earlier complained about Louis XVI or Marie Antoinette.
If so, we can ask, what good was the French Revolution?
If people did not become any happier as a result of it, what was the point
about all the chaos, and the fear, and the bloodshed, and war and so forth?
If you really understand and
accept the biological approach to happiness, then
the conclusion is that it was pointless.
Biologists would not have encouraged you to
storm the Bastille because it wouldn't change anything.
People think, people fantasize that this political revolution or that social reform
would make them happier. But the biochemistry tricks them again and
again and again.
The political revolution comes but the biochemistry remains the
same, and therefore, the level of happiness remains the same.
According to this view, there is only
one historical development that has real significance.
For the history of happiness. Today, when we finally realize that
the keys to happiness are in the hands
of our internal biochemical system, we can stop
wasting our time on politics and social reforms
and wars and ideologies and all that stuff.
Instead, we should focus on the only thing that can make us truly happy.
And this thing is manipulating
our biochemistry. The one thing that is important
in the history of humankind from this perspective, is the
advance in science, particularly in the life sciences.
If we invest billions of dollars in cracking the codes of our
biochemistry and genetics and so forth, and if we use this
knowledge to develop better treatments, we can make people far happier than
they ever were before, without any need of political and social revolutions.
Prozac and other eh, psychiatric drugs, they work,
they increase your happiness, not by changing the regime.
Or implementing some economical reform, but by raising
up in an artificial way, the serotonin level
in your brain, and this does manage to
lift at least some people out of their depression.
Nothing perhaps captures better the biological approach to happiness.
Than the famous new age slogan,
happiness begins within. Money, social status, politics,
plastic surgery, beautiful houses, none of these things will bring you happiness.
Lasting happiness, according to the biological
approach, can come only from within yourself.
From Serotonin, from Dopamine, from Oxytocin, and from
the other biochemical compounds and systems that are your body.
In his novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley back in the 1930s
already envisaged a world, in which happiness, is
the supreme value of society, and psychiatric drugs that control
and increase happiness levels, replace the police and elections, and government,
and so forth as the foundation of politics.
In the world envisaged, by Aldous Huxley.
Each day, every person in the world takes a dose of soma.
Soma is a synthetic drug that makes people satisfied with their lives and
feel very happy about themselves without harming their productivity and efficiency.
The world's state that rules the whole world in this scenario, governs the
entire globe and is never threatened by any wars, any revolutions,
strikes or demonstrations, because all people in the world are supremely content
and satisfied with the current conditions, no matter what these conditions are.
Because there
the system is, is built on controlling and manipulating
the biochemic-, biochemistry inside us and not the conditions around us.
And if you do this successfully, then anything that happens outside?
It doesn't really matter.
This vision of the future is, many people find it far more troubling
than for example George Orwell's Dystopia, 1984.
Huxley's World seems monstrous to most readers
but, it is very hard to explain why.
After all in Huxley's world, everybody is very happy all the time.
So, what could be wrong with it. We'll try to answer this question in the
next segment, which will explore other approaches to the study of happiness.
And which will also examine the problems of
the approaches, which we'll discuss in this segment.
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