When we seek happiness, what exactly are we searching for? And when we wish happiness on someone else, what is it that we truly desire for them?
Can happiness even be defined or is it an illusion, an impossible desire to fulfil? So then why are there so many happiness self-help books? What do they promise and can they be attained? Is it possible to measure happiness? If so, how do ordinary people and scientists do that?
To answer these questions, I explored different definitions of happiness in my book Happiness, Unhappiness, and Chance. The book is based on my PhD study in philosophy.
Happiness today is narrowly defined by some positive psychologists as a joyous state of mind or well-being.
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The happiness sciences see it as something you can calculate and quantify. They developed a Happiness Index and the World Happiness Report. These basically measure happiness as satisfaction, with criteria like gross domestic product per capita (money) and life expectancy (health) as some of the factors considered.
But happiness is also defined by our capitalist, consumer-driven society as certain aspirational products, brands and lifestyles. These consumerist definitions are often exaggerated by influencers on social media, but also through the manipulation of consumers by the online algorithms behind the digital tools we use. Increasingly, this also happens through artificial intelligence.
All these different definitions of happiness create their own problem for happiness. In fact they can lead to more unhappiness than happiness.
Joy and pleasure are often short-lived and unsustainable; well-being can quickly be ruined by illness and fate; owning certain brands, products and lifestyles exposes us to the trap of the "hedonistic treadmill," which causes one "to rapidly and inevitably adapt to good things by taking them for granted".
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Happiness that's reduced to a single and simple definition does not consider the complexity of being human, of the societies we live in, and the fragile relationship we have with the environment.
My book searches for a more inclusive and encompassing definition of happiness. A happiness that is more than just joy or well-being, more than an ethical or good life. More than just good and meaningful human relationships. More than just luck, the absence of pain or a by-product of consumption. More than just a meaningful, fulfilled and content life.
I wanted to find out if a better understanding of happiness can be formed and actually achieved. One that considers all cultures and also factors like justice and caring for each other and the environment.
Can this kind of understanding of happiness, I wondered, not be a powerful motivation to live and work for a better future for all?
Consumerism
To explore the potential of such a philosophical understanding of happiness, we first need to understand why the current dominant definitions of happiness don't work anymore.
Today, consumerism and capitalism are the forces behind the digital technologies that manipulate our understanding of happiness. Consumerism, with its "you-must-have-this-or-that-to-be-happy" approach, became so powerfully enforced through today's digital platforms that it became a question of whether we can still envision, hope, and live for something more than what the algorithmic ecologies we live in present to us.
Happiness sciences
Happiness sciences, as the power behind happiness within our contemporary global happiness culture, proclaim that happiness is something one must work for and must achieve. Happiness itself is becoming so all-consuming that it is like a new religion. US historian Darrin McMahon describes the situation thus:
At the dawn of the modern age, God was happiness; happiness has since become our God.
Consequently, happiness becomes and remains an exhausting and impossible task which paradoxically makes one more unhappy. In this process people give up on happiness and may even become cynical due to this impossible pressure to be happy in a certain way.
Religion
Globally, the strongest power behind certain forms of happiness, especially as "true and eternal" happiness, is religion.
The type of happiness some religions offer is one where the ideal is that unhappiness should be overcome or will be in an afterlife. Some religions teach that true happiness can only be achieved in the afterlife, in heaven or nirvana, for example. They proclaim it is impossible to find true happiness in this world, or in the here and now.
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It is a happiness where this life is not fully affirmed because happiness can't be attained. It is still to come. In effect it is not only giving up on the possibility of happiness, but on "true" goodness and beauty in daily life.
Philosophy
As alternative to these problematic understandings of happiness, and the different driving forces behind them, I used well-known French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's thinking to guide me. He argued that happiness should and could not be defined as the overcoming of unhappiness. Such an attempt will always be futile. It denies unhappiness as part of the fundamental reality and fullness of life, and leaves us with an impossible and unhappy task. Happiness and unhappiness are always in relation to each other, and the one does not mean the annihilation of the other.
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Secondly, the relationship between happiness and unhappiness is situated within our fragile ability to work for happiness. Yet, at the same time, to be aware that receiving happiness is not just hard work but can be a result of chance. Unhappiness can be in the form of unexpected tragedy.
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The tension between striving for happiness and receiving happiness unexpectedly should remain. We should continue to work at contributing to our own and others' happiness. But if we try to always be in control we will become exhausted. So we should also keep on allowing space for chance - as luck and tragedy - in our lives.
Why this matters
The ability to think and dream again about a different kind of happiness, one that is connected to our lives (not the technological world of the present), our desires (not those manipulated by consumerism), and the needs of the world - which includes unhappiness and injustice - has become increasingly important today.
We need better definitions of happiness in a world where the term is constantly corrupted and used by consumerism, politicians, prosperity evangelicals, the self-help industry, and in algorithmic technologies.
Such happiness should be able to affirm our lives, here and now. Such affirmation will become more important as our lives are more manipulated and controlled by technology and consumerism.
I argue in my study that this affirmation of life allows for a happiness that can include and respond to unhappiness and chance. Life itself is one thing we should not give up on; otherwise, happiness will also become irrelevant.
Anné H. Verhoef, Professor in Philosophy, North-West University
